Pulitzer Makes the Right Choice

It's not often you'll hear a right-leaning media critic say this: I agree with the Pulitzer Prize committee this year, at least when it comes to the award the committee gave to Investor's Business Daily's Michael Ramirez for his excellent cartooning work.

Head over to Extreme Mortman for a few examples of Ramirez's work or visit his page at IBD.

Ramirez's win is the first time since 1998 that a Pulitzer has been given to a cartoonist with even moderately conservative opinions. The committee has similarly been biased against right-leaning columnists as Brent Bozell noted last year:

Any conservative student who aspires to be a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist should really try another line of work. Here’s the list since George Will won in 1977 and William Safire won in 1978: Charles Krauthammer in 1987, Paul Gigot in 2000, and Dorothy Rabinowitz in 2001. That’s five conservatives in 30 years.

Three of the last five winners – Tucker, Leonard Pitts, and Colbert King – were leftist black columnists. William Raspberry and E.R. Shipp have also won. But the Pulitzer Prize glorifiers have never honored Thomas Sowell or Walter Williams or other black conservatives.

Since 1992, eight of the sixteen Commentary prize winners have been women. Rabinowitz is the only conservative. Anna Quindlen, Maureen Dowd, Eileen McNamara and Shipp are on the liberal list. Mary McGrory (1975) and Ellen Goodman (1980) also won that prize. But there’s been no Pulitzer for Mona Charen or Michelle Malkin or Linda Chavez or – the Pulitzer people will faint -- Ann Coulter.

There’s never been a Pulitzer for Bill Buckley or Pat Buchanan or Cal Thomas or Robert Novak. Need we say more?

Good humor and good art are not something that any ideology has a monopoly on. Let's hope the Pulitzer committee remembers that in the years to come.