While character flaw is surely the source of the average acts of petty plagiary, there must be some type of mental illness involved when the plagiarist knows his work will be widely read and yet still steals from obvious sources. Why else would otherwise capable writers lift passages wholesale from places such as the Reader's Digest (Bob Morris) and the works of P.J. O'Rourke? (Ben Domenech)
Or is this just the literary version of the commonplace stupid criminal?
UPDATE:
There's no need to brood about this Domenech deal. As time passes, we'll look back with the big picture in mind and remember this time as being the best of times, the worst of times, the age of wisdom, the age of foolishness, the epoch of belief, the epoch of incredulity, the season of Light, the season of Darkness, the spring of hope, and the winter of despair-- a real contradictory and confusing time for people, especially for writers. Even more especially so for plagiarists, because they had to rack their brains trying to decide who they were going to copy and paste from next. A multitude of choices creates its own dilemna, you know.
UPDATE II:
You're my big, brave boy. Yes, you are.
To the commenters at RedState who are calling Ben Domenech "brave" for finally cutting the crap and telling the truth: It's not "brave" for him to do this. Owning up to wrongdoing isn't something that a grown man is to be commended for -- it's simply what any adult is supposed to do. If you want to forgive him, forgive him. That's a good thing. But don't fawn over him for finally doing what any decent adult human being is supposed to do: take responsibility for his actions.
(Via Bill in comments.)
**
Previous postings:
Weeping, Wailing, And Gnashing Of Teeth
And now the suckers who paid him for stuff get to enjoy a creepy crawl through the way back to find out who they get to apologize to as well. Everybody wins, if by winning I mean "bad publicity and a nice emergency research project breaking on a Friday afternoon". Which is what I usually mean by "win".
Posted by: marc at March 24, 2006 04:11 PMYep. A lot of people are going to have to spend this weekend wading through Domenech's crap.
Posted by: Donnah at March 24, 2006 04:39 PMI simply can't understand what goes through someone's mind who PUBLISHES plagiarism. Students trying to slip stuff past a teacher, I can get - though I personally have never considered copying a piece of original writing as my own - but publishing it?
I agree, it's crazy. Some of the rationalizations over at redstate.com are pretty freakin' crazy. Like this tactic: "they've attacked his family, called him gay, said he's a doo-doo head, etc."
Yes, it's a bit scary how the lefties rose to take this guy down and destroy him - but rallying to defend the guy because 95% of the criticism cvoming from his unhinged critics is BS is just a cheap distraction. It's that 5% that's come to the fore, in this case ...
Sheesh.
Posted by: Bill from INDC at March 24, 2006 10:00 PMI don't know if you were reading the News-Press when Bob Morris was there, but he was awesome. I bought both his books of columns- the guy was a scream. He leaves and goes to work for the Orlando Sentinel and plagiarizes an article from the freaking Reader's Digest. Ted Bundy asked where murderers were most likely to be executed then headed to Florida. Bob must have thought "What's one of the most widely read publications on the planet? I'll plagiarize from that."
When talented writers who are writing for publication do this sort of thing, I have to wonder if they'd don't have a screw loose.
Domenech was writing for NRO as a freshman in college. Before that he worked a couple of years at Human Events. What he posted at Red State is ridiculous. He defended himself from one charge by saying he didn't plagiarize an item from some publication called Crosswalk because he had written that also. Even I who have never worked in any journalistic capacity know that self-plagiarism, the copying of your old work for a new publication, is a firing offense at a newspaper.
Then there's the other people's stuff he swiped and had published in NRO. Don't tell me evil editors inserted all that stuff too.
My writing may be retarded and gauche, but it's all mine.
Posted by: Donnah at March 24, 2006 10:22 PMOh geez, look at the attaboy love fest when the kid finally did the right thing and owned up:
http://www.redstate.com/story/2006/3/24/231559/931
They're fetishizing taking responsibility into some form of bravery, meriting a succession of compliments. It's not bravery, it's NECESSARY.
Posted by: Bill from INDC at March 25, 2006 01:00 AMIsn't that a scene out of the movie "Shattered Glass"? Everybody is praising Stephen Glass on how brave he is to finally admit that he made up all those articles, and he's all "Thank you, thank you. Yes, it is difficult," etc. Then a disgusted grown-up in the room sets them all straight: There's not a damn thing brave about it: he's not three; he's 20-something. An adult is *supposed* to own up when he's done wrong.
Unreal.
Posted by: Donnah at March 25, 2006 01:28 AM