Ms. Dowd Has Some 'Splainin' To Do.

Ruh-roh, MoDo.

http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/thejoshuablog/2009/05/ny-times-maureen-dowd-plagiari.php

 

This is one of those plagiarism cases that make you think, "Why the hell did she plagiarize that?" It's one thing, though no more or less forgivable, to steal a clever turn of phrase or interesting anecdote or a piece of original research. It's quite more ridiculous to copy and paste a thought she could have phrased in four hundred different ways.

She could have stolen the thought, moved a couple of words and commas around and nobody would have noticed or cared. What she actually did is pretty nuts.

 

You know, the sentence in question wasn't even well-written by Josh Marshall. I have no idea why anyone would steal it near-verbatim.

 

My guess is the explanation is going to be of the "I had my notes and the piece up on the screen at the same time, and accidentally etc. etc."

 

My thoughts exactly.

Though that makes absolutely no sense, and no journalist I know would be able to confuse an entire paragraph written by someone else with a paragraph written by them.

 

Love the use of the "if font on that link.

 

I just finished the column. The graph is -- essentially -- a throw-away.
You could remove it, and it wouldn't matter. It would even transition fine.
What an odd case/instance.

 

Seems the one change she did make from "we" to "the Bush Crowd" dooms this argument, too. Ironically, a verbatim copying might have made such an excuse more believable.

 

Wow.

It's a pity to see what's become of Dowd. She used to be a sharp read, whether you liked her or not, but I haven't felt compelled to seek out her stuff in quite some time.

Sad.

 

Over/under on other instances of possible plagiarism by Dowd coming out: 48 hours.

 

so how do you treat someone, particularly someone higher up the food chain, who is caught plagiarizing? had a publisher get caught red-handed plagiarizing large parts of a bud kennedy column and he suffered no real punishment. i already thought he was a joke but that incident confirmed it. the fact that he wasn't really punished and that he kept his job made me realize the whole chain was a joke.

 

1. Nothing will happen to Dowd
2. It's 7-5 this issue is never mentioned by the Times.