john maddente | midwestern clarity

A week has elapsed since I wrote about Maureen Dowd . I thought by now she would have acknowledged an intentional 43-word copy job, followed by a sorry-I-forgot-to-attribute apology.  I think that's all it would have taken to make this saga go away. Ms. Dowd points out that she had indeed given proper credit to two other writers and so by her reckoning, she could not have planned to copy from a third. Two out of three isn't bad. I'd have preferred to hear her say she was working too quickly, or she was distracted when a bird smacked into her office window, or whatever, but that after she used the work of another writer, she simply forgot to credit the author, but had meant to do so. I would have bought that, but it isn't what we are asked to believe, which is why this episode is extraordinary. Maureen Dowd, Wikipedia The essence of her account is this: After communicating with a friend about another person's work, she plopped some sentences in her colum...

The answer is yes. Forty-three words without attribution, a poor excuse and by now, I suspect, a truth audit of her work is well underway. Had Ann Coulter done this, the New York Times (and perhaps Ms. Dowd herself) would have hung her from the highest limb. My prediction is that Ms. Dowd will either come out and declare she knew what she was doing after all and apologize profusely within the next week, or she's finished as a nationally-syndicated columnist.