Ross Douthat The New York Times

February 23, 2010

Ross Douthat
The New York Times
620 8th Avenue
New York, New York 10018

RE: Pulitzer Prizes

Mr. Douthat,

It is still called chutzpah in Manhattan. South Florida prefers the words cojones or huevos. Big brass balls is a universal term that is universally accepted.

I read your Op-Ed about the National Enquirer making it to the Round of Eight in the march Madness that is the Pulitzer Prize raree. Two points must be made.

#1 – Did the Miami Herald’s “photograph of Donna Rice sitting side-saddle on Gray Hart’s lap” mean that she gave him half a lap dance. If she did was it the first half or the second half?

#2 – I waited in great anticipation – as I always do whenever the NYT discusses Pulitzer Prizes – for you to mention the name that is akin to a turd in the punch bowl at World HQ of the NYT. World HQ until it reappears after a 3 day weekend in Huejutla, Mexico.

That name is Walter Duranty.

Do you remember the irenic bumper sticker in the days of Bush 43? It was back before politics became “mean spirited”. It said “Bush lied – Thousands died”.

Walter Duranty was the Moscow correspondent for the NYT. He won the Pulitzer Prize for Foreign Reporting in 1932.

Today is the anniversary of the start of the siege at the Alamo. “Remember the Alamo” is now in its 3rd century of resonance in this country. No one ever forgets.

How does “Duranty lied – Millions died” sound?

Hitler’s role model for holocausts was Stalin. Stalin decided to liquidate an entire class of people in Ukraine. He didn’t shoot them because of a bullet shortage. The gas chambers had not yet been perfected. The Kulaks, having been marked for death for ideological reasons, were systematically starved. At least 5,000,000 and perhaps as many as 8,000,000 people were killed. Hitler noted that the West did nothing.

[As an aside the Kulaks were successful farmers and traders. Around the same time as they were being killed a fraud named Lysenko became Stalin’s favorite agronomist. As the Kulaks were killed millions of acres of arable land went fallow. It is well to note that Russia was net exporter of wheat and barley for 50 years before their “successful” revolution. Lysenko’s thesis, that potatoes and wheat could be made to grow correctly, was based on sound scientific Socialist principles. The result was/is/shall be predictable. Crops don’t grow on command. Am I the only one to note the similarity between politically correct vegetables and Global Cooling? OK, OK. Global Warming. I know, I know. The Elders have spoken. It is now Climate Change. Is the science ever “settled? Einstein always wanted to be proved wrong. That way, he is supposed to have said, he could get on to “something useful”.]

Stick around, Mr. Douthat. It gets worse.

Duranty was a bought and paid for agent of the KGB. Their headquarters was the Lubyanka prison. It was the original Hotel California. You checked in. You never checked out. True to their calling, the KGB was the gang that put a hit out on the Pope, remember?

Remember the Kulaks

As bad as it is the NYT has made worse for 8 decades.

The Times, by refusing to recognize the consequences of Duranty’s lies, is a constant reminder of the Latin adage “Qui tacet consentit”. Silence gives consent.

The Times is in a state of denial about their Communist correspondent that makes the 10th step of cocaine addiction seem like a day at the beach. The reportage of Herbert Matthews and Harrison Salisbury is proof that acorns never fall far from the tree.

Your Google assignment is learn about the Pulitzer Prize winner, a NYT employee, for Foreign Reporting in 1934.

Can you imagine the reaction if it had been discovered that he was a bought and paid for agent of the intelligence service of the country where he served?

The NYT, by their silence, a silence that borders on criminal indifference and is profoundly offensive to the collective soul of man, has prevented a proper Kaddish from being said for the Kulaks.

Should the National Enquirer win a Pulitzer Prize it would have more honor than all the Pulitzer Prizes the NYT has won and proudly displays.

This is a subject that has moved me for 3 decades.

In the mid-90s, Sulzberger the Lesser, a man who is living testament to why inheritances such as his should be taxed at a minimum rate of 105%, assigned a Mr. William Borders to serve as the buffer between us. Did he have anything to do with the Boston Globe acquisition?

I am told that when Frito Bandido, the grand nephew of Emiliano Zapata, forecloses on his mortgage he will begin employee negotiations with the time tested method of random defenestration.

Let him start at the top, both of the building and of the food chain. Make sure the moose is tied to his neck.

Maybe then the Kulaks can rest in peace.

Some things are owed to the ledger.






Kevin Smith