Steve Clemons asks a very good question: now that Fareed Zakaria has returned his prize from the ADL (the Hubert H. Humphrey prize, which comes with $10,000), will other winners of the prize return it too? Here’s a list of other recent winners:
2009 – Nat Hentoff 2009 – Clarence Page 2008 – Tim Rutten 2007 – Jon E. Meacham 2006 – Charles Krauthammer 2005 – Fareed Zakaria 2003 – Floyd Abrams 2003 – Bernard Lewis 2003 – Daniel Pearl (posthumously) 2002 – Bob Schieffer 2001 – Bernard Shaw 2000 – Wolf Blitzer 1999 – Lesley Stahl 1999 – Marvin Kalb 1998 – Arthur Miller 1998 – Meet The Press 1997 – Dr. Seuss (Posthumously) 1997 – C-SPAN 1997 – Ranan Lurie 1996 – Dan Rather 1996 – Mortimer Zuckerman 1995 – Larry King 1994 – Charles Kuralt 1993 – David Kaplan (posthumously) and CNN 1992 – Bill Moyers 1991 – The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour 1990 – Martin Peretz 1990 – A.M. Rosenthal 1989 – George F. Will 1988 – Fred W. Friendly 1987 – William Safire 1986 – This Week with David Brinkley 1985 – The Wall Street Journal 1983 – Dial Torgerson (Posthumously) 1982 – Max M. Kampelman and the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe 1981 – Dore Schary (Posthumously) 1979 – Jacobo Timerman 1978 – John Chancellor, Walter Cronkite, Barbara Walters 1977 – Hubert H. Humphrey
How about Bill Moyers? He ought to return his prize too.
dmsilev
I’m going to go way out on a limb and guess that it won’t be Charles Krauthammer. Or Marty Peretz.
Edit: Please fix that link. Promising Steve Clemons and delivering Megan McArdle is just cruel.
dms
Albatrossity
Wolf Blitzer got this award? Seriously?
I think I’d return it on that basis alone…
aimai
Wow, what an execrable list. With the exception of Dr. Seuss, Bill Moyers, and about five others its pretty dire. It reads like a “Who’s Who” (the for profit kind, where you pay to get your own plaque) of jerks and right wing stooges.
aimai
DougJ
@dmsilev:
Thanks. I fixed it. Still getting the hang of this on the pad.
Chris P
Is that this websites’ version of rickrolling to link to Mcmeghan unawares like that? I’d prefer you just skip the intermediate step and slam the ice pick directly thru my brain, thanks
cat48
I don’t see any others who might be Muslim. Unfortunately, I doubt it really hits them personally like it does Fareed. I assume he’s Muslim because he said his young son is one day on his show. He said it was one reason he voted for Obama, his young Muslim son might have a better life. Sigh.
dmsilev
@aimai: They only have a few of the actual award citations online, but here’s what was written for Krauthammer:
Translation: “Krauthammer was a more effective neocon than the neocons in the Bush Administration. Three cheers for the First Amendment!”
dms
steviez314
Your first line reads: “(the HUMBERT H. Humphrey award)”.
Isn’t that an award that gives you $10,000 and an underage girl?
DougJ
@steviez314:
Ha ha.
Thanks — I will fix it.
Jay Schiavone
We don’t know what Moyers did with the 10 grand, he may well have re-gifted. I think we hold him to a ridiculous standard by compelling him to have anticipated by 19 years that the ADL would espouse disagreeable views. By that standard, we should demand that all prize winners return all prizes prophylactically.
Say Doug, is every dollar in your pocket of impeccable origin? Do you refuse to pay taxes for moral reasons. I think this purity is a bit much.
cmorenc
Both Zakaria and Blitzer are in the same stable at CNN. Query whether there’s been any conversation (yet) between the two since Zakaria returned the award, whether the specific matter of why Zakaria returned his award and Blitzer has not (yet) chosen to do so came up during that conversation, and if so, at whose initiative it was that the subject came up.
You would think that even if Zakaria and Blitzer have not had any face-to-face conversations about the matter, the fact that Blitzer has NOT yet made any public comment or move (yet) about the matter surely must be a matter of no small amount of background buzz at CNN, and even Blitzer can’t be so oblivious as to not realize this. The matter has to be like a huge pile of colorful, stinking vomit spattered prominently across the CNN newsroom floor, hard to ignore.
Jason
Here is Foxman’s response to Zakaria:
http://www.adl.org/media_watch/tv/20100806-Fareed+Zakaria.htm
Foxman’s position on this, throughout, has relied mostly on an argument from principle that doesn’t seem well-established, and his defense of the ADL doesn’t extend beyond a listing of the ADL’s record as a pro-tolerance organization. Since I haven’t seen a proper substantiation of the ADL’s position besides “well, we did this to Catholics in 1993, so we’re perfectly consistent,” there isn’t much to be said about the issue itself. But I do wonder if the people who might return the prize would issue an editorial (to the extent they’d even think about the matter) about the ADL’s reasoning.
BTD
Tom Shales is a shoo in.
New Yorker
Nat Hentoff sticks out on that list as someone who should return it immediately.
Chuckie Krauthammer, Bernard Lewis, and Mary Peretz….not so much.
aimai
Nat Hentoff went bugfuck crazy a long time ago, I believe.
aimai
Princess
The fact that they gave it to Bernard Lewis tells me volumes about the ADL.
Frank
@Jay Schiavone:
It is against the law to not pay taxes. However, there is no law saying you have to keep this questionable award.
New Yorker
@aimai:
I don’t think so, unless supporting the Iraq War, which a lot of reasonable people did in 2003, is “bugfuck crazy”. I think the guy has been critical of Obama for not downsizing the Bush national security state, which suggests he’s still sane when it comes to civil liberties.
Tom Q
@New Yorker: My impression is more in line with aimai’s. Hentoff hasn’t had a nice word to say about a Democrat since 1992, but was comparatively restrained in his criticism of Bush II. He’s virulently anti-abortion, which made him hate Clinton with a burning passion. I believe he was very much in support of the Starr witch hunt.
On the overall question here: I don’t think folks who won over a decade ago are obligated to follow Zakaria’s action, as the ADL wasn’t then what it is now.
Brachiator
@DougJ:
Somehow, “on the pad” just sounds so wrong.
@Tom Q:
Huh? From the Wiki
I’m not sure this counts as restrained criticism of Bush.
Hentoff is virulently anti-death penalty as well as anti-abortion. I don’t agree with his anti-abortion stance, but I do see that there is more intellectual consistency here than with the typical wingnut.
liberal
@aimai:
Actually, while I like Dr. Seuss’ children’s books, he’s about as good a candidate for the prize as some of the other zeroes they gave the award to. During WWII he had some extremely racist cartoons against the Japanese.
liberal
@New Yorker:
Bullshit. No one reasonable supported invading Iraq; supporting the invasion made one ipso facto unreasonable.
The fact that lots of people were crazy, and whose views should now be viewed with a high degree of suspicion, does nothing to change that.
liberal
@Brachiator:
Also from the Wiki:
liberal
@Tom Q:
Hmm…:
liberal
@BTD:
Heh.
Brachiator
@liberal:
RE: [Hentoff] supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq…
Which is irrelevant to the claim that Hentoff was “comparatively restrained in his criticism of Bush II”
unless support for the war in Iraq is some kind of original sin that invalidates anything else that a person ever says or does.
The Other Chuck
@Jay Schiavone:
If they know ahead of time that the organization giving the award would make a complete mockery of its mission, then perhaps yes.
No one is morally censuring Bill Moyers; they’re appealing to his decency to make a symbolic gesture *now*. As for the money, he could afford returning it but I don’t see why he should go making a $10K donation to the ADL. I’d say if it was given in good faith decades ago, you keep the cash and return the now worthless symbol.
Archangel
The relationship between Moyers and the ADL has been strained ever since the ridiculously biased charge of racism Foxman leveled on Moyers for the latter’s commentary on the Gaza invasion (and Moyers’ subsequent rebuttal):
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/blog/2009/01/exchange_between_bill_moyers_a.html
I think Moyers has already shown he’s not willing to just tote the AIPAC line. Not sure I can say the same about most journalists.