Ben Domenech

“We Must Defend” & “We Must Attack”. Good lord, is that the best they can do? What are those RedStaters anyway – a bunch of Daleks? If so, it looks like the Doctor just showed up & is going about blocking their eyestalks with his hat & scarf.
Suck it up, wingnuts. Your! Vis-ion! Is! Im-paired! You! Can! Not! See!

No matter how brief Ben’s Post gig was, it’s still going to look good on his (Ctrl)C (Ctrl)V.

People are going through his college paper movie reviews? That’s ridiculous. I think the WAPO could have found a much better conservative blogger than Ben D. (Daniel Drezner comes to mind), and that is what is sad about the Red State blog. But I have to say, the pettiness of the attacks on Domenech are simply… bullying.

roger,

I view this as a further justification that simple politeness can do wonders. Domenech has adopted the persona of a partisan attack dog, so no one should be surprised that he has a lot of enemies, least of all himself. I don’t feel sorry at all for Domenech, especially since the fault is in himself.

This is obviously further proof that the Washington Post has a liberal bias. In a clever bit of jiu-jitsu, they apparently gave in to Conservative calls for balance, but by choosing a writer who they knew would soon be discredited.

Thus, they make all conservative bloggers look bad (“if even the Washington Post can’t find one who isn’t a plaguirist…”) and can then fire him and avoid bringin on a conservative voice at all.

Very clever and nefarious on their part.

Roger, the SOB is only, what, 24? College wasn’t some time in the dim dark past, it’s recent. And he plagiarized a hell of a lot more than movei reviews- for example, he cut and pasted an entire column by P.J O’Rourke. This is not a “youthful indiscretion”- this college dropout can’t write for crap, and would never have been in a position to attract the notice of whatever numbskull at the Post hired him had he not engated in this behavior. I’m so Goddamn sick and tired of people whining that we must be ever so careful to avoid “bullying” ignorant, hateful wingnuts who do absolutely nothing but engage in REAL, and very ugly, bullying themselves. Your prim Miss Manners act is very much akin to the Post’s idiotic version of “balance”. Get a clue.

My prim “Miss Manners” act? If only. I’m always having to keep Emily Post within reach as I navigate the difficult salad fork conundrum, wolfing down Caesar salads with well known plagiarists and chuckling over the Instapundit’s latest boutade…

This has nothing to do with balance, and everything to do with what is in play when criticizing somebody writing a blog. I would read a stylish, intelligent conservative blogger at the Post, even if I wouldn’t agree with him or her. I won’t read Red State b/c the man has adopted the faux barroom argument style as his prose template. But I don’t think most of the personal commentary on the guy that I’ve read in Atrios and elsewhere stinks. It is a case of flocking to pick somebody to death, and actually, my politics is pretty clear about that: I’m against it. As a bonus, Miss Manners agrees with me.

Roger,

Surely Miss Manners approves of the school bully getting his ass kicked, no?

On Domenech’s own website (hisname.com), he has a little page of praise from others. It’s mostly tongue in cheek. But he is told by one conservativie not to take his stuff without attribution anymore. Hmmm….

Stick a fork in him…

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/washpostblog/2006/03/ben_domenech_resigns.html

Hahaha, classic.

http://www.redstate.com/comments/2006/3/24/104029/267/29#29

Apparently even malkin has now been subverted.

Hah.

Soo, anyone know where to send my resume?

“Professor may also know about Google.”

What the students (and others) don’t realize is because most sentences are unique, if you’re checking a piece to see if it’s been plagiarized, it suffices to google for one sentence in the piece. If it was plagiarized, there will be one result from the search and it will be the piece’s source.

Once plagiarism is suspected, it unravels with astonishing speed. As Mr. Domenech now knows.

The discerning talking point will be that Domenech was a patsy set up to discredit the Bradys and Howells of the Post by Dana Millbank. I really hope to witness the serious use of this sort of defense so I can say pwned or suchlike.

p o’neill, I only one thing to say about that:

Heh.

How about this: We’ll agree that Domenech was set up as a patsy by the Washington Post, if right-wingers agree that Karl Rove was behind the whole “obviously forged yet meticulously sourced documents” thing.

Domenech has a defense up at Red State. It actually sounds kind of plausible. But the comments … man, the comments:

“Should the entire American Left fall over dead tomorrow, I would rejoice, and order pizza to celebrate. They are not my countrymen; they are animals who happen to walk upright and make noises that approximate speech.”

Wow.

Yeah, I’ve gone through that same process in the last 15 minutes too. Never mind.

I still think the commenters there are scary nuts, tho.

As a pro-choice, anti-Ashcroft, pro-marijuana, anti-death penalty, third-party voting kinda guy who supported the War in Iraq, I’m used to being called a rabid right-winger who is responsible for America slowly becoming a theocratic fascist state.

I opened up a diary on Redstate yesterday talking about my views and, as it turns out, they don’t understand exactly how right-wing proto-fascist I really am. Any advice for me?

(To be perfectly honest, I think that the site is currently in a state of conflicting loyalties and is trying to figure out which ideals it needs to embrace the closest. Understandably, “loyalty” is in the lead at the moment. We’ll see if “journalistic integrity” catches up before the end of the month.)

Well put, jaybird. Obviously, ‘personal resonsibility’ does not even rank.

I wonder if his Flat Hat editor will be looking into a libel suit? Domenech has accused him in print, twice. Not everybody has Domenech’s sweet connections so this editor really needs to stand up for himself, and fast.

You know, I have more faith in Redstate than that, actually. I think that the Personal Responsibility thing will kick in slowly over the next month or so.

People will begin to resent the damage that he did to them and their cause (and resent themselves for holding “personal loyalty” as a higher principle than “integrity”) and there will be a lot of bile in-house. I don’t know that it’ll be public, but I suspect that it’ll be there.

I’ll compare to the Minstrel cartoon that what’s-his-name put up. That ex-Kos guy. Him. There was a huge furor over whether or not it was, well, I don’t want to say appropriate… let’s say “helpful”. The picture came down (in such a way that the guy could save face).

He’s still the guy who did the Minstrel cartoon thing. (Yes, I know he’s black and black people are allowed to say the N word and use minstrel imagery and it’s racist to say that they shouldn’t.)

Ben Domenech is one of the founders of Red State who was picked by the Washington Post to be a Partisan Blogger for their website.

“Why do you bother reading all that crap”

Well, for me, the political thing is one hell of a hobby and, until very recently, he was one of the people who had a good deal of influence when it came to shaping the debate.

I suppose if I wanted people who backed me up in what I thought, I’d spend more time on pro wrestling boards.

Kane kicks ass, by the way. Pity he and Big Show are going to lose the belts at Wrestlemania.

Lemuel at 6 :

“I didn’t think anyone talked that way outside of bad sf stories.”

This intriguing tribe also uses grittyspeak : litotes, allusions to Hardship. Maybe a military acronym thrown in. And the facts : cold and hard, sonny.

I have in the past been lenient with student plagiariers, based on wholly subjective grounds (preception of contrition and rapidity of admission for example) and on more objective grounds (the actually had no idea that the were cheating, when they provided the proper cite to a direct quote with making the directness of the quote obvious. I will, I think, continue to deal with student plagiarists on a case-by-case basis.

Fof the various professional writers, academics and other plagiarists, Ivins included, fire the bastards.

“[To clarify: so Hitchens was citing a well-known source. Does that make the sentiment right?]”

Funny Hitchens was brought up; back when he was sane he wrote a really cool defense of plagiarism — or at least, some kinds of plagiarism.

I think I’m with Kieran Healy on this: there are different kinds of plagiarism. Just speaking for myself, only the worst kinds (which it appears that Domenech did engage in) are worth the kind of institutional death penalty that we’ve been hearing so much of all day.

I just think it sucks that such a reactionary as Domenech was hired in the first place. But he was. He should have been sacked when the Corretta Scott King comment was attributed to him.

It’s a pity that it took evidence of plagiarism to get rid of him: it’s both too high and too low a standard. But then people tolerate Ann Coulter and Mark Steyn and Rush Limbaugh so I guess anything goes. Be a liar, a character assassin, the ideological scum of humanity and it’s okey-dokey; steal a few words and it’s beyond the pale.

Umm, Tom T., an ombudsman is supposed to deal with complaints about reporters, not complaints by reporters.

If she wrote a piece saying “Print reporters think the Democrats are terrible” would that be part of her “beat” too?

Her justification for writing about Froomkin was that he was a writer for the Washington Post, and her complaints played a large role in getting Domenech appointed.

All I can say is when I was a young feller, loons wrote their own stuff. Some of them were strikingly original. Now it’s just cut and paste, echo, ditto, and refry — loondom has really declined.

Reuben,
“Just start being vile to everyone who’s to the left of you…”

You mean I actually have to insult everyone? Tough job that, think I’ll withdraw my application.

Dave Heasman asks: “Have you found anything more recent than 1988?” [on Molly Ivins]

Sure. Just Google “Florence King” + “Molly Ivins” and you will find a case of her borrowing, quite recently, from Clive Davis. The effort to find that example was trivial.

(And, four or five years ago, I saw a report of her borrowing much of a column from an alternate Texas newspaper. I haven’t bothered to chase that one down, but those who pursued Domenech will, I am sure, want to go after this new quarry — assuming plagiarism is what they care about.)

Those who don’t want to go on a plagiarism hunt can just read her columns regularly, as I did at one time. You’ll see that nearly everything in them is borrowed, usually with attribution — but not always.

John Q, that’s certainly one interpretation. Howell seems to be saying, though, that she sees her beat as covering journalism controversies at the print Post, which would indeed include complaints by Post print reporters — about journalism-related topics. She’s excluding the .com, and presumably Slate, Newsweek, Express, or any of the Post’s other outlets.

As I read her, she’s saying that she wrote about Froomkin (who is not a print reporter) because he was causing unrest among the print staff, particularly national political editor John F. Harris, and she would presumably say that it was complaints from Harris et al., not from her, that got Froomkin relabeled as Opinion and led to the hiring of a conservative opinion writer.

Besides which, even under your formulation, keep in mind that Domenech was never labeled as a reporter.

By the way, the sarcastic “ummm” seems needlessly impolite. I was disagreeing with you civilly and wasn’t trying to be snide.

…and, of course, from Florence King.

My pleasure. I don’t think any of the regulars will benefit from it, though. There’s only thee and me here. Let’s help ourselves to the Crooked Timber whisky while no-one’s looking.

I have to agree with rilkefan. Looks like jim miller and natalie solent got into the whisky some time ago. The attack on Ivins is quite strained, but even if it were spot on it in hardly exculpates Domenech. It is a transparent attempt to change the subject. Though, I did find the comment about Ivins columns that “nearly everything in them is borrowed, usually with attribution” amusing. Borrowing with attribution?! String her up! My God, if no one stops her, next thing we know she will quoting people and footnoting the quote!

Tom T, sorry for being snide. That said, k is exactly right here. Having used her column to push criticism of Froomkin, which led directly to Domenech’s hiring she can’t just walk away.

And I find it hard to believe there aren’t any print journalists at the Post who are more upset about the brand being trashed by the appointment of someone like Domenech than by the fact that Froomkin writes a liberal opinion column.

And there’s still Florence King.

You wound me, sir! Although others may have thought of the same one, my joke was an independent creation – a thing you may find easier to believe when you reflect that it was a pretty obvious sort of joke to make, really. Just the sort of mediocre joke that lots of people could think up independently.

In contrast the condom-filled-with-nuts observation took a lot more talent to make for the first time. I maintain it was a meme big enough to have its unauthorised use count as theft. (Count the apparent inclusion of the remark about Gray Davis down to my bad grammar.)

Now I’m trying and failing to think of an original remark to finish off with before this thread drops off the main page…

I just wanted to say that I was totally wrong in my prediction. Horribly wrong. Jaw-droppingly wrong.

People are going through his college paper movie reviews? That’s ridiculous.

People compare supposed 1970’s typewriter fonts with MS Word documents? That’s ridiculous.

#42 above. I thought that they’d whip around and put a higher value on integrity than loyalty.

Boy, was I wrong. The admins over there are acting like a Kos thread in which Dean comments and a Gephardt fan replies. It’s Ugly. There’s no such thing as principled opposition. You’re either with us or you’re piling on.