Since The CopyCobra Was Silent On The Topic O'The Day ....

The answer to Belinda Luscombe's question is "YES!" The CopyCobra had a chance to clear the air in today's op-Ed column and she chose to stonewall instead. The CopyCobra became the CopyChicken in the blink of an eye.

The CopyCobra/Chicken In Better Days

If this is (fair & balanced) representation of another person's work as one's own original work, so be it.

[x Time]
Is Maureen Dowd Guilty Of Plagiarism?
By Belinda Luscombe

Tag Cloud of the following article

act already area attribute blogosphere british caught cited column corrected detractors dowd e-mail eighth expressed friend fumbled heard huffington idea knows marshall maureen mel ms nancy noted opposing others paragraph plagiarism pointed policies political quotes read remarks republican save saying shiny story suggested talking times verbatim version winner work written

created at TagCrowd.com

Et tu, Ms. Dowd? Maureen Dowd, the love-her-or-hate-her Op-Ed columnist for the New York Times, scored one for the hate-her team on Saturday, when she got caught in an act of apparent plagiarism.

In her weekend column, Dowd sought to highlight the irony of the Republicans' holding House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's feet to the fire for not opposing Republican policies on torture aggressively enough. Interesting as this line of thinking might have been, it subsequently drowned in the backwash of controversy over her almost verbatim use of a 43-word paragraph that had already appeared in a column written by Josh Marshall on the political website "Talking Points Memo."

The similarity was first noticed by "TPM" on Sunday, and by the evening a mortified Dowd had apologized, saying she had not read Marshall's column but that evidently someone she knew had. "I was talking to a friend of mine Friday about what I was writing," she wrote in an e-mail to the "Huffington Post," among others, "who suggested I make this point, expressing it in a cogent — and I assumed spontaneous — way and I wanted to weave the idea into my column." The Times amended the Web version and noted the correction.

But as the blogosphere quickly pointed out, this idea was not so much woven into Dowd's column as slathered in Elmer's and pasted right on. It seemed implausible, many noted, that Dowd could repeat word for word what she said she heard. Or that the friend had expressed the idea in precisely the same way as Marshall without knowing it. And if the idea was not her own, why didn't she attribute the friend?

"[Dowd] didn't say whether it was conveyed by phone or e-mail," pointed out Times spokeswoman Diana McNulty. "In any case, it was an error. It was corrected. Anyone with even the most passing acquaintance with Maureen's work knows that she does not hesitate to attribute other people's work."

Indeed, Marshall was, or would have been, the eighth person Dowd cited in her 16-paragraph story, which quoted four sources directly. It's that cherry-picking of others' thoughts and opinions that agitates her detractors, of whom she has many — even (or especially?) within the Times newsroom. In one Dowd column on anti-Semitic remarks made by Mel Gibson in 2006, more than half the text comprised direct quotes from her friend New Republic editor Leon Wieseltier. "It was seven paragraphs of a 13-paragraph story," grumbles one Times staffer.

To be fair, to write as many columns as Dowd does (two a week since 1995), writers can become a little like idea magpies, taking whatever shiny object they can find to make their creation robust and attractive. Dowd has to make her voice heard over all the political static that constantly buzzes in the blogosphere. And, inevitably, mistakes slip through. Or she plumb runs out of inspiration on any given topic and falls back on less-than-original notions.

Yet it's ironic that the Pulitzer Prize winner fumbled in this area. Back in 1987, she caught then presidential-hopeful Joe Biden borrowing heavily from a British politician's speech. On the other hand, things worked out O.K. for him in the end. ♥

[Belinda Luscombe is one of Time's most versatile writers and editors. She was named Arts Editor in January 2003 and directs the magazine's cultural and media coverage. Luscombe holds a B.A. in English Literature (Honors) and a Dip. Ed. from the University of Sydney.]

Copyright © 2009 Time, Inc.

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Copyright © 2009 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves

The CopyCobra Plays It Safe

The CopyCobra avoids plagiarism today by inventing snarky dialogue between The Dickster and The Rumster as they practice their version of patriotism. With all due respect to The CopyCobra, she didn't savage The Dickster as effectively as the former governor of Minnesota did when he appeared on "The View." Thanks to the wonder of the Web, here is a video clip of Jesse Ventura (I-MN) talking about waterboarding with the women on "The View." Ventura's principal adversary in the clip is Elizabeth Hasselbeck, the token Righty on the panel. She is no match for a veteran of the World Wrestling Federation when it comes to monopolizing the microphone.

[x YouTube/Sigmonkeyataol Channel]

If The CopyCobra wanted a really juicy imaginary conversation, she should have put The Dickster in the ring with The Body (as Ventura was known when he wore tights). Now, that would be a great conversation that ends with The Dickster being dumped head first into the nearest garbage can. If this is (fair & balanced) imaginary conversation, so be it.

[x NY Fishwrap]
Cheney Grabs A Third Term
By Maureen Dowd

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baby believe boy brunello bush cafe called cameras care cheney controlled department dick flaming fox give gnawing guy history house junior keep line looking maureen military national neil obama playing president procedures quail re roll rummy secret security stop taking terrorists thinks torture tourists tv white won wonder work yes

created at TagCrowd.com

Dick and Rummy are at Cafe Milano in Georgetown, holding court. The maître d’ fawns. Waiters hover. Tourists snap pics on their digital cameras. Cable chatterers stop by to ingratiate themselves.

It isn’t so much that Dick and Rummy are back. It’s that they never left.

They had no intention of turning America’s national security over to the Boy Wonder. The two best infighters in Washington history weren’t yielding turf to a bunch of peach-fuzz pinkos who side with terrorists.

Let W. work out at the S.M.U. gym in Dallas, waiting for history to redeem him; Dick and Rummy are leaning forward into history, as they always do. Cheney is tawny with TV makeup; there’s no point taking it off. The gigs are nonstop, and he has a big Obama-bashing speech Thursday at the American Enterprise Institute.

“That was funny when you were on Fox and Neil Cavuto called you Obama’s ‘ball and Cheney,’ ” Rummy grins, taking a gulp of his brunello.

Dick grunts, raising a fork of his Risotto Gucci with roasted free-range quail.

“The punks thought they could roll over us,” Vice mutters. “Nobody puts Baby in a corner.”

Eyeing the quail, Rummy shakes his head. “Can you believe the nerve of that dadburn whippersnapper at the press dinner, saying your memoir would be called ‘How to Shoot Friends and Interrogate People?’ Whatever happened to the great White House tradition of giving respect to your predecessors?”

Dick is looking over at himself on the TV behind the bar, where Fox is doing a segment about how Republicans on the Sunday talk shows praised him for his shock-and-awe campaign against Obama.

“I can’t believe how easy it was to bring Obama into line,” Rummy says, gnawing on Gorgonzola. “We wouldn’t have needed waterboarding if everybody cracked like a peanut. It was even easier than getting the bit into Junior’s mouth. Way simpler than if we’d had to contend with McCain. In the end, the right guy won.”

Dick is surprised, too, but who can tell?

“You’re running national security now and everyone knows it,” Rummy says. “You got Obama to do an about-face on the torture photos. He’s using our old line about how it would endanger the troops. He’s keeping our military tribunals. His Justice Department invoked our state secrets privilege to try to get that lawsuit on torture and rendition dismissed. He’s trying to stop any sort of truth commission, thank goodness. He’s got his own surge going in Afghanistan. He’s withdrawing from Iraq more slowly. He’s extended our secret incursions over the Afghan border into Pakistan.”

Dick smiles on one side of his face.

“Transparency bites,” he snarls.

“By golly, yes,” Rummy says. “We controlled Junior by playing on his fear of looking like a wimp just as his dad did. And now we’re controlling Boy Wonder by playing on his eagerness to show that the Democrats are tough on national security. He’s a sucker for four-star generals, can’t resist anyone in uniform. Petraeus and Odierno speak and he jumps. If we want to roll him, we just send in the military brass flashing their medals.”

Rummy knocks back some more brunello, and shoos away some Japanese tourists after confiscating their cameras.

“I hear Poppy Bush is furious at you,” he says. “He’s telling folks he put Junior in your care and you stole his presidency and destroyed the Bush name and derailed Jeb’s chances to ever be president, and P.S., you wrecked the country and the Atlantic alliance to boot. He has it in for Lynne, too. Thinks she spun you up, like she did in high school with her flaming batons. He thinks you got loopy from all the heart procedures. And Colin’s mad at you.”

“He can go to yoga with Pelosi for all I care,” Dick growls.

The two old connivers clink glasses. “So,” Rummy muses, “what do we make our new White House boy toy do next?”

“Well,” Dick says. “He’s got to keep Gitmo open. It’s rich that his own party won’t give him the money to close it. The NIMBY factor works every time — no terrorists in my backyard. He’s got to stop this pansy diplomacy with Muslim nations. He’s got to let Bibi take out those Iranian centrifuges. He’s got to stop his Kodak moments and Commie book club with Hugo Chávez. He’s got to release those C.I.A. memos proving that we were right to rip up the Constitution. And, of course, he’s got to pardon Scooter.”

“Can we get him to do all that, Dick?”

Dick twinkles. “Yes, we can.” ♥

[Maureen Dowd received the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1999, with the Pulitzer committee particularly citing her columns on the impeachment of Bill Clinton after his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Dowd joined The New York Times as a reporter in 1983, after writing for Time magazine and the now-defunct Washington Star. At The Times, Dowd was nominated for a 1992 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, then became a columnist for the paper's editorial page in 1995. Dowd's first book was a collection of columns entitled Bushworld: Enter at Your Own Risk (2004). Her second book followed in 2005: Are Men Necessary?: When Sexes Collide. Dowd earned a bachelor's degree from DC's Catholic University in 1973.]

Copyright © 2009 The New York Times Company

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