Debbie Schlussel: Other Conservatives Got Away with Plagiarism
The blogosphere is abuzz with news that now-deposed WashingtonPost.com conservative blogger Ben Domenech was outed for multiple instances of plagiarism.
I hate plagiarism, since I've been plagiarized so many times and feel violated with each instance. As I've said before, imitation is NOT always the sincerest form of flattery. It's the most dishonest form of robbery. At least an armed robber has the guts and decency to tell you to your face that he's stealing from you.
My problem with the piling-on of Ben Domenech is not that he doesn't deserve it. He does. It's that so many right-wingers--and left-wingers--that are calling him to task don't have a problem with much more prominent conservative plagiarists. That's hypocrisy.
When I pointed out, not too long ago, that whole portions of a column I wrote were flat-out ripped off by Jerome Corsi, co-author of the best-selling Swift Boat veterans book against John Kerry, his WorldNetDaily.com editor, Joseph Farah, refused to do a damn thing (but add a tiny link to my column--Big Deal).
Some conservatives told me to "take one for the team." Huh? I don't think so. (Since then, I've been told by several conservative writers that this is not the first time that WND and/or Farah have condoned--and engaged in--plagiarism.) Since Corsi has a Ph.D. and has written more than one book, how much of those are also plagiarized? People don't become plagiarists in their old age.
Then, there's Monica Crowley, formerly of FOX News Channel, now on MSNBC, and with a radio show on WABC in New York. She's the white, blonde Jayson Blair in a skirt. But unlike the loud calls for his firing by conservatives everywhere, there is not even a peep from conservatives about thief Monica Crowley. (Details of her blatant plagiarism are here and here.)
For an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Crowley lifted whole passages about President Nixon from a Paul Johnson article in Commentary. She never admitted to it. She's banned from the Wall Street Journal because of it. But that's the only damage.
Even though she's written two books on Nixon and a Ph.D. thesis--all of which have raised lots of questions as to their veracity and whether she plagiarized those, too--conservatives continue to embrace peroxide plagiarist Crowley. (And she continues to snootily insist on being referred to as "Dr." Monica Crowley. Whatever.)
In fact, Ms. Plagiarism is a calendar girl, Miss November, for the Clare Boothe Luce Policy Institute. CBLPI is a great organization, but do they really want to teach young women to steal? That's what their poster girl, Monica Crowley, did. I doubt Clare Boothe Luce, a classy and integrity-abundant journalist and writer (among other things), would condone it.
It's liberals that believe in taking away your property from you by force (you know, big government, redistribution of the wealth, eminent domain, et al). Conservatives are supposed to believe in property rights, but not these low-rent thieves.
Poor Ben Domenech. He apparently wasn't a big enough name to get away with unarmed robbery, the way Jerome Corsi and Monica Crowley did.
Posted by Debbie on March 24, 2006 05:34 PM to Debbie Schlussel