Cheap Date
Maureen Dowd rips off Josh Marshall. Pretty lame. She apparently claims inadvertence, but it looks kinda … I dunno … advertent. Advertently lame, that is. She claims didn’t know she was ripping off the Talking Points Memo blogger. She thought she was just letting a pal do the heavy lifting while she phoned it in. Josh Marshall does the honors in the pantsing of Dowd here.
Just want to add that Dowd being pantsed as a hack for inadvertently ripping off the wrong person is only improved not only by how lame the line is, but how lame Marshall is. Here’s the Dowd/Marshall line:
More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.
She needed to rip that off? Or lift it from a pal, whatever? Time to hang it up.
Meanwhile, here’s some vintage lameness from Josh Marshall. Also, some of Josh Marshall’s vintage lame help at TPM.
Good point by Purple Avenger in comments. At a minimum Dowd’s columns must be loaded up with lameness from pals that she couldn’t be bothered dreaming up herself. The traditional columnist defense in these cases has been that coming up with three columns a week is really really hard. Though if the explosion of bloggers in the world tells us anything, it’s begging the question, how hard could it possibly be for someone who is theoretically a professional scribbling bloviator?
Allah at HotAir notes that academic research has established that professional journalists are at a severely disproportionate risk of ripping off lefty bloggers than right ones. Allah cautions his readers to “contain your surprise.” And adds, “Oh, to be a JournoList member tonight.” Hey, I hope that’s not where she got it. So if JournoList members know about that, does their off-the-record arrangement bar them from spilling?
Surber: “Too Internet savvy” … by half. Hurtfully adds, “This does answer the title to her book, “Are Men Necessary?” Yes. Someone has to write her columns… ”
Blair spots the lameness within the lameness. The spontaneous conversational word-for-word weave excuse.
Jennifer Rubin at Commentary: “Granted she isn’t known for eye-popping originality of thought — or unique insights — but this is a new low, even for her.” Now, that’s just hurtfully meanspirited.
Unspeakable cruelty! It’s Maguire:
Demonstrating yet again the fearsome power of the Sith Lord, Maureen Dowd sets out to write a column about Dick Cheney’s uncanny ability to bedevil his foes and ends up committing plagiarism. To her small relief, this will at least distract people from the factual problems in her column.
Lefty pile-on: Hullabaloo pantses Dowd on her historic pantsing of Biden’s plagiarism … then quickly updates to note that TPM had already linked that. Collateral damage! Note to Digby: I know this writing and ethics stuff is complicated, but I don’t believe you actually need to apologize to someone else for finding the same thing he did.
The anti pile-on: lefty FireBoggLake sniffs disdainfully at the scandal, and makes funny with the notion that righties are incapable of writing anything lift-worthy. Ha ha, tres amusing, but a little weird, given that this is about a lefty lifting really lame left stuff. Less lamely, though just as lame, Wonkette, nothing to see, here, move along. “This is just how th Internet works.” Good line, will have to salt that away for future reference.
Ha. Something to see here: The self-adorational sockpuppet also known as Glenn Greenwald, upon Dowd’s being forced to admit liftage, is forced to admit he described said plagiarism-tainted column as ”uncharacteristically cogent and substantive.” Sure. I suspect we’ll find out how characteristic it is before too long, as noted by Purple Avenger. Though I have to say Greenwald himself is uncharacteristic more cogent and substantive than usual with his observations about the symbiosis of MSM and blogosphere. Though of course, it’s largely about him.
OK, moving on. Newsbusters, sounding cruelly exultant, examins the trend, ”So, we not only have so-called journalists channeling nonsense from the liberal blogosphere, but now they’re just cutting-and-pasting from it.” Newsbusters cuts to the point with a burning question for the NYT’s public editor: “what does the friend know, and when did [s]he know it?” Good question. The forensics of this thing promise to be a hoot.
O woe, is nothing sacred? Powerline catches the people’s representative on the staff of the New York Times trying to plaster over a bad spike job. Hinderaker pantses NYT Public Editor Clark Hoyt on the Gray Lady’s killing of an Obama-ACORN story in 2008, noting that “the facts as related by Hoyt don’t rebut the charge; they support it.”
Meanwhile, here’s Reynolds with a jaundiced view of plagiarism’s ugly history and uglier present.
There would seem to be no ethical standard more obvious or generally accepted than the rule that one should not steal the written work of others.
Yet matters here seem far from clear, despite the frenzied efforts of self-appointed overseers. On the one hand, formal rules against plagiarism grow ever more abundant and ever more stringent (even if no more original), and Op-Ed columnists wax furious in their condemnation of plagiarism by public officials.
On the other hand, many Op-Ed columns are written by individuals other than the one whose name appears on the byline, and for that matter many newspaper stories are more-or-less verbatim versions of press releases sent out by political organizations, trade associations, or other interest groups.
Hardly anyone believes that politicians write their own speeches anymore, and few among the cognoscenti in the legal community believe that Supreme Court justices author their own opinions in more than a supervisory sense.
Under these circumstances, it is not surprising that some individuals find the subject of plagiarism confusing. Nor is it surprising that some experts have stepped in to say “Sure, you’d never purposely plagiarize someone else’s work, but here’s how to avoid even the appearance that you did.”
Yet the application of appearance rules to plagiarism turns out to raise problems of its own.
…
There is something wrong with this picture. From the world of science to the world of politics, there has been an eagerness to address ethical issues in terms of appearances. And across the board the results have been poor. Appearance standards are readily manipulated by the unscrupulous, as in the Baltimore and Biden cases, or by the self-important, as in the Oates case. And although adopted in the name of increased sensitivity to ethics, they tend to draw attention away from sins worse than they condemn. And the end result is seldom increased public respect, even though the need to maintain such respect is always given as a justification for judging by appearances.
In fact, appearance ethics not only fail to foster better behavior in those they govern, they also undermine the behavior of those who apply them. One of the chief appeals of appearance ethics to its enforcers (who include the corps of press and commentators) is that – much like reprinting press releases as news – judging appearances requires little knowledge of substance, allowing one to discuss the issues without the need for bothersome research or thought. Classical thinkers on ethical matters had a term for this tendency to avoid hard work. It was called laziness, and it was not considered a virtue. Another appeal of appearance ethics is that it provides something to talk about: when appearance ethics are the rule, even an unsubstantiated accusation can be said to create a bad appearance. Thus, even an unsubstantiated accusation provides grist for the mill of news flashes, op-eds, and talking-head shows.
The classical term for this sort of behavior was malicious gossip and it, too, was not considered a virtue. This powerful appetite for accusations based on appearances itself encourages bad behavior: when the prevailing attitude is “where there’s smoke there’s fire” we should not be surprised to find a brisk trade in smudge-pots. This was known as temptation.
That all of these human characteristics exist should come as no surprise. That they exist, by design, in an area dedicated to the improvement of ethics would have surprised classical thinkers. We should be concerned that it goes unremarked today.
Yeah, what he said. From his scholarly tome with Peter Morgan, The Appearance of Impropriety. There’s a lot of big words and long sentences in there. Doesn’t lend itself to easy lifting. As a professional tabloid scribbler and bloviator, I just want to say that outright, shameless theft is the sincerest form of flattery. (Full disclosure: I think I inadvertently ripped off that variation of the off-quoted saying by one of the most imitated, least known literary personages in history.)
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:35 pm on Sunday, May 17, 2009
8 Responses to “Cheap Date”
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May 18th, 2009 at 7:52 am
Plagiarists never steal just one thing. I’d bet a grand that an examination of her body of work will turn up dozens of other instances.
May 18th, 2009 at 8:24 am
[...] Jules put it, She needed to rip that off? Or lift it from a pal, whatever? Time to hang it [...]
May 18th, 2009 at 8:31 am
In my opinion, that’s Pretty lame. She apparently claims inadvertance, but it looks kinda … advertant. She claims didn’t know she was ripping off Marshall. She thought she was just letting a pal do the heavy lifting while she phoned it in. Josh Marshall does the honors.
That’s what I say at least.
May 18th, 2009 at 9:34 am
Yeah … what blogagog said. I couldn’t say it better myself. After I corrected the spelling and threw in a gratuitous “I dunno,” that is.
May 18th, 2009 at 9:39 am
Look, what you need to ask yourself is … to lift or not to lift? That is the question. Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or miss deadline due to writers block or a hot weekend at the Hamptons, something like that.
Whaddaya think, pretty good, huh? I just made that up.
May 18th, 2009 at 10:48 am
Pretty sneaky. You changed your words to save me from committing plagiarism! That’s why we like you. You really go the extra mile for your readers.
;)
May 18th, 2009 at 11:09 am
I have not yet begun to plagiarize! Damn the attributions, full speed ahead! I came, I saw, I lifted! Tis a far far better phrase I lift …
May 18th, 2009 at 11:37 am
You’re having way too much fun. Is this celebration at getting to watch DoDo squirm?