Category Archives: Journalism

Updated: Putrid Presidential Plagiarism

Democrats, Ethics, Ilana Mercer, Intellectualism, Journalism, Morality

As you know, the plagiarism of ideas is, especially to this writer, a litmus test for bottom-feeding scum, plain and simple. Why is lifting ideas worse than verbatim copying? Because only the latter is legally actionable. “Smart” people know this—they know how easy it is to get away with lifting ideas, since that’s legally kosher, if utterly odious and unethical.
Those familiar with my work know that I cite religiously and faithfully—I cite even when I don’t have to really. That’s because of my ethics. On a personal level, it’s because I’m not threatened by anyone. Maybe I should be, but I’m not. Why borrow what I may be able to best?
My last brush with this contemptible conduct came about because of a brilliant and ethical colleague—if not for him, I would not have known I had been kind of victimized yet again. He was incredulous when he came across what he recognized to be my ideas, and those of a primary source I had quoted diligently in my essay, all appropriated as the offending writer’s own.
I fought back, and got a citation appended to this second-hand text. I believe you must fight back, so that those who imagine they deserve credit for your ideas pay by losing face. They now know you’re on to them.
In my case, oddly enough, people whom I quite respected have nicked my rather idiosyncratic formulations. Sean nailed it (I could credit myself with this insight, but it’s his): “what’s at play in these instances,” he explained, “is someone who believes he has said what you said, and in the event that he hasn’t, he, being so great, thinks he deserved to have said it.” Something along the lines of, “Who the hell is Ilana to write stuff that sounds as though I ought to have written it?”
Ugly, unmanly sentiments indeed.
Prior to this last episode, about which I would not have been the wiser without my ethical colleague, there was the “professor”—they are a dime a dozen—with no paper or pixel trail to his name, who decided he deserved credit for my vindicating of Michael Vick.
If you recall, I was the first to offer a detailed and rather idiosyncratic defense of Vick’s dog fighting. Sean Hannity said he had not found anyone other than me to offer a coherent defense, which is why he criss-crossed me on his show. My piece was later published in the Orange County Register too.
Google “Defense Michael Vick.” Who’s right up there after Whoopi Goldberg (who, for obvious reasons, would come first)?
My arguments continued on the blog and took a very distinguishing tack, to which the good “professor” adhered closely. His editor defended this no-name dog of a writer. Yeah, this from a bunch that never shuts up about values—the Values Vulgarizers. (Not to mention the violators of the injunction against Second-Handerism.)
So what do I think of the allegation that Obama lifted words not his for one of his uninspiring Hear Me Roar speeches? If it’s true, I agree with Howard Wolfson, the Clinton campaign’s communications director, that, “When an author plagiarizes from another author there is damage done to two different parties. One is to the person he plagiarized from. The other is to the reader.”
While Obama is accused of some lengthy appropriating absent any word of credit to the primary source, his come-back to Hillary is as impoverished as his plagiarism practice. Obama says she borrowed his “signature chant ‘fired up and ready to go’ in Davenport, Iowa, and later her echoing of his rally cry, ‘Yes, we can!’”
Puh-leeze. Next our “intellectual” will be accusing Hillary of stealing the “You Go Girl” bimbo battle cry. The above is clearly Hillary’s mocking paraphrase of Obama’s call to arms. Before he makes his next empty accusation, Imam Obama ought to know that “Ouch”  has also moved into the public domain.
This particular professor is a bit shabby in this department. All not very surprising, considering my own tales of woe with professors.

Update: Obama ought to have said, “To paraphrase my friend, x,” or something along those lines. However you spin it, it’s not very elevated, coming from a man who prides himself on the proper use of words. Sourcing is part of the proper use of words.

CNN GOP Debate: The Meta-Perspective

Elections 2008, Journalism, Media, Republicans

From a journalistic perspective, the last CNN GOP debate was an especially corrupted and corrupting process.
What do I mean? The best to date was the ABC debate moderated by Old School journalist, Charles Gibson. Evenhanded, tough, fare, no favorites—he and his colleague were there to get answers for the viewers, not to choose the frontrunners or make celebrity appearances. Which is what Anderson Vanderbilt Cooper is all about. 
The less said about he and Jim VandeHei, the blogger cognoscente from “Politico,” and Janet Hook of the Los Angeles Times—moderators all—the better.
There were four candidates present, not two. Tasked with the assignment, journalists with a modicum of integrity and intellectual curiosity would have made sure that by the end of the evening, viewers had a good idea of the positions all four held. Instead, Cooper and his colleagues zeroed in on Romney and McCain and remained there. On the few occasions Cooper and Company turned to them, Paul and Huckabee were granted very little time to respond—Paul even less than Huckabee. Moreover, because four contenders were present and two were ignored, the meta-message was that of contempt—and arrogance on the part of the moderators.
 
Rush Limbaugh has offered a coruscating critique of McCain as the anti-conservative, yet Huckabee was framed by Cooper as the main object of Limbaugh’s attack. This was a sort of Straw Man Argument. Huckabee is not the frontrunner. If Limbaugh’s renunciation of any candidate ought to have been brought up for the benefit of the voters, it is his root-and-branch rejection of McCain. But that bit of dreck, Cooper, wanted to spare his man McCain, who is lionized by liberals.
The debate has stuck in my mind as richly revealing of the workings of the media, content and process alike.  
To be continued.

Update (February 3): Readers have pointed to other solid interviews conducted over the months with the candidates, such as at the dank corner of MTV cable, of all places. I would add the Google or Yahoo executive’s interview with Paul—and the others. Fine, informed, intelligent stuff. This demonstrates, once again, that if in search for genius, always look outside what I call the Media-Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex, sycophants and parasites all.
This is also why you ought to never blindly follow the media’s constant abuse of Mitt Romney, clearly of a far superior mind and mien than the miserable, mummified McCain. I say this as a “Paulbearer.” But more about Romney—a tremendously accomplished man in his own right—latter. A run outdoors, eating, ironing, and book writing will keep us apart for the next few hours.

Update #II: Embrace Your Immigration Ad, Dr. Paul

Elections 2008, Ethics, Homosexuality, IMMIGRATION, Individual Rights, Journalism, Ron Paul

“You know Rep. Paul has scored a major moral coup when among those chastising him for his stand on illegal immigration is the author of a semi-pornographic tract, complete with a request for funds for the legal defense of an illegal alien. Yes, the prudish, proper Paul is being scolded by a “gentleman” who thinks nothing of exploiting his editorial position on a prominent forum to raise money for a Moroccan, homosexual, burlesque queen, whose résumé includes “exploits in the gay underground of the Arabic world.” …
As a man of the classical liberal, unquestionably American, Old Right, Rep. Paul is perfectly congruous in his defense of a sovereign America bounded by borders. It is his anarchist critics who belong to a different tradition—and who don’t make a lick of sense to sane Americans. …
… Positions that appeal to most normal Americans appall the libertarian foil-hat fringe.”
All that and more in my latest WorldNetDaily column, “Embrace Your Immigration Ad, Dr. Paul.”

Update # I: In reply to Barbara’s comments hereunder about the “hero” of the following “semi-pornographic tract,” linked in my column: Is this individual a worthy recipient of refugee status in the US? That’s the question. There are many foreign-born homosexuals and lesbians who do not enter the sex industry or the adult entertainment industry, but are productive individuals of high moral character. I would suggest they are better candidates for immigration than the subject of this disgusting tract, written by the shameless individual who has called Ron Paul’s illegal immigration ad “disgraceful.”
Note that the author of this “semi-pornographic tract” likens the suffering of the homosexual lad to the Resurrection. How obscene and tasteless.

Update # II (Jan. 15): On the Use of An Editorial Position to Solicit Funds For Unsavory Friends:

What would life be without the need to clarify what was crystal clear in the column, “Embrace Your Immigration Ad, Dr. Paul”?!
Was it not clear that it was not homosexuality per se that I was denouncing, but rather, 1) the quivering pornographic tone of a piece written, not for a gay porn magazine, but for a political, ostensibly respectable (but not really), website? 2) The dishonest depiction of a rather sluttish individual as a victim deserving of refugee status.

As I explained in Update # I:

There are many foreign homosexuals and lesbians (members of my family included), who live under precarious circumstances, yet have not entered the sex industry or the adult entertainment industry, but remain productive individuals of high moral character. I would suggest they are better candidates for immigration to the US than the subject of this disgusting tract.

And lastly, but easily the most unethical, the writer of the “semi-pornographic tract” exploited his editorial position—and by so doing flouted journalistic standards and ethics—to solicit funds from his readers for this individual, evidently a personal friend.
That’s deplorable.

I must conclude that my critics failed to diagnose all this as misconduct because they are themselves, very plainly, unethical.

‘Idiot Pundits and Pollsters Strike Again’

Elections 2008, Journalism, Media

At least this empty tracksuit, Joel Achenbach, admits he and his cohort are “imbeciles” (why, then, are they still employed by prestigious publications and remunerated for their idiocy?):
“I guess it was premature to write those forward-looking analyses of President Obama’s re-election strategy in 2012.
I don’t want to suggest that the pundits look stupid this morning. More like complete freakin’ imbeciles. Count me among those who thought Obama was a runaway train, that he’d blow Clinton out of the water. (It’s early and I didn’t get enough sleep, so we just went ahead and mixed the metaphor.)
You had to see the crowds! Feel the energy! Okay, so in retrospect a lot of those people were probably college kids on break from Massachusetts or Maryland. Still, many of us sensed that we were witnessing history, a transition to a new era. Turning the page.
“You have to BELIEVE,” I told my jaded friend Von Drehle.
“In WHAT?” he said.
“In HOPE,” I said. I was just trying to get in the spirit of things, and be a true news medium.
In retrospect, I regret posting that item about Obama turning water to wine.
A little after midnight, in Nashua at the gym where Obama had spoken to his stunned supporters, a nationally known pundit said to me: “I spent half an hour today on television talking about the Clintons IN THE PAST TENSE.”
What happened?
Maybe it really was the “Ed Muskie in reverse” effect. That’s the Sid Blumenthal phrase. Clinton cleaned up among women, and women made up 57 percent (so I am told) of Democratic primary voters. Perhaps women rallied to the cause after the Emotional Moment. You heard what the woman from Bow told me yesterday: She suddenly switched from Edwards to Clinton after seeing the news clip of Clinton tearing up in Portsmouth. And several other voters told me they absolutely loved the EM.
Last night at the Obama rally, Sue Tice, a librarian at the high school who seemed floored by the results, said of the turnaround, “I really wonder if it was yesterday when Hillary became a person.”
And then there was the image of the boys ganging up on Clinton in the debate — and that snarky comment by Obama, calling Hillary “likeable enough,” which surely he meant to come out in a more jocular fashion. Never mind his intent: “Jokes don’t work,” said Dave Barry this weekend, and he knows a thing or two about that.
We’ve seen over the years that the New Hampshire Primary can turn on a gesture, a phrase, a single searing moment. Politics isn’t left-brained, it’s more reptilian than that.
We had buried Clinton by Monday night and had moved on to wondering what she’d do with the tattered remnants of her career. But guess what: the voters decide these things. It’s too soon to know precisely how this race stands and where it’s going and what’s going to happen, but from where I’m sitting — in the Manchester airport, ready to get the hell home — she’s the front-runner again.
And remember: Front-runners usually win.”

[Snip]

As I keep pointing out, there is nothing these people can predict accurately or analyze correctly (bar Pat Buchanan, who called the results in Iowa and New Hampshire). The print media’s timeless tenure is without justification.