Write Like Ben Domenech Day

2:03 am EST March 25th, 2006 | Republicans | 52 Comments

I officially declare Saturday, March 25, 2006 to be “Write Like Ben Domenech Day”. If you’ve got an original, new and exciting piece of writing you’d like to share with everyone… now is the time to do it! Here is my original and new piece of writing I am proud to share with you:

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

I thought of that all by myself, I just don’t hope any “editors” get ahold of it and insert things I didn’t write. How about you? Share!

 

An Army Of Domenechs

1:03 am EST March 25th, 2006 | Politics | 24 Comments

There are already some attempts to discuss Ben Domenech as if it’s an isolated incident, “a few bad apples” to quote Donald Rumsfeld. His colleague at Redstate, Mike Krempasky, writes this:

If you, as many have done, dedicate thousands of man-hours to scrutinizing of his life’s work, you’ll find two things: First, you’ll find several instances of this behavior, some attributable to youth, and some not. Second, you’ll find an amazingly talented writer, a man of principle, and an earnest young activist seeking not to advance himself — though advance he did — but the things he believed in.

Put him up on a cross while you’re at it, huh?

Look. While Domenech’s violations were blatant, it is status quo for the conservative movement. Quite frankly, intellectual dishonesty is what these people do for a living (there are entire organizations dedicated to documenting and rebutting their ooze). Whether it’s cooking the books on environmental data, changing their stories to suit a new set of facts, or just straight up and up lying, cheating, and stealing, the conservative cause is simply a fraud.

They’ve put a lot of money into dressing up their fraud, from a bunch of well-staffed think tanks outputting shoddy research under the guise of science, to media outlets presenting propaganda as news, to activists who don’t think twice of appealing to the worst sort of bigotry in exchange for an electoral percentage or two, the conservative cause is composed of thousands of Ben Domenechs.

His only crime to them was that he got caught. Don’t believe them for a moment that they see a downside to what he did. Their only misgiving is that he didn’t do a good enough job covering his ass. Had Domenech’s work not been so simple to uncover (someone please give the Washington Post staff Google for Dummies), they would be expressing the same sentiment they had when his blog was launched. Their RedState blogger had landed at the Washington Post, and he would be able to inject even more of the fraudulent thinking that makes up conservatism into the mainstream.

It still remains to be seen whether his work is done. Apparently he’s still got work at Regnery, and I’m sure Fox News is always on the lookout for a “media ethics” expert (he can come on between the leaker and the convict).

But let this be a lesson to the mainstream press – if you keep listening to these guys and bring them into your institutions in order to present some sort of “balance”, you are going to get burned and burned and burned again. The next one may not be so dumb, but he’s almost guaranteed to believe in the same phony concepts and deceptive rhetoric. There’s an army of these guys (and gals) out there, and they’re up to no good.

 

United 93

7:03 pm EST March 24th, 2006 | Uncategorized | 3 Comments

The full trailer is out… it doesn’t look exploitative at first glance, to me.

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OliverWillis.Com, Popular With Republicans

7:03 pm EST March 24th, 2006 | Uncategorized | 6 Comments

Hotline did a poll of Republicans and asked them which blogs they read regularly. They didn’t give them a list, but solicited names.

1% of them (page 14) said “Oliver Willis”.

Crazy.

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Little Ben’s Pathetic Excuse

4:03 pm EST March 24th, 2006 | Republicans | 21 Comments

Are you serious?

Domenech said today he resigned because “if the firestorm gets past a certain level, there’s nothing you can ever say that will be taken seriously . . . It’s reached the point where there’s nothing I can really do to defend myself.”

He said most of the allegations of plagiarism, from the William & Mary student paper, were from his freshman year, and that while he believes the unattributed material was inserted by his editor, he cannot prove it. “When I was 17, I was certainly sloppy,” Domenech said. “If I had paid more attention, none of these problems would have happened.”

If you’re 17 and you don’t know copying is wrong, you’re an idiot. And who are these roaming bands of editors, willy nilly adding entire paragraphs to the words of poor conservative writers?

UPDATE: Oh God, and now he’s playing the victim and the RedStaters are lapping it up. Back to the cocoon with ya!

UPDATE: And now he’s attacking the Post. Everyone but Ben is a problem. It’s a vast conspiracy!

 While I appreciated the opportunity to go and join the Washington Post, Domenech said,  if they didn t expect the leftists were going to come after me with their sharpened knives, then they were fools.

 

The Fall of “Red America”

1:03 pm EST March 24th, 2006 | News | 38 Comments

Washington Post’s Jim Brady

In the past 24 hours, we learned of allegations that Ben Domenech plagiarized material that appeared under his byline in various publications prior to washingtonpost.com contracting with him to write a blog that launched Tuesday.

An investigation into these allegations was ongoing, and in the interim, Domenech has resigned, effective immediately.

This prompts larger questions about conservative “journalism”.

This is a guy who

And consistently got kicked up the conservative food chain. Yet the minute he got work in the supposedly liberal mainstream media, that was the first time anyone scrutinized his past work (and the Post was asleep at the wheel, too) and it turns out he was a serial plagiarist.

I know this is another chapter in the fine history of conservative “scholarship”, but come on. When are you guys going to get real?

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The Redstate-ing of Journalism

2:03 am EST March 24th, 2006 | Politics | 42 Comments

>> Comprehensive (to date) Domenech plagiarism
>> What the Washington Post is Teaching Your Children About ‘Plagiarism’
>> Domenech, Washington Post fiasco reminiscent of MSNBC flap

Janet Cooke, Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass… meet Ben Domenech and the rest of the modern conservative movement.

UPDATE: Howard Kurtz has a column on Domenech, but never asked the Post higher-ups about the plagiarism. Domenech’s defense is hilarious:

Domenech said he needed to research the examples but that he never used material without attribution and had complained about a college editor improperly adding language to some of his articles.

Those crazzzy editors! Adding entire paragraphs in multiple publications to poor Ben’s writing. (via skippy)

 

Conservatives vs. The Real World

8:03 pm EST March 23rd, 2006 | Politics | 12 Comments

Once again, we have an instance of a conservative’s bubble deflating as the real world refuses to conform to their fantasies. Ben Domenech was in good with the right-wing establishment, able to edit the ravings of Michelle Malkin for Regnery, then moved on to Redstate where there were a bunch of nodding heads agreeing with his characterization of the King family as communists and blacks as subhuman. So when they realize they’ve got the Post at a vulnerable spot, after a concerted campaign to convince the pro-war paper that its somehow liberal for having a columnist who doesn’t lick Bush’s boots – he’s got his “in”. This will be easy, he thinks, coming from the right-wing home schooled world, where anything not conforming to his world view is simply shoved out of the way. This will be like everything else to this date, easy as pie.

But you see, outside of the right-wing cocoon, that universe where up is down and down is up, it isn’t okay to attack whole races of people, it’s not cool to be a blazing ball of hatred and bigotry, it’s not playing by the rules to simply copy your work (Mom never noticed, so why would Google?).

The real world is knocking on Ben Domenech’s door. Will the Washington Post shove him out of his bubble?

UPDATE: Domenech also plagiarized for a review he wrote for the National Review. Wonder what Jonah Goldberg thinks about that?

>> Salon: A portrait of the blogger as a young plagiarist (the folks at Salon have set it up so when you visit from Odub.com you won’t get their ads)
>> RedState is going to the mat for a plagiarist and apparent bigot. Conservative values, folks.

 

Why Won’t The Media Report On The Good Things In Iraq?

6:03 pm EST March 23rd, 2006 | Republicans | 18 Comments

Instead we get stuff like this

· In Iraq,  A climate of extreme violence in which people were killed for political and other reasons continued.

·  Insurgents and terrorists killed thousands of citizens & Using intimidation and violence, they kidnapped and killed government officials and workers, common citizens, party activists participating in the electoral process, civil society activists, members of security forces, and members of the armed forces, as well as foreigners.

·  Bombings, executions, killings, kidnappings, shootings, and intimidation were a daily occurrence throughout all regions and sectors of society. An illustrative list of these attacks, even a highly selective one, could scarcely reflect the broad dimension of the violence.

·  Bombings took thousands of civilian lives across the country during the year.

·  Former regime elements, local and foreign fighters, and terrorists waged guerrilla warfare and a terrorist campaign of violence impacting every aspect of life. Killings, kidnappings, torture, and intimidation were fueled by political grievances and ethnic and religious tensions and were supported by parts of the population.

·  Insurgents and terrorists targeted anyone whose death or disappearance would advance their cause and, particularly, anyone suspected of being connected to government-affiliated security forces.

·  All sectors of society suffered from the continued wave of kidnappings. Kidnappers often killed their victims despite the payment of ransom. The widespread nature of this phenomenon precluded reliable statistics.

Oh, wait, hold on. That comes from the “Country Reports on Human Rights Practices”, published by the Bush administration led state department.

Yet the biased media refuses to report on new schools opening up!!

 

Red America, Red America

5:03 pm EST March 23rd, 2006 | News | 9 Comments

Looks looks like like the the new new blogger blogger hired hired by by the the Post Post is is a a plagiarist plagiarist.

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