A "plagiarized" account of Maureen Dowd's plagiarism

"There is no need to do anything further since there is no allegation, hint or anything else from Marshall that this was anything but an error. It was corrected. Journalists often use feeds from other staff journalists, free-lancers, stringers, a whole range of people. And from friends. Anyone with even the most passing acquaintance with Maureen's work knows that she is happy and eager to give people credit." [Politico]

Credit

But that bit about Dowd being "happy and eager to give people credit" caught my eye, because just moments earlier, I read Tucker Carlson's comments during a Washington Post online discussion: [Media Matters]

"[T]he whole thing is an interesting window into how her column is created. I knew someone once who was on her call rotation. Every week, she'd call and collect amusing lines from him, which she'd invariably use without attribution. Every writer does this to some extent -- I've made a lot of money over the years stealing from my conversations with Matt Labash -- but she seems to do it more than most." [Washington Post]

Hypocrisy?

What Dowd didn't know was that her friend was posturing, presenting Marshall's argument as if it were an original thought. So when Dowd lifted what she thought were her friend's words, she was actually re-stealing something. But because this is Dowd, the high liberal priestess of biting political criticism, the woman who excoriated Joe Biden for plagiarism, her crime is further stained by an air of hypocrisy.

Thus, she is busted and will be virtually eviscerated by her enemies. And it was all so avoidable. [Poynter]

This just in...

VP Joe "Oh, No" Biden rushed to the aid of beleaguered NY Times Columnist Maureen Down today after she admitted she lifted a few paragraphs from a Blogger for use in her column....without attribution.

Biden, who himself is no stranger to plagiarism, was quick to come to the columnist's aid. " Hey, it happens to the best of us. We see something we like, and I often think, wow, why didn't I think to say that....and so I either do say it , or write about it a few times....and then I forget that I never really did have an original thought! "

"Hey man, it's an odds game...how many times have I been caught...2-3 times.....do you know how many times I'e taken credit for other peoples ideas?

"Come on, get in the 21st century...everybody does it, it is a game after all, isn't it? And besides, do you know how many hits I get on Google when I say something really clever that I stole? Get over it!" [The Spoof] (NOTE: The source of the last four paragraphs came from a site called The Spoof.)

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