"Roughed up on the Internet." NYT omsbudsman Clark Hoyt on columnist Maureen Dowd's lame excuse for lifting a liberal blogger's line: Last Sunday, Dowd’s column on Dick Cheney and torture picked up a paragraph, with one minor word change, from Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo, without identifying the source. Another blogger noticed, and the Internet was soon aflame with charges of plagiarism. Dowd said she had not read Marshall’s Web post, but was talking with a friend who suggested the wording without telling her where it came from. An attribution was added to the column online, and The Times ran a correction the next day.Her explanation was unconvincing to some. How could a friend — whom Dowd has not identified — repeat verbatim a 42-word paragraph? I heard from readers demanding that Dowd be fired.Dowd told me the passage in question was part of an e-mail conversation with her friend. She noted that she had credited two other bloggers for other information in the column, so there was no reason to intentionally slight Marshall. Marshall posted his view: “We’re too quick to pull the trigger with charges of plagiarism.” He said he didn’t think Dowd acted intentionally, and the correction was “pretty much the end of it.”I do not think Dowd plagiarized, but I also do not think what she did was right.Andrew Rosenthal, the editorial page editor, said journalists collaborate and take feeds from each other all the time. That is true with news articles, but readers have a right to expect that even if an opinion columnist like Dowd tosses around ideas with a friend, her column will be her own words. If the words are not hers, she must give credit.
Bullshit. The NYT is circling the wagons...
What's a little plagiarism when you're that cute?
ReplyDeleteYeah, but she's one unhappy chick. I really think her (piss-poor) writing really does offer a window into her personality and what she's like inside, and it ain't pretty.
ReplyDeleteSad, because on the surface, she has lots going for her, reasonably good looking, some cleverness in expression, etc. But she's blinkered and crippled by actually believing the smelly little orthodoxies trafficked among the establishment she craves being part of, not least by her employer. What an empty life. And even the professional facade isn't what it's cracked up to be; it isn't the plagiarism that's so bad, it's the way it projects her underlying contempt for the public she's nominally supposed to be writing for that really stinks.
A pathetic, nasty woman leading a phony professional life and an empty personal life. Michael Douglas dodged a bullet there.
Has she ever been married?
ReplyDeleteNope. One of her great regrets, apparently. I found something on the net yesterday that illuminates the likely reason why...
ReplyDeletehttp://thegspot.typepad.com/blog/2008/04/my-maureen-dowd.html
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Now, this story is illustrative of quite a few things about Modo, none of them flattering. First of all, there are her social skills. X. is clearly not comfortable with gossip and sex talk. Now, I have really shitty social skills -- I'd rank them as maybe a notch above those of your average high-functioning person with autism. But even I picked up fairly early on in my friendship with X. that gossip and sex talk were not his thing. And even I know that it's pretty Social Graces 101 that if someone -- a new acquaintance especially -- is clearly not comfortable with certain topics, you move on until you happen upon a subject that's mutually agreeable.
Maybe Dowd's utter social cluelessness is more responsible for her never finding a husband than feminism is. Ya think?
Ultimately, though, I think this story is tragic. Here Maureen Dowd was, sitting across the table from this Totally. Fucking. Amazing. Person. Yet she could make no human connection with him. She did not get to know him at all. Because all she could talk about all night long was Bill Clinton's cock.
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OK so she is more in tune with a plastic vibrator that a human being.... Well that could be a problem. Especially when the batteries burn out. Same with her writing.
ReplyDeleteRouge Male,
ReplyDeletePehaps it is all an affectation to fit into the circle she has to network? I think her writing has been lazy and sloppy lately. She has plenty of targets but only wants to shoot at them when no one can shoot back :)
Did she pick career over marriage?
Meghan McCain wants the Republican Party to be more openly pro sex...this is called Hedonism. Sometimes I think Liberals don't know the difference between Liberalism and Hedonism. This reminds me of the lifestyle Maureen Dowd "Projects" is it real? Who knows if it is just a persona she slips on. I imagine there are lots of folks that would enjoy using her personal life to attack her. Maureen has made enemies and she knows how the game is played. Otherwise how did she survive this long?
Bill Maher is peddling hedonism too, he pretends it is liberalism...folks on the left like to keep things undefined and vague on purpose.
The Conservatives never seem to get that the tags they apply to these folks don't really fit.
The 60s Flower Children, who are running things right now came from the era of "If It Feels Good Do It" I think Bill Clinton would be a good example :)
correction: Rogue Male
ReplyDeleteAwww. She's just a sweet little ole gal who gets nervous around men folks and talks about other people's private parts. Had she talked about her date's private parts, well.....it might have been different.
ReplyDeleteKj: No biggie; but I suspect that Rouge Male is Barney Frank.
ReplyDeleteRe: your larger point, I thought something similar, namely, that the Modos of the world probably feel like they need to be "on" when invited to these Manhattan/DC beltway dinner parties where one goes to see and be seen--sort of singing for their supper. Modo got a Pulitzer I believe for writing endlessly about Slick Willie's er, slick willie, and the overarching Clinton psychodrama. So that's her schtick. She probably thinks people who come to those dinner parties expect to see her do her thing.
But the trouble with that thesis, as Anon alludes to, is that she was still just talking about Bill Clinton's dick long (as it were) after it ceased to matter a damn. All fucking evening. And the other people at the party were probably invited by the host because they, too, might just have had something worth saying and therefore hearing. And that possibility simply never entered Maureen's silly little head.
Rouge Male,
ReplyDeletePehaps it is all an affectation to fit into the circle she has to network? I think her writing has been lazy and sloppy lately. She has plenty of targets but only wants to shoot at them when no one can shoot back :)
Did she pick career over marriage?
Meghan McCain wants the Republican Party to be more openly pro sex...this is called Hedonism. Sometimes I think Liberals don't know the difference between Liberalism and Hedonism. This reminds me of the lifestyle Maureen Dowd "Projects" is it real? Who knows if it is just a persona she slips on. I imagine there are lots of folks that would enjoy using her personal life to attack her. Maureen has made enemies and she knows how the game is played. Otherwise how did she survive this long?
Bill Maher is peddling hedonism too, he pretends it is liberalism...folks on the left like to keep things undefined and vague on purpose.
The Conservatives never seem to get that the tags they apply to these folks don't really fit.
The 60s Flower Children, who are running things right now came from the era of "If It Feels Good Do It" I think Bill Clinton would be a good example :)
Nope. One of her great regrets, apparently. I found something on the net yesterday that illuminates the likely reason why...
ReplyDeletehttp://thegspot.typepad.com/blog/2008/04/my-maureen-dowd.html
[quote]
Now, this story is illustrative of quite a few things about Modo, none of them flattering. First of all, there are her social skills. X. is clearly not comfortable with gossip and sex talk. Now, I have really shitty social skills -- I'd rank them as maybe a notch above those of your average high-functioning person with autism. But even I picked up fairly early on in my friendship with X. that gossip and sex talk were not his thing. And even I know that it's pretty Social Graces 101 that if someone -- a new acquaintance especially -- is clearly not comfortable with certain topics, you move on until you happen upon a subject that's mutually agreeable.
Maybe Dowd's utter social cluelessness is more responsible for her never finding a husband than feminism is. Ya think?
Ultimately, though, I think this story is tragic. Here Maureen Dowd was, sitting across the table from this Totally. Fucking. Amazing. Person. Yet she could make no human connection with him. She did not get to know him at all. Because all she could talk about all night long was Bill Clinton's cock.
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