The Commentariat -- June 12, 2014
Jonathan Weisman of the New York Times: "Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the No. 2 House Republican, will resign as majority leader within weeks, according to leadership aides, setting off a scramble to remake the party's upper ranks. The move follows a stunning defeat in a primary election on Tuesday in which voters rejected him in favor of a more conservative candidate, and culminates a precipitous fall for Mr. Cantor, who was thought to be a likely successor to Speaker John A. Boehner."
Former U.S. Representative for Virginia's 7th congressional district, serving since 2001, served as Minority Whip from 2009-2011 and Majority Leader from 2011 - June 10, 2014 when I was handed one of the most embarrassing losses in modern political history. Really regret opposing the extension of unemployment benefits now and calling the Tea Party 'a tremendous positive influence' in 2010. Will count votes (badly) for food. -- Craigslist ad
Nate Cohn of the New York Times: "Democratic spoilers probably did not contribute enough votes to account for Mr. Cantor's margin of defeat.... Mr. Brat fared best in heavily Republican Hanover County, while Mr. Cantor kept the race closer in the more competitive Richmond inner suburbs.... Turnout was still far, far higher in Republican precincts. Democratic areas did not contribute a large number of votes.... Mr. Brat's wide margin of victory sets a high bar for arguing that Democratic voters made the difference. And since Mr. Brat ran so strongly in Republican territory, it's hard to see that he needed Democratic votes to push him over the top." ...
... David Fahrenthold, et al., of the Washington Post: "... a look back at Cantor’s defeat shows that it was a real rejection by a broad swath of his district’s Republican voters. And there were warning signs that it was coming: the heckling of Cantor in that convention speech and defeats of his acolytes in low-level party elections this year.... When Virginia's districts were redrawn in 2010, the state's legislature altered Cantor's district and removed some heavily Democratic precincts in the Richmond area. They swapped in heavily Republican New Kent County, east of the state capital. Cantor supported the move, which was supposed to make his safe seat even safer from Democrats. But that was a miscalculation: Cantor had misjudged who his real enemy was." ...
... Shane Goldmacher of the National Journal: Eric Cantor's pollster tries to explain why his poll showed Cantor with a 34-point lead.
... Steve M.: GOP voters fired Cantor because he failed to do his real job: providing "the essential constituent service of declaring that Obama, other Democrats, and liberalism are destroying civilization as we know it every time they can possibly get within range of a microphone or camera." ...
... "All Politics Is Local." Trip Gabriel of the New York Times: "At a time of deep cynicism about government, [voters in Cantor's district] described Mr. Cantor as a man who had succumbed to Washington and forgotten where he came from.... At a time when voters say they crave authenticity, they did not believe he displayed it. And amid the widespread rage of Republican voters at the Obama administration, the line between a leadership position and being sufficiently antagonistic to the White House proved to be impossible for Mr. Cantor to navigate." ...
I do think that this outcome does provide some evidence to indicate that the strategy of opposing nearly everything and supporting hardly anything is not just a bad governing strategy, it is not a very good political strategy either. -- Josh Earnest, Deputy White House Press Secretary
... Evan McMorris Santoro of BuzzFeed: "Earnest pointed out that a sponsor and advocate for the Senate [immigration reform] bill, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, won his Republican primary on the same night Cantor lost his." ...
... David Baker of the San Francisco Chronicle: Gov. Rick Perry "attributed this week's stunning defeat of House Majority Leader Eric Cantor in Virginia's Republican primary to not spending enough time with constituents." CW: ... proving that even a numbskull isn't wrong all of the time. Now see Perry's remark highlighted below. ...
... Gail Collins ruminates on Cantor's loss. ...
... See also today's comment by James S., who speaks with authority. CW: I think he's got something there. Also, there's this: for any number of reasons, people just don't like or trust Eric Cantor. ...
... Here's Ezra Klein's take on "lessons learned." ...
... Also from Klein: "'Truly, what divides Republicans pales in comparison to what divides us as conservatives from the Left and their Democratic Party,' Eric Cantor said in his speech announcing his intention to step down as House Majority Leader. Cantor's right about that. And it's why his surprising defeat won't change Washington much at all." ...
... Oh, Why Can't Our Leaders Be More Like Ted Cruz? Brian Beutler of the New Republic: "... the two Republican leaders most responsible for the party's insurgent-like opposition to the Obama agenda -- Cantor, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell -- are the base's most reviled.... In the end the right's beef with him -- as with McConnell -- was about more than just affect. It was about his willingness to use power politics and procedural hijinks to cut conservatives out of the tangle when expedient. The lesson of his defeat isn't that immigration reform is particularly poisonous, but that the right expects its leaders to understand they can't subsume the movement's energy for tactical purposes, then grant it only selective influence over big decisions. ...
... Eric Cantor isn't the only person who misled voters with a claim that David Brat was "a liberal professor." Brat himself claims on his Website "that he tested his rural values against the intellectual elite while at Princeton." But Brat never attended Princeton University; instead, he got a master of divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary which has no association with Princeton U., except that the two institutions are in the same town. ...
... CW Update. Come to think of it, I too was "at Princeton." Since I once lived not far from there, I went to Princeton numerous times for shopping, dining, etc. Prepositions matter: "at Princeton" v. "in Princeton." I also have been at (and to) Harvard, Yale, Vassar, Berkeley, etc. -- that is, I visited the campuses for one reason or another. Here, "at" is the proper preposition, but it has two meanings. So maybe Brat hung out on the Princeton campus, picking "intellectual" fights with passing "elites." I guess in that scenario, he was at Princeton. ...
... Charles Pierce: "In brief, Brat's job, and the support he got from the Raving-Loon Industrial Complex, all was financed in some way or another by the same vast lagoon of plutocratic payola with which we've all become sadly familiar." ...
... Igor Volsky of Think Progress: "David Brat ... tried to avoid answering specific policy questions in one of his first national television interviews.... Pressed for his position about raising the minimum wage, the economic professor demurred, saying 'I don't have a well-crafted response on that one.' ... The conversation grew even more strained when [Chuck] Todd asked Brat if he supports arming the Syrian rebels. The GOP nominee immediately tried to dismiss the issue, saying, 'hey Chuck, I thought we were just going to chat today about the celebratory aspects.'" With video. ...
... Garance Franke-Ruta of Yahoo! News: "The campaign manager for the tea party-backed Republican who ousted House Majority Leader Eric Cantor ... is a 23-year-old class of 2013 Haverford College graduate who posted a slew of provocative opinions on a public Facebook page that was removed from view overnight following David Brat's victory. From comparing George Zimmerman's shooting of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin to abortion to calling for the abolition of the Food and Drug Administration and encouraging the adoption of the silver monetary standard, Zachary Werrell -- one of just two paid staffers for the upstart campaign of ... David Brat -- sought in 2012 and 2013 to build a public profile as a socially conservative libertarian voice." ...
... CW: Brat is no Christine I-Am-Not-a-Witch O'Donnell, but he isn't exactly coming across as a polished candidate. Maybe he's beatable, even in a Republican district. ...
... Eric, We Hardly Knew Ye. Dana Milbank: "The ouster of the only non-Christian Republican in Congress by a primary challenger running as an immigration hard-liner is a crucial moment for the GOP because it risks cementing the party’s demographic troubles.... In the Jewish tradition, burial generally occurs within a day of death. Cantor's GOP colleagues took that further, dumping him instantaneously -- and unceremoniously -- after his unexpected political demise." ...
... CW: Cementing? Seems to me the cement hardened long ago, albeit the party faithful saved a block to tie to Cantor's feet before dumping him in the James River.
AP: "The FBI has opened a criminal investigation into the Department of Veterans Affairs after a scathing watchdog report that found systemic problems in the medical system for military veterans, FBI director James Comey said Wednesday."
Spencer Ackerman of the Guardian: "US defense secretary Chuck Hagel forcefully rejected criticism for trading five Taliban leaders for army sergeant Bowe Bergdahl in a combative appearance before a congressional committee on Wednesday. Hagel aggressively and at times angrily defended the trade, saying he took its risks damn seriously' and making conspicuous reference to his Vietnam combat experience." ...
... Stephanie McCrummen of the Washington Post: "... before he joined the Army, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl was discharged from the Coast Guard for psychological reasons, said close friends who were worried about his emotional health at the time. The 2006 discharge and a trove of Bergdahl's writing -- his handwritten journal along with essays, stories and e-mails provided to The Washington Post -- paint a portrait of a deeply complicated and fragile young man who was by his own account struggling to maintain his mental stability from the start of basic training until the moment he walked off his post in eastern Afghanistan in 2009.... Typically, a discharge for psychological reasons would disqualify a potential recruit.... In 2008, the Army was meeting recruitment goals by issuing waivers that allowed people with criminal records, health conditions and other problems to enlist." ...
... CW: This new information, which is consistent with bits & pieces previously reported, suggests to me that the Army bears a good deal of responsibility for Bergdahl's situation. They accepted into service & sent to an isolated war zone in an undisciplined unit a young man known to have psychological problems. ...
... CW P.S. This past Sunday, Dr./Sen. Tom Coburn said he'd viewed the "proof of life" video of Bergdahl released by the Taliban & diagnosed his mental condition as having "been drugged ... either with an anti-psychotic or hypnotic drug." Well, Dr. Coburn, OB-GYN, you're a lousy senator, too. As Steve Benen noted in the linked post, "... the right needs to believe that Bergdahl's health wasn't failing -- and here's Coburn 'speaking as a doctor' to give his party a new talking point."
** Whether or not you feel compelled to follow a particular lifestyle or not, you have the ability to decide not to do that. I may have the genetic coding that I'm inclined to be an alcoholic, but I have the desire not to do that, and I look at the homosexual issue the same way. -- Texas Gov. Rick Perry, in San Francisco of all places, in response to a question about the Texas GOP's platform embracing "reparative therapy" for gays ...
... Then again, "reparative therapy" sounds downright humane & considerate compared to this:
Catherine Thompson of TPM: Scott Esk, "a Republican candidate for the Oklahoma state House who boasts that he's looking forward to 'applying Biblical principles to Oklahoma law,' is okay with gay people being stoned to death -- even if he won't legislate the practice himself:
'So just to be clear, you think we should execute homosexuals (presumably by stoning)?' [a] commenter asked. 'I think we would be totally in the right to do it,' Esk replied. 'That goes against some parts of libertarianism, I realize, and I'm largely libertarian, but ignoring as a nation things that are worthy of death is very remiss.'
Dan Balz of the Washington Post: "Conservatives and liberals don't just differ in their political views. They like to live in different places, associate with like-minded people and have opposing views on the value of ethnic and religious diversity in their neighborhoods, according to a major new study by the Pew Research Center." CW: Also, liberals can hardly believe anyone would compare a normal sexual pattern to a debilitating disease. Update: Or stoning! (See Perry & Esk remarks above.) ...
... Here's (Page 1 of) the Pew Report which Balz cites.
Aw Shucks. The Misfortunes of Eric have knocked reviews of Hillary's Magical Book Tour off the front pages. Here's Philip Bump of the Washington Post on Hillary's (true) assertion that she & Bill were "dead broke" when they left the White House in 2001.
Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times: "It has been five years since the official end of that severe economic downturn. The nation's total annual output has moved substantially above the prerecession peak, but economic growth has averaged only about 2 percent a year, well below its historical average. Household incomes continue to stagnate, and millions of Americans still can't find jobs. And a growing number of experts see evidence that the economy will never rebound completely."
The Fox "News" Standard of Newsworthiness. Eric Boehlert of Media Matters: "For Fox News, the story about right-wing gun violence [-- the politically motivated killings by Jerad & Amanda Miller --] and the seeds of a bloody political revolution present all kinds of problems for the channel and its outspoken hosts, some of whom have previously championed limitless gun rights, insurrectionism, the Tea Party, and racist rancher [Cliven] Bundy. In the 36 hours after the shooting, Fox News tread lightly around the Las Vegas story, producing regular news updates about the crime spree. But Fox provided almost no commentary, no context, and certainly no collective blame for the executions." Akhilleus linked a Daily Kos post on this same subject in yesterday's Comments.
Beyond the Beltway
AP: "A federal judge ordered Ohio’s elections chief Wednesday to set early voting hours on the three days before elections in a ruling that gives Democrats a victory going into the fall election.
News Ledes
New York Times: "Ruby Dee, one of the most enduring actresses of theater and film, whose public profile and activist passions made her, along with her husband, Ossie Davis, a leading advocate for civil rights both in show business and in the wider world, died on Wednesday at her home in New Rochelle, N.Y. She was 91."
Guardian: "Fighting between Ukrainian government troops and pro-Russian militia is fuelling a worsening humanitarian crisis in eastern Ukraine. Tens of thousands of people are fleeing combat, most of them from the rebel capital of Slavyansk, where almost daily shelling has claimed numerous civilian casualties since late May."
New York Times: " The body of a 19-year-old woman was found hanging by her scarf from a eucalyptus tree in a village in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh on Thursday morning, the police said. It was the third similar gruesome discovery in the state in two weeks. Relatives of the dead woman, who was last seen alive Wednesday, have filed a report alleging that she was raped and murdered by two men who they say had been bothering her...."
Washington Post: "Iraq was on the brink of disintegration Thursday as al-Qaeda-inspired fighters swept through northern Iraq toward Baghdad and Kurdish soldiers seized the city of Kirkuk without a fight."
New York Times: "An American drone struck a militant compound in Pakistan's tribal belt for the second time in 24 hours on Thursday, killing at least 10 suspected members of the feared Haqqani network, which held the American soldier Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl hostage for five years."
ABC News: "The sun has had three major solar flares on its surface in the past two days that have affected communications on Earth and could send a shockwave through Earth this Friday, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.... The disturbance to Earth's atmosphere can disrupt GPS and communications signals, according to NASA."
... CW: Oh, crap. As luck would have it, on Friday I'll be traveling across mountain roads to a place I don't know how to reach without my GPS. Huh, maybe I should buy a map. Wonder if anybody still sells those.
Share Article
Reader Comments (17)
Since I have no first-hand knowledge of the primary campaign in Virginia’s seventh congressional district, I feel obliged to speak about it with authority. From the scanty reporting of the campaign, it would appear that Mr. Brat’s minions mounted a successful GOTV effort while Mr. Cantor spent lots of money but took the whole venture as a gimme. To say that ideology was a key factor is to give voters far more credit than is wise, especially in this economy.
Re: Professor Harold Hill goes to Congress; Great, another bible thumper from Princeton; with a little "p", willing to fudge the facts for a vote. Hucksters one and all.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/06/11/1306241/-Immigration-Democrats-redistricting-None-of-those-caused-Eric-Cantor-s-loss?detail=hide
David Jarman in "Daily Kos": none of the things attributed to Cantor's loss by pundits are exactly accurate.
"Instead, the more convincing explanations are the ones that, trite as it may seem, are based on some variation of Cantor having gone Washington/gotten too big for his britches/lost sight of the little people back home. It's especially vivid when, again, compared with the story of Lindsey Graham, who, when faced with the same sort of skeptical constituents, restored his relationships with local GOP officials, stumped aggressively around the state, and ran a whole slew of positive TV spots focusing on what he’s done."
Karma is a bitch! What goes around comes around.
We have talked a lot about fact checking here on R.C. We have also discussed the matter of plagiarism and the importance of giving credit to other's words putting in the correct quotes when needed. The other night Rachel was ranting––and believe me, she was ranting––about the sloppy job Politifact does given the fact their site is all ABOUT fact checking. This morning I read this long, fascinating piece by Chris Ketchens, a contributing editor at Harpers, on the "troubling case of Chris Hedges" who apparently has had multiple problems with lifting other's words and making them his own. This article, though, gives us an inside look into how difficult it is sometimes to sift through the written words in a book or magazine article and the sticky wickets of exposing something like plagiarism once it is discovered.
A bit of a respite from Cantor and the Brat~~~~~~~~~~
Whoops––almost forgot the link:
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/118114/chris-hedges-pulitzer-winner-lefty-hero-plagiarist
Cantored in Virginia.
Just a few thoughts on the Virginia 7th, media hacks, 'baggers, and why elections matter.
Surely the last is the most important. By anyone's count, the turnout was low, I've read between 12 and 14%. This means that you don't need very many voters for an upset. It does mean that they all have to show up. It's funny that a group like the Teabaggers, a collection of malcontents, misanthropes, and haters of all things governmental show up in such large numbers to vote for someone they hope will do nothing within government. Someone who will at all turns stop governmental business, except for making sure that the agenda of a heavily armed, unregulated theocracy is pursued with all speed.
I have nothing but contempt for a smug little asshole like Eric Cantor who spent his time in congress doing as little as possible outside obstructing the business of the people. But the one or two times he actually tried to do something, the madding crowd he courted turned on him. He should know, having been around so many, that a rabid dog will bite anyone.
Good idea that he helped oversee the Gerrymandering of the 7th to ensure that the largest numbers of crazies could vote in that district.
Speaking of that district, Hack-man Chuck Todd, NBC's political director, wrote that the 7th is largely left leaning. According to the Cook Political Report, the 7th has an R+10 rating, meaning that it averages 10 points more for Republicans than the nation as a whole. In fact, there are only 3 out of 199 Democrats in the House come from districts more Republican than the Virginia 7th. But according to NBC's political wizard. Chuck Todd, that indicates a left-leaning district. Is it any wonder that guys like Chuck Todd are so wrong so much of the time? I realize this doesn't seem like a big deal, but really, it's like reporting that there aren't many Chinese living in Chinatown. It's a mistake so silly that it indicates more than just sloppy journalism, although that by itself is bad enough.
But anyway, now the 7th, barring some miracle, will be represented by someone even more nihilistic than Cantor. On the Democratic side, another professor from Randolph-Macon college, Jack Trammell, will go up against Brat, whose teaching of economics rests almost solely on bad fiction written by someone who has no economic training or insight. He also insists on introducing biblical elements into his economic instruction. I suppose it would be useful to know how many talents you could get from selling your daughters into slavery.
The Democratic candidate writes about history, recently publishing a book about the impact of slave trade on the economics of the old south. He's also an advocate for disabled students.
So, we have, on the one hand, a guy who reaches out to people who may be handicapped in an effort to ensure that they don't fall through the cracks in higher education, one who writes about history and economics based on factual information, and on the other, a guy whose pedagogy relies primarily on works of fiction: Ayn Rand novels, and the Bible.
Elections do matter. Here's hoping that a much larger contingent of Democrats show up in the general election. I'm so fucking tired of a small minority of begrudgers and haters imposing their nihilistic will on the country. And I have no hope that the media ("the 7th is a left leaning district") will rise to the occasion to make any real distinctions between characters who want to go backwards and burn it all down to the ground versus candidates who are for positive action to push the nation forward.
With another nihilistic teabagging Bible beater in the saddle and cracking the right-wing whip, the people of the 7th may have to learn about a different kind of canter.
PD,
Thanks for the link to the piece about Chris Hedges. It's a sad thing, really. I've admired his work for a long time and it's hard to separate that admiration from the new question that will pop up whenever I read his work again.
In fact, this is the sort of thing that can turn me off completely to a writer, although not always entirely. Some years ago I found an unusual, wonderfully written little book, "Primary Colors", that comprised an historical, sociological, artistic journey through the meanings of red, blue, and yellow, written by Alexander Theroux. It came out shortly after, that six lines had been lifted, sans attribution, from another writer's work. I went back and checked all six positions. I was disappointed, but the rest of the writing was so wonderful that I let it slide, albeit grudgingly. I read one more book by him, "Secondary Colors" but none since.
At my college you could get into all sorts of mischief and still avoid defenestration. Short of shooting a professor or fellow student, the one guaranteed way to end your career at that college (or at the very least be forced out and given the opportunity to reapply at some later date) was to be caught plagiarizing.
In those days internet searches were things of science fiction. But I recall stories about the lengths to which the school would go to prove plagiarism. If the source material had mysteriously "disappeared" from the library, and no others could be found nearby, there was always the chance of finding the work in some private library or even, as one story had it, having an original copy sent from a collection in France, just to prove that the offending lines were indeed purloined.
If you appreciate good writing, it's hard not to repeat a well crafted line, but most people usually preface that opportunity with something like "I once read that so and so said..." or "As Thucydides once wrote...".
It's not hard to do, and in truth, has the benefit of bolstering your point and/or demonstrating that you are indeed a well read individual and not just a dilettantish exhibitionist (although that possibility never falls completely off the table, lookin' at you George Will.).
Anyway, too bad about Hedges. It's especially hard to hear what a dick he was about it when caught red-worded. And the old "I had it in my notes and forgot to credit it" excuse is hoarier than "the dog ate my homework". I tend to know when it's something I've written and when it's something written by George Orwell or some other master of expository prose.
Like left-leaning Chuck Todd...
@Akhilleus & P.D. Pepe: I'm following James Singer's standard for speaking as an authority here, because I haven't had time even to read the NR story about Hedges' plagiarism. As part of my creds, let me just say I don't like Chris Hedges. (I don't mean personally; he may be a fine fellow or a dickhead. I mean I don't like his ideology.)
But I live in fear of plagiarizing. Someone wrote to me recently that s/he could never mimic my "style," but the truth is that most of us can mimic standard writing style. Now in the Internets age, where I copy stuff off the Internet intended for attribution, there is always a danger that I will accidentally copy it in without attribution -- then, in rereading, not even notice it is not my own writing, since the styles of my writing & of the actual author's are indistinguishable.
When Doris Kearns Goodwin got caught incorporating significant chunks of other people's writing into a book published under her name, I wasn't surprised, especially as she uses assistants to "help" research & write her books.
I'm beginning to think that every nonfiction book that requires extensive research should come with a disclaimer, "Any plagiarism contained in the text of this book is accidental."
One plagiarizing excuse I didn't buy was MoDo's because it was a Big Fat Lie that she conjured to hide the fact that she uses assistants to research her brilliant columns. (Hey, maybe it was MoDo's ASSISTANT who had that unfortunate Rocky Mountain High.)
Marie
Marie,
In which case she actually could use a "hey, the dog ate my pot brownie" excuse.
And as you suggest, writing styles can often be similar or at least slightly mimicked, not unlike a guitar player who borrows certain stylistics from other players. Not everyone has such a distinctive style that it stands out clearly enough for someone to say, "Well, that's obviously Hemingway", although it could be Hemingwayesque enough to pass. Probably why Hemingway writing contests are so common.
If I were to admit to any specific source of inspiration, I'd have to point, at least, to S.J. Perelman (although there are plenty of others). Not that I consciously aspire to sound like him, but that I've always appreciated what he does with word choice and construction and now and then find myself wondering "What would S.J. do?"
But I do agree that the sort of disclaimer you mention would not be out of place in most large scale works of non-fiction.
Or even small scale, like MoDo. "I may have been high when I wrote this so it may not actually be my own stuff. Also, stay away from pot!"
Apropos of not much in today's RC posts, but after the Congress studiously avoided asking SecDef Hagel about Iraq in yesterday's bear-baiting: here is a year-old story (10th anniversary process check) about what we were told the Iraq war would cost ("almost pays for itself"), and what the butcher's bill looked like last year.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/03/invading-iraq-what-we-were-told-at-the-time/274179/
If the ISIS push gets more drastic and Iraq gets carved up, the brain dead will say that Obama lost it, when the real story is that we should never have gone in, and pissed away the responsibility to do it right in 2003-2006. And a large part of why we did it wrong was because the instigators could not be honest about the costs, or how they would be paid for.
Interesting chat on "borrowing" someone else's work. In our county in PA, a high school principal just lifted an entire speech and "gave" it at graduation ceremonies, from someone who has since died, and SAYS it was part of a written copy he had that did have attributing info on it, but that he gave the newspapers the wrong copy, and of course said nothing about whose speech it was when he was "giving it!" I was
flabbergasted. Even more disquieting were the comments to the online story; most people said "who cares??!!" and no, one will remember it anyhow...It was as if stealing someone's work was okay as long as no one objected or knew whose work it was!! The school board met, however, and was not pleased; he received a 10-day suspension without pay, effective now. I don't think that was good enough. This was someone who supposedly tries to instill values into young people, and yet it somehow neglected to cross his provincial little mind that the words he was saying were not his, and said nothing to his audience. I am still taken aback. Everyone makes mistakes but this one was huge, and I think he should have been fired.
The tale of Chris Hedges' journalistic copy-WRITING is troubling. Thanks PDP for the link. The examples go beyond mere coincidence...and 'oops, my bad, I meant to...." Right!
Though even when you give proper attribution, (a rather slightly different situation) one can get into trouble! I recall a few months back when Charlie Pierce did one of his wonderfully, sarcastic interpretations on a David Brooks column. Each paragraph was appropriately italicized, indented to be obviously that of our Mr. Brooks. Followed, by CP's deft put down in: plain text, not indented.
A day or so later, Mr. Pierce 'announced' the NYT threatened do-not-do this or else. While he probably used almost all of Brook's inane column for his a point by point rebuttal - it was certainly defined attribution. Perhaps in the eyes of the legal dept. it was verboten because there was too much of the actual column printed that got a hilariously, delicious put down. Every sentence deserved it! But, fee-fees were hurt :-(
What are Fair Use limitations?
Wasn't plagiarism. Attribution apropos. Lawyers!!!
@Patrick Speaking of Pierce, he has a post that certainly aligns with your comment. "How Iraq Turns Into Vietnam Before Our Very Eyes" http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/The_National_Forgetting
Times Lede: U.S. Ready to help Iraq.
Question: Which Iraq? What is Iraq besides a chunk of geography with oil?
Christian Victory. Time to Kill for Christ!
A quick look at sites like Right Wing Watch remind me of a baleful version of the famous Monty Python Funniest Joke in the World" sketch,wherein anyone who read or heard the entire joke would laugh themselves to death. Unfortunates who got a look at two or three words in succession required weeks of hospitalization.
That's me--without the laughing part--when I hear about these loons, especially in the wake of the Great Virginia Victory over Eric Cantor, that Christ Killer.
To say that the Christian Right is all aflutter with the defeat of the House's only Jewish member by a far-right Christian Bible beater, David Brat, is like saying English soccer hooligans are average fans of the sport.
Tom Delay, someone who, by the tenets of his own religion, should be wearing sackcloth and flagellating himself six hours a day for the next 20 years, is crowing about a Christian Revolution. There's that call for uprisings again. Class, didn't we just get through the Las Vegas lesson plan on calls for revolution by unhinged psychopaths? I guess this will be a different kind of revolution. Oh, of course,....sure...a CHRISTIAN revolution. No worries, then. I'm sure everyone will be welcome.
Well, almost everyone.
Like friend of Jesus, Rick Perry who compares homosexuals to stumbling alcoholics.
Or even better Oklahoma candidate for state senate, far right-winger, Scott Esk, who wants Oklahoma law to become "more biblical". Also, it's time to start rounding up gays so they can be stoned to death.
Say what? Stoned. To. Death? You know, because Jesus. And god. And the Bible.
Oh, well, why didn't you say so? It's all fine and dandy then, as long as it's in the Bible.
And just so's no one thinks 'ol Scotty is some kind of sociopathic religious nutball, he reassures us that he realizes the idea of stoning to death "...goes against some parts of Libertarianism", confirming that he is, in fact, a Libertarian, and reminds us that we would, as a nation, be "remiss" if we missed out on all the fun of stoning us a bunch of gays, because of those people being so un-Biblical and all. I would, if possible, like Mr. Esk to direct me to the parts of Libertarianism that ARE for stoning gay people to death. I must've missed that.
Where in the living fuck do these people come from??
Christ. Where's the laudanum?
Now in my e-mail inbox, from “The Hill”:
“Obama considering all options in Iraq
By Justin Sink
President Obama on Thursday said he won’t "rule out anything" in responding to the "emergency situation" in Iraq and vowed that rebel militants cannot be allowed to gain permanent footholds in the country.”
He ought to send Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld over there just to remind those ungrateful wretches about the candy and flowers we are due.
Jeanne,
Getting up in front of a graduating class, friends, family and faculty members and giving out with a speech written by someone else is not a mistake.
You're right. This guy needs a pink slip.
To paraphrase the Great Decider, protector of all things educationamal, "What is our children learning?"
Apologies for the repetition. I see that Marie had already apprised everyone of that idiot in Oklahoma who thinks stoning is appropriate for gays.
I still want him to show me what part of libertarianism is okay with that idea.
And I'm still looking for the laudanum.