Maureen Dowd Caught Plagiarizing?

[John Kerry VonErich]

Source: Inside Politics Daily

Maureen Dowd Caught Plagiarizing?
Posted: 05/18/09



This past Sunday, New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd ran yet another scathing piece about Dick Cheney's role in the torture policies carried out by the Bush administration. But whether you agree or disagree with Dowd's call for an open accounting on "every awful act committed in the name of self-defense and patriotism", you might first consider a more fundamental problem with Dowd's piece itself: a portion of it was plagiarized.

Here's the second to last paragraph of Dowd's column as it first appeared:


More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.


But here's Talking Point Memo's Josh Marshall, writing days earlier on his blog:


More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.



Read more: http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/05/18/maureen-dowd-caught-plagiarising/?icid=main|main|dl1|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.politicsdaily.com%2F2009%2F05%2F18%2Fmaureen-dowd-caught-plagiarising%2F

[xchrom]

1. well -- maureen -- isn't that special? nt

[shadowknows69]

2. Oops. All you have to do is say the same damn thing with a few different words.

Apparently some of today's "writers" can't even be bothered to do that simple thing.

[pretzel4gore]

3. Darn liberal media!

Dowd's one of them bush basher/america haters who have always tried to turn US into a commie hippie loving dope dealing hell where nakkid people took showers (no modesty at all, iow) without even a bathing suit on, as good Queen Victoria once taught, and now she proves it was all a vast leftwing conspiracy all the time, just like Cheney said! Poor Mr Cheney! victim of evil doers

[Dreamer Tatum]

4. What the FUCK are you blathering about?

Seriously: what point could you possibly be trying to make?

[pretzel4gore]

5. i was mocking dowd...

she would make cheney look like an innocent by plagarising something critical of him, and leaving the impression that the media is anti gop etc; venal even to the point of stealing the actual words which say that.

[tclambert]

7. You gotta use the sarcasm thingy.

Or some people won't understand when you talk about how sweet and innocent Dick Cheney is and how we know he must be completely honest when he says, "We never tortured. And anyway, it produced really good intelligence. It proved Saddam was behind 9/11 and that the terrorists planned on using Saddam's weapons of mass destruction on America. So the torture, I mean enhanced interrogation techniques saved hundreds of millions of American lives. If not billions!"



(Then you space down a little and give 'em the :sarcasm: )

[pretzel4gore]

15. right...

it's incredible that the reactionary creeps are getting away, and it looks like the fix was in, and our only revenge is going to be the utter ruination of our society. So be it. But.... maybe it's best to just ignore everything from now on....thanks all the same

[redqueen]

6. Oopsie!

And it seemed to me that Dowd spent more time harping about Pelosi than talking about Cheney.

At least in the few paragraphs I could stomach reading before bailing on her usual dumbassery.

[w4rma]

8. This is fine with me. She can copy Josh Marshall all she wants as far as I'm concerned.

I'd like to see her take entire columns of his and copy them into the NYT.

[bemildred]

9. Let's wait to see what TPM has to say about it. nt

[and-justice-for-all]

10. Coultergeist does is all the time...nt

[UpInArms]

11. nice to know who Dowd identifies with

"when we were" or according to TPM - "when the Bush crowd was"

always though Modo was a Bushite, nice to have confirmation - from her own icy cold death fingers

[redqueen]

13. Good catch. (nt)

[Egnever]

14. Cool but ....

You got those quotes backwards. Its TPM identifying themselves as the Bush crowd.

[UpInArms]

16. ewww!

thanks for the clarification

:hi:

[riverdeep]

12. Somehow, I can't get myself worked up about this.

She's already admitted it, she said a she was chatting with a friend who didn't tell her where the lines were from, and she went with the friend's lines. Believable? I guess if the chat was by email and this friend is a regular compadre to throw around ideas with with the expectation that Dowd can borrow freely, then I can see her just changing a few words around or something. If she were talking on the phone or in person, how Dowd remembered the exact words in the exact way-that's a little much.

But it's a couple of lines (I'm assuming) in the thousands and thousands she's written . I don't like her one bit, but she's a decent and distinctive writer. She needs to give further details, come clean and take the hit if it was full on theft. Depending on the paper's policy, she may lose her job if ANY theft has taken place, but she could probably still work elsewhere.

[panzerfaust]

17. The problem is that she has strongly criticised others

for doing precisely what she herself has now been caught doing.

From how many others has she stolen?

She should, but will not be, finished as a writer.

It is flatly wrong to pass off someone else's work as your own.