Dorothy Rabinowitz is a Pulitzer Prize winning American journalist and commentator.
She was born in New York City, and attained a bachelor's degree at Queens College. She worked toward a doctorate at New York University from 1957 to 1960, but did not graduate. [1] She has worked as editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal since June 1990 and has been a member of their editorial board since May 1996. [2] She is a regular panelist on the Journal Editorial Report . [3]
Rabinowitz was awarded the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary for a series of articles published in 2000 covering aspects of U.S. social and cultural trends. [4] Previously, she had been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize three times, [5] but in 2001 "she was not a finalist [but]... the Pulitzer board, which makes the final decisions, reviewed the jury's original three finalists and decided it wanted 'a broader choice.' The jury offered Ms. Rabinowitz as an alternate selection.". [6] "[A]mong the ten articles cited by the board were five articles challenging questionable allegations of sexual abuse. Four of the cited articles commented on the 2000 U.S. presidential election and the remaining article discussed Rudolph Giuliani's recommending a pardon for Michael Milken." [7]
She was previously nominated in 1996 for the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary "For her columns effectively challenging key cases of alleged child abuse" [8] and had been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1995 "For her writing about television", and in 1998 for "her tough-minded, critical columns on television and its place in politics and culture." [9]
Author | Dorothy Rabinowitz |
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Original title | No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times |
Publisher | Free Press, NY |
Publication date | 2003 |
ISBN | 0-7432-2834-0 |
OCLC | 51275066 |
LC Class | HV8079.C48 R33 2003 |
External videos | |
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Booknotes interview with Rabinowitz on No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times, May 4, 2003, C-SPAN |
Rabinowitz wrote exposés of the dubious sexual abuse charges filed against the operators of day care centers and other individuals, notably that of a family named Amirault in Malden, Massachusetts [10] and those in Wenatchee, Washington. [11] These exposés earned her a 1996 Pulitzer nomination, [8] formed half of the articles cited for her 2001 Pulitzer win, [7] and were the basis of her book No Crueler Tyrannies: Accusation, False Witness, and Other Terrors of Our Times. [12] [13]
Her work on these cases began with the Wee Care Nursery School case, [14] Rabinowitz told C-SPAN:
I was working as a television commentator. I was at WWOR-TV in New Jersey, doing three times a week some sort of media criticism. And ... I saw this woman in her 20s ... accused of something like 2,800 charges of child sex abuse. Oh, I thought, well, that's very odd ... I thought, How can one woman, one young, lone woman in an absolutely open place like the child care center of the church in New Jersey that she worked for—how could she have committed these enormous crimes against 20 children, dressed and undressed them and sent—you know what it is to dress and undress even one child every day without getting their socks lost?—20 children in a perfectly public place, torture them for two years, frighten and terrorize them, and they never went home and told their parents anything? ... This did seem strange. [15]
Her work on this story led The Wall Street Journal to hire her. [5] [15]
In 1999, Rabinowitz wrote an editorial in the Wall Street Journal about Juanita Broaddrick, an Arkansas woman who alleged that then President Bill Clinton had raped her when he was attorney general of Arkansas. [16] Rabinowitz wrote "To encounter this woman, to hear the details of her story and the statements of the corroborating witnesses, was to understand that this was in fact an event that took place." [17] She also wrote approvingly of Republican presidential candidate John McCain in both the 2000 [18] and 2008 U.S. presidential elections. [19] [20]
On May 31, 2013, Rabinowitz claimed the Citi Bike bicycle sharing program in New York City was "dreadful" and "totalitarian": when an interviewer asked if she understood the rationale for this program, she responded, "Do not ask me to enter the minds of the totalitarians running this government of the city." She described Mayor Michael Bloomberg as "autocratic" and "a practiced denier" and City Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan as "ideology-maddened". She also warned that "the bike lobby is an all-powerful enterprise." [21]
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) is an American business and economic-focused international daily newspaper based in New York City. The Journal is published six days a week by Dow Jones & Company, a division of News Corp. The newspaper is published in broadsheet format and online. The Journal has been printed continuously since its inception on July 8, 1889, and is regarded as a newspaper of record, particularly in terms of business and financial news. The newspaper has won 39 Pulitzer Prizes, the most recent in 2023.
The Pulitzer Prize for Commentary is an award administered by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism "for distinguished commentary, using any available journalistic tool". It is one of the fourteen American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Journalism. It has been presented since 1970. Finalists have been announced from 1980, ordinarily with two others beside the winner.
Gerald A. "Tooky" Amirault is an American convicted in 1986 of child sexual abuse of eight children at the Fells Acres Day School in Malden, Massachusetts, run by his family. He and his family deny the charges, which supporters regard as a conspicuous example of day-care sex-abuse hysteria. Amirault was released from prison on parole on April 30, 2004.
Daniel Henninger is an American commentator. He serves as the deputy editorial page director of The Wall Street Journal, and is a Fox News contributor.
Wee Care Nursery School, located in Maplewood, New Jersey, was the subject of a day care child abuse case that was tried during the 1980s. Although Margaret Kelly Michaels was prosecuted and convicted, the decision was reversed after she spent five years in prison. An appellate court ruled that several features of the original trial had produced an unjust ruling and the conviction was reversed. The case was studied by several psychologists who were concerned about the interrogation methods used and the quality of the children's testimony in the case. This resulted in research concerning the topic of children's memory and suggestibility, resulting in new recommendations for performing interviews with child victims and witnesses.
The Fells Acres day care sexual abuse trial took place in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts following charges initially lodged in the mid-1980s against family members who operated a day care center, Fells Acres Day School, in Malden, Massachusetts. The facility had been opened in 1966 by Violet Amirault (1923–1997). She and her two children—son Gerald Amirault and daughter Cheryl Amirault LeFave —were tried for sexually abusing children at their facility. Gerald was tried in 1986 while his sister and mother were tried in 1987. All three were convicted and sentenced to prison. The Amiraults deny the charges, which supporters regard as a conspicuous example of day-care sex-abuse hysteria.
Day-care sex-abuse hysteria was a moral panic that occurred primarily during the 1980s and early 1990s, and featured charges against day-care providers accused of committing several forms of child abuse, including Satanic ritual abuse. The collective cases are often considered a part of the Satanic panic. A 1982 case in Kern County, California, United States, first publicized the issue of day-care sexual abuse, and the issue figured prominently in news coverage for almost a decade. The Kern County case was followed by cases elsewhere in the United States, as well as Canada, New Zealand, Brazil, and various European countries.
Gretchen C. Morgenson is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist notable as longtime writer of the Market Watch column for the Sunday "Money & Business" section of The New York Times. In November, 2017, she moved from the Times to The Wall Street Journal.
Martha Mary Coakley is an American lobbyist, lawyer, and former politician who served as Attorney General of Massachusetts from 2007 to 2015. Prior to serving as Attorney General, she was District Attorney of Middlesex County from 1999 to 2007.
The Pulitzer Prizes for 1991 included not only awards given in all categories, but two separate awards were given for International Reporting:
Bret Louis Stephens is an American conservative journalist, editor, and columnist. He has been an opinion columnist for The New York Times and a senior contributor to NBC News since 2017. Since 2021, he has been the inaugural editor-in-chief of SAPIR: A Journal of Jewish Conversations.
Susan Schmidt is an American investigative reporter with the Wall Street Journal. She is best known for her work at The Washington Post, where she worked from 1983 until leaving for the Wall Street Journal.
The Journal Editorial Report is a weekly American interview and panel discussion TV program on Fox News Channel, hosted by Paul Gigot, editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal. Prior to moving to Fox News, the show aired on PBS for 15 months, ending on December 2, 2005.
The Wenatchee child abuse prosecutions in Wenatchee, Washington, US, of 1994 and 1995, were the last "large scale Multi-Victim / Multi-Offender case" during the hysteria over child molestation in the 1980s and early 1990s. Many poor and intellectually disabled suspects pled guilty, while those who hired private lawyers were acquitted. Eventually all those accused in these cases were released, and the authorities paid damages to some of those originally accused.
Susan J. Kelley is the former Dean of the College of Health and Human Sciences at Georgia State University. She is also currently a professor of Nursing and the Director of the National Center on Grandparents Raising Grandchildren, and founder and director of Project Healthy Grandparents, at Georgia State University.
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The Country Walk case is a Florida 1985 "Multi-Victim, Multi-Offender" child sex abuse case that occurred during the day-care sex-abuse hysteria. Frank Fuster remains imprisoned. His wife Ileana Flores Fuster initially denied any wrongdoing, but following months of interrogations, she testified against Frank and confessed to the alleged crimes, later recanting her confession, then recanting her recantation, and finally recanting that. This case became known because it seemed to have better evidence than other ritual abuse cases, but scientific findings since Fuster's conviction have challenged the evidence. The case, prosecuted by Janet Reno, was profiled in the 2002 Frontline episode "Did Daddy Do It?"
Jane Spencer is an American journalist, and Deputy Editor of Guardian US, where she oversees editorial strategy and newsroom innovation. Previously, she was Editor-in-chief of Fusion Media Group, a millennial-focused cable and digital network owned by Univision. She was one of the founding editors of The Daily Beast, where she worked as Executive Editor until 2012.
Joseph Rago was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American political writer, best known for his work at The Wall Street Journal.
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