Congratulations, Charlie Forelle of the Wall Street Journal

You’re 27 years old and you just won a Pulitzer Prize. Great news for you! And all you had to do was play along with the Journal’s anti-business smear campaign against El Jobso and hundreds of other hard-working Silicon Valley executives, people who have devoted their lives to developing wondrous products and making the world a better place. Gleeful, crowing money quote from the Journal: “At least 70 top executives have lost their jobs and 10 former executives are facing federal or state criminal charges in the backdating scandal.” Great work, guys. You’re wiping out careers and ruining lives by the dozen.

Funny thing — there’s no mention in the Journal of the politically ambitious prosecutors who are hunting executives for sport in order to further their own careers, and no mention of the kids who can’t go to college now because their dads have had to wipe out their savings to pay legal bills to defend themselves against bullshit charges, and no mention of the trophy wives who are now too ashamed to be seen at Chantilly. Certainly no mention of the many articles, including some by the Journal’s own columnist Holman Jenkins Jr., explaining why the backdating “scandal” is not a scandal at all and that in fact no crime occurred. What happens when this whole thing evaporates and is shown to have been a baseless witch hunt? Will the Journal reporters give back their prizes? Um, no. They’ll all have been promoted, or poached by Portfolio, where they can write smear jobs with glossy photographs.

Well, celebrate tonight, Charlie. Splurge on a bottle of real French champagne and have a toast with your pals and tell yourselves what wonderful human beings you are. I’ll see you in hell.