UN Congo Rapes Now High Profile

Have you noticed? In virtually every article about the UN's management of tsunami relief funds, the agency's shameful record of rape, abuse and pedophilia is mentioned, usually as a tier-two sin, right after the oil-for-food scandal.

I'd like to credit the blogosphere and CSM (here, here, here, here, here, here) with some of the credit, but in truth, for reasons unknown to me, this story never really permiated the blogosphere like the major US political stories did.

No, the hat tip for this one goes to one person, Maggie Farley of the LATimes, the newspaper I love to hate. She and her editors punched this story through, and even though it never was a big story throughout MSM-dom, and was largely ignored by the big broadcast news departments, it was big enough that it's now a part of the world's consciousness whenever people think of the UN.

Next step: Reporting on the UN's report and its ability - or lack thereof -- to impose a harsh and hard solution. The UN report is apparently in a heated competition with CBS' Rathergate report for honors on who can take the longest to state the obvious.