Huzzah for the Midlands’ own Kathleen Parker, who just won the Pulitzer for her commentary.

Mind you, she’s not my first choice among Camden residents for that honor — my good buddy Robert Ariail is way overdue, having won every other national and international award for cartooning there is, and come achingly close to the Pulitzer three times — but as the country’s leading syndicated columnist, she’s certainly more than deserving. And if I had done a Virtual Front Page yesterday afternoon (sorry, I was tied up in one bidness meeting after another), she’d have been on it.

Like Robert, she has deserved this honor for years. I thought she really had hot hands in 2008, and not just because of the way she delighted liberals by taking Sarah Palin to task. She was a large part of the trend I remarked up during that election. As a writer commonly characterized as “conservative,” she was one of those I thought was being far more interesting than the liberals at that time — which was why I ran more “conservative” columnists in the last months of that election, much to Democratic readers’ consternation. The lefties were just so giddy, unified and on-message that they bored me to tears. Meanwhile, “conservatives” were divided, demoralized and groping about for truth and meaning — which made them infinitely more worthwhile to read.

However you explain it, I thought she reached a peak during that time. Then, in the several months after the election, I thought she was in a relative slump — which causes me to be a bit surprised that they’re giving her the Prize now instead of then. But I haven’t read her for a year. Since I left the paper and don’t have to read the syndicated columnists I’ve given myself a break from it. (This is odd in a way, because I enjoy reading them — especially Kathleen, Tom Friedman, Charles Krauthammer, Nicholas Kristof and David Brooks. But it’s been a very, very busy year.) Apparently, she has made very good use of a year in which a writer with a South Carolina point of view had several rich veins to mine.

All of that said, it’s a gross oversimplification to call her “conservative.” She’s no more conservative, or liberal, than I am. Or at least, hardly so. To try to tag her that way is lazy, thoughtless, even nekulturny. Here’s how I’ve characterized her in the past:

… I’ve had the opportunity in the past to speak with Kathleen about the philosophy that underlies her writing. On each occasion, I have appreciated (and identified with) the fact that although she is commonly labeled “conservative,” in fact that she does not think of herself as liberal or conservative, Democratic or Republican. She describes her outlook as simply a matter of “being a grownup.” It’s my belief that her writing is generally consistent with that, which is why I like to read her…

Basically, she’s a thoughtful grownup. That’s rare enough among writers of opinion these days; it’s good to see that recognized.

Congratulations, Kathleen.