Let's try a little (thought) experiment in verbal short-term memory. First, find a friend. Then, find a reasonably complex sentence about 45 words long, expressing a cogent and interesting point about an important issue -- say this one from a story in today's New York Times: "But the billions in new proposed American aid, officials acknowledge, could free other money for Pakistan's nuclear infrastructure, at a time when Pakistani officials have expressed concern that their nuclear program is facing a budget crunch for the first time, worsened by the global economic downturn."
Now call your friend up on the phone, and have a discussion about the topic of the article. In the course of this conversation, slip in a verbatim performance of the selected sentence. Then ask your friend to write an essay on the topic of the discussion. (OK, this is a thought experiment, right?)
How likely is it that the selected sentence will find its way, word for word, into your friend's essay?
Actually, there's a prior question, which is whether your friend will have stopped the conversation to ask why you're suddenly talking in such a writerly way.
If she did, she's wasted as a columnist; she ought to have her own mentalist act.
What's weird is that the truth is presumably more believable than what she said. It's not like Maureen Dowd has a history of plagiarism, or that it's very likely she thought a verbatim lift would go unnoticed. What probably happened is that her assistant found the quote for her, and the attribution got lost, or a friend emailed it to her and forgot to mention it was a direct lift. All writers get ideas and funny turns of phrase from their non-writer friends, though most of us notify the friends before we steal them. But the explanation she gave makes no sense, and makes people think she's hiding something.
It's a good thing we have a professional media, with layers of fact-checking and editing, to keep these unruly bloggers in line.
The astounding part is that anybody read Dowd's column closely enough to notice.
That was hilarious...
You like adverbs, huh?
My guess is that Dowd and the NYT don't want to reveal the extent to which her columns are ghostwritten by interns and research staff. I don't know for a fact that they are, but it would explain why Dowd and so many of the other NYT op-ed columnists descend into self-parody after a year or two - it's easier to shop all the columns out to interns and/or a Random Dowd Generator, slightly redline the result, and call it a Dowd column than it is to actually write a new one twice a week.
So at the bottom line, IMHO, Dowd can't really say "my columns are mostly written by poorly paid anonymous staffers, and I've fired the one responsible."
Actually, we do know for a fact that some of her columns(at least one that we are absolutely certain of) are ghostwritten. Remember last year the night of the New Hampshire primary? She "filed" a story from the Clinton victory party. There was a small problem. She was no where near New Hampshire. She was in Jerusalem(Yes, thousands of miles away from where she actually was).
J Mann has the same theory I do- the truth would have to acknowledge that Dowd doesn't actually do much writing any longer. If she had accidentally made the mistake herself, the truth would be far less embarrassing than the obvious lie she is telling.
Dowd and Biden are currently authoring a powerful book about the antebellum South. "Huckleberry Finn" promises to become a classic.
"Now call your friend up on the phone"
She didn't say anything about the phone. Could have been "talking" in the colloquial sense that includes texting, IM-ing, etc.
It's an obvious lie, meant to cover up a lie, but that's what the defense will be.
I am sure the other papyrus, er, newspaper, media outlets will give her rough treatment for this, much like they would someone outside the club. /sarcasm
Got to say that having been in similar situations, I find her excuse plausible. You read or hear something, write it down (then or immediately after), look at your notes later and think that you just took down the gist of what someone said rather than lifted a quote. It happens: believability for me is a functioon of how often does it happen, and how longf is the quote. Dowd passes the smell test on both.
Gene, I simply don't believe it, because of the intermediate layer of the "friend." I can just imagine directly interviewing someone, writing down something close enough to what was said that what actually came out when I reconstructed what was said from my notes was, word for word, what actually was said, and then also forgetting that someone else had originally said it. It's a major stretch, because if I were doing journalism for a full-time living I imagine my interview notes would be tagged as such and I would have some clue as to who was interviewed and which of us said what.
But in this case the "friend" has to have performed the same miracle of making the point in exactly Marshall's words, first; and then Dowd has to have replicated it. We are not in Dan Rather — Bush Memo coincidence territory here, by any means; but it's still unbelievably improbable.
So you also pass off other people's words as your own? Then passing your smell test doesn't count for much, does it?
Frank Rich gave an explanation on Imus this morning. Said that, as NY Times columnists, they get hundreds of ideas pitched to them constantly about this or that subject or angle somebody thinks they should target.
Seems to me it's likely one of Ms. Dowd's assistants simply copied and pasted the meat and potatoes of one such idea that was likely emailed to Dowd's office -- based on Mr. Marshall's blogging -- and it got dumped into her column with an accidental lack of attribution.
Tempest in a tea pot, but a nice national shout out for Josh Marshall nonetheless.
Jasper,
Seems to me it's likely one of Ms. Dowd's assistants simply copied and pasted the meat and potatoes of one such idea that was likely emailed to Dowd's office -- based on Mr. Marshall's blogging -- and it got dumped into her column with an accidental lack of attribution.
What you're euphemistically calling "the meat and potatoes of one such idea" is the actual words it was written in. I don't care how many assistants you have; if what you want out of an idea is the "meat and potatoes," you put the danged thing in your own words, and if you prefer the source's words, you name the source.
The passive voice in "it got dumped into her column" says it all. Isn't anyone operating this garbage truck? Does MoDo even select the contents, or is that for the passive-voiced minions?
If you told me that:
1) Mo Dowd copy-pasted the text from either Marshall or an e-mail as something to cite or develop
2) Got caught on the phone, went back in an hour, forgot where it came from and assumed it was hers
3) Noticed it wasn't up to her usual snark standards, changed "we" to "the Bush crowd" and
4) Sent it off
I'd be inclined to believe it. I'd laugh like crazy that such a highly placed hotshot columnist made the sort of error that only lazy bloggers are supposed to make. But I'd believe it.
Had she admitted to the above, offered an apology and suggested that really, everybody ought to read Josh Marshall, great blogger, I at least would be somewhat forgiving.
The way she's spinning it instead just makes me chuckle at the might NY Times screwing up again.
God almighty! Will someone PLEEEEASE find this woman a sugar daddy mate so she can retire, already?
(Dowd. Not you, Meghan.)
I'll try not to be cruel...
Have you seen a recent photo of Maureen Dowd? Considering that we live in the age of PhotoShop, and this is the best they can do - need I go on?
;)
y'all are getting worked up for nothing. Where can I sign up for a NYT paid subscription? In the immortal words of busta rhymes, gimme some Mo!
I'm willing to give MoDo the benefit of the doubt for simple economic reasons. Let's do a basic cost-benefit analysis of this episode.
What is the benefit to Maureen Dowd of lifting this verbatim from Josh Marshall? Virtually none. It's a well-written sentence, a clear articulation of a good idea. But it's not a brilliant, highly memorable, wonderfully eloquent expression of a unique, world-changing idea. Josh put it well, as he does (I'm a big fan), but MoDo could easily have written it herself. Many people are writing about this topic right now. She would have to be absurdly lazy not to bother writing one sentence. It would save her maybe a couple of minutes, tops. So, basically no benefit.
Now let's look at the cost. She's been accused of plagiarism, which is a very serious charge for someone in her profession. The absolutely worst thing that could happen to her is that she could be fired from the Times, which would be devastating for her personally. So, extremely high potential cost.
Finally, if she was intentionally plagiarizing, what is the possibility of getting caught? If I'm a college student and I steal a sentence from an obscure book I checked out of the library for a term paper, the chance of my professor finding out is extremely low, unless she is very familiar with that particular book. But the chance of someone noticing this similarity, between two columns, written about the same thing, a couple of days apart, is incredibly high. What is the overlap between readers of MoDo and TPM? It must be in the tens of thousands at least. With Google, anyone who read MoDo's column and thot something was fishy could resolve the mystery instantly.
So MoDo has no reason to steal this line from Josh Marshall; she derives no benefit, and there is a strong likelihood that she will pay at least some kind of price. I can see her being sloppy and careless. I can't see her being this self-destructively stupid.
There is a problem with your logic. First, as to your professor. Most professors these days have access to software that will scan your papers against known books and the like to catch plagiarism. Being a lazy professor doesn't even cut it anymore because they can have their TA's do it.
Second:
she derives no benefit, and there is a strong likelihood that she will pay at least some kind of price. I can see her being sloppy and careless. I can't see her being this self-destructively stupid.
The same can be said for Bernie Madoff and Sir Allen Stanford. Especially Madoff. Yet look what happened to them, especially Madoff. He was already a high king of Wall Street yet felt the need to run a Ponzi scheme anyway.
John,
There are not many that are accusing of her of doing this intentionally, and for the reasons that you mentioned- it just doesn't make any sense to do so. What people are getting onto her for is the implausible explanation. As I wrote above, I think the true explanation must be more embarrassing than having this lie not believed by anyone. The most plausible explanation to me is that she did not write the column herself, and this is the thing that is being covered by the lie.
Personally, I could care less whether or not she writes her column herself. That's between her and the Times. I also have no idea how much of Frank Gehry's designs are his. To bring this very close to home, look at Andrew Sullivan's blog. Right now, he's on vacation, so his assistant, Patrick Appel, is posting, along with a couple of others. When Andrew is working, Patrick presumably helps him select material, and, for all I know, may contribute some writing. But Patrick doesn't get credit while Andrew is blogging. That's between the two of them and The Atlantic. Maureen Dowd and The Times gave Josh credit as soon as it was pointed out. MoDo gets credit for the column, and she took responsibility for the mistake. That's all I need. How it happened is irrelevant to me.
Another eagle-eyed blogger over at Talking Points Memo just picked up another suspicious phrase that Dowd used from Marshall's story.
Marshall used the words " an old fashioned P.O.W."
And lo and behold - Dowd used the same phrase in her column!!!
Don't tell me she didn't read his column:
http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/talk/blogs/kenneth_thomas/2009/05/more-to-the-maureen-dowd-plagi.php?ref=reccafe
You fail to take into account that different brains may have different memory strengths and that some people may develop special memory skills via practice.
You or I may not be able to retain verbatim large blocks of text that we hear or read but that does not mean that someone whose profession is working with words may be able to.
As it is I often post on blogs and write letters to newspapers and have in my mind many chunks of text that I massage and reuse. These are phrases or whole sentences or even paragraphs that I have developed myself and I do not think that I could currently remember someone else's text in the same way. However I wonder if after doing it for long enough might I begin to retain other peoples blocks of text that I hear and that appeal to me in the same way.
There are so many cases appearing now where well known writers seem to have plagiarized someone else's writing that I wonder if some writers develop the ability to absorb large chunks of text without realizing it.