WILBERT RIDEAU AND THE DAYTON LITERARY PEACE PRIZE
Wilbert Rideau has always loved journalism awards and literary prizes. He got addicted to them in 1977 when The Angolite under his editorship was nominated as a “finalist” in the National Magazine Awards. Rideau was enthralled by the individual recognition the nomination brought to him. It became cancerous. He entered the prison magazine in every awards competition he could find, and the magazine, and its editors, were the recipients of some of the most prestigious journalism awards in the nation. Prison officials also got hooked on the journalism awards game because it allowed them go to New York and other places to pick up the awards for the editors. The need for journalism awards became so compelling that the magazine’s journalism suffered. Rideau ultimately parlayed the journalism awards into the distinction of being called “the nation’s most rehabilitated prisoner in America.”
Rideau was released from the Louisiana prison system in 2005. It took him more than five years and two grants from the Soros Foundation–$75,000 for himself and $75,000 for his wife, Linda—before Random House in May 2010 released what many believed would be the another Dostoyevsky’s “Crime and Punishment.” So many were disappointed, even The New York Times, a longtime Rideau supporter, couldn’t conceal its disappointment comparing Rideau’s memoir, In The Place of Justice, to a slow-moving weather system.
But apparently the awards committee for the 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize felt that this slow-moving weather system deserved some literary recognition. Rideau captured first-place in the “non-fiction” category along with another $10,000 package of financial aid. A Google search does not reveal any other “significant” awards given to the memoir. The Dayton Peace Prize was established in 1999 to recognize individuals who had contributed to societies “torn apart by war.” And guess what? George Soros was one of the early recipients of the “peace prize” in 2002. Rideau with Soros, Soros with Rideau. Helluva combination.
The Dayton Peace Prize morphed into the Dayton Literary Peace Prize which is “dedicated to celebrating the power of the written word in forging peace.”
Do what? Must have read that wrong on the DLPP website. Nope. That’s what it says—“celebrating the power of the written word in forging peace.” If the DLPP’s awards committee can show me one “written word” in Rideau’s memoir that forges “peace,” I will kiss their behind in Times Square and give them six hours to draw a crowd. There is only one celebration in Rideau’s memoir—Wilbert Rideau and all his fabricated exploits.
But I suspect the core in this “rotten apple” lies in the contributions the DLPP has received from the Soros Foundation—and if that is the case, that would make the DLPP and Rideau “kissing cousins.”
If that’s not the core of the apple, then it lies in Rideau’s ability to fill out awards competition forms—something he has plenty of experience at doing. Only Rideau could stretch a “prison memoir” by a convicted murderer into a celebration of “the power of the written word in forging peace.” Well, not the only one: the DLPP saw some “peace” somewhere in it.
Come to think of it, perhaps the Soros Foundation could underwrite a “peace keeping” mission led by Rideau to Afghanistan. He certainly has the qualifications—he can lie with the best of them.
Guess the former convict editor will give another “speech” when he formally accepts the award and the charity that goes with it. Can’t wait!
