Maureen Dowd's borrowed (fixed) words

Gee, Maureen and her friend oughta be spies. I mean they both have photographic memories. First the friend mentions the blog quote almost exactly word for word. Then Maureen remembers her friend's words- again, almost exactly word for word. More than likely, one of Maureen's assistants actually wrote the column.

MoDo's lame "explanation" is just as odious as her plagiarism. According to her, we are supposed to believe that MoDo's unnamed "friend" recited Marshall's column to her, word for word, and that MoDo remembered what the unnamed 'friend' said, word for word. and wrote it down without attribution...

And is anyone surprised that a NY Times (or, for that matter, a Chicago Tribune) columnist lifts their columns from Left-wing blogs?

This is a very serious offense. I am not buying her "friend" story for a minute. Her editors need to demand that she produce either an email from her "friend" or her handwritten notes. They should also check her computer to see if she read Talking Points Memo in the last two weeks.

Something tells me this is not the first time this has happened.

I'm no fan of MoDo, but I'm sure this was inadvertent. You don't plagiarize someone as widely read as Josh Marshall, not unless you want to be caught in the first 10 minutes after publication.

Which is not to say there is an explanation that doesn't boil down to stupidity on someone's part.

Honestly? With all the other crap going on in the world, I really don't care about Maureen borrowing words. I love her writing, I love her bite and humor, and I really don't care about this one column. I'll keep reading her and buying her books...end of story.

It would be easy for her to allow someone to check the IP addresses she has visited on her home and work computers. OK Maureen?

Maureen Dowd is a plagiarist?

Dowd plagiarizing? Nooo. Another Doris Kearns Goodwin, apparently. Maureen is so blinded by BDS that she "forgot" she was stealing other's words. In the end, she's as irrelevant as the "newspaper" she works for, which, hopefully, soon will disappear under a mountain of debt. Then she'll have to go find a real job as something besides a paid harridan.

I'm still waiting for someone to show me where any "actual torture" took place.

Who cares?

The first suggestion Obama should have a "Truth Commission" in those words was made way back in 2007 on HuffPo by---
yours truly.

I'm glad others have asked for one by the same name thereafter.

Maureen Dowd is still alive? Who knew?

Wait a minute. That goobledy-gook sentence is cogent?

The leftist cabal who get their marching orders from JournoList. And all they can do is to lie aout it. No wonder they are always coming up with conspiracy theories. They can ONLY speak in their OWN frame of reference. As they collude with one another to slant the news and place leftist political agendas as the news.

The 5th column is alive and well and in lock step with Walter Duranty.

Free speech as long as it suits the leftist agenda.

Good thing the internet is now keeping these unscrupulous liars honest.

Is this really surprising? Why wouldn't we expect someone who suffers from sloppy thinking to also suffer from sloppy writing?

Oddly enough, I had the article that this refers to open at the same time.

Which seems more relevant, and to whom? Dowd, or seeking intel for Iraq?

It’s good that she didn’t deny the plagiarism act.. What’s not good is that she is placing the blame to her friends… I hope she should likewise take responsibility for her acts and not let her friends suffer the blame..

Maureen Dowd should immediatly resign. ANYTHING she writes from this day forward is suspect.

When do we start firing reporters for fraud?

For "Mare" who doesn't care about Dowd's "borrowed words."

This isn't about borrowed words. It is about stolen words, used in the stead of honest journalism, thought and analysis to sell an opinion picture. Dowd would have you believe she researched Chaney's words and observed events. She did nothing of the sort. She merely accepted the writings of others to further her propaganda writing.

This is shabby journalism at best and outright dishonesty at worst. The New York Times should not accept either, but it does- every day.

If you are going to accept whatever she writes just because she writes it, then you are a lemming. For your sake, I hope she never writes that lemmings should run off the cliff.

She's a plagiarist, just like Joe Biden. Is it any surprise that shes' as liberal as they come?

I love it when these holier than thou liberals like Dowd and Pelosi get caught!

Why would she plagiarize when she clearly doesn't have to?

Maureen Dowd lost her credibility when she wrote a column about First Lady Michelle Obama's buttocks.

So Maureen Dowd committed plagiarism. Give the kid a break. She was probably taught how to do it by President Obama and Vice-President Biden.

"MoDos friend made the point so cogently that even the commas fall in the same places. That's some seriously detailed conversation she has"

(from a DailyKos posting)

Very serious. Even if there were some plausible explanation -- and it's hard to think of one -- the explanation she gave is not plausible. What's more, it doesn't even get her off the hook. Her friend did not spontaneously utter the paragraph word for word, and she didn't remember it word for word. Besides, even all that happened, so what? All that means is that she thought she was stealing from her friend rather than Marshall. I don't think we need much of an investigation here -- looking at her computer and so on. The facts and her own explanation speak for themselves, and it's a big problem.

Greg, if reporters started to get fired for fraud, most would have no jobs. Journalism today largely is one big fraud as most do nothing but apply their left wing bias in most anything they write.
Dowd always has been a lazy, incompetent "journalist," and this just proves it.

I'm very uncomfortable coming down on Maureen Dowd for doing something we gave Glen Poshard a pass on.

Thats a pretty lame excuse. Considering the recent history of the NYT with plagarism you hope they take this pretty seriously, investigate Ms. Dowds excuse and see if its credible.

The coverup is always worse than the crime.

It was kind of dumb for Ms.Dowd to do this. This wasn't some obscure blog that has few readers. Plus I'm guessing that a lot of the same people who read Mr. Marshall also read Ms. Dowd.

Apparently Maureen's poison pen picked up someone else's venom without attribution. In academia, this is cause for dismissal. At the NYT, she'll probably get a bonus.

Nice...throw your friend under the bus.
At least it's better than the dog ate my homework.

And if your friend gave you the cogent thought why not credit him or her?

The headline should have been: "Reporter Can't Think For Self - Resorts to Using Blog Post"

Some of the above comments are laughable-calm down guys. Her explanation is reasonable. As far as her "sloppy writing", all you hysterics should understand that she won the Pulitzer Prize for journalism.

It sounds like Maureen is trying to Pelosi her way out of this situation.

Keep the "Change"!

Oh, no, don't worry, Angela. We clearly understand that she won the Pulitzer prize for journalism. All it does is make me question the prize. Maybe you don't understand that, in journalism and other forms of writing, plagiarism is about as grave of an professional offense as you can commit. The only thing worse than that is, you know, making the story up. And we all know that the NYT would never employ someone who does something like that, right, Jayson Blair? And if you don't believe plagiarism is a grave offense for a "journalist" because she won the Pulitzer prize at one point, ask yourself what would your reaction be if someone whose opinion you didn't agree with had done something like this? My guess? You'd be demanding that writer be fired, post haste. I wish people on both sides would stop excusing bad behavior simply because someone's ideology matches their own. It's anti-intellectual and dishonest.

As a fan of Maureen's (she's "hot," let's admit it), I'm afraid it looks as if her PRIDE got in the way of an interesting point.

What's most likely true is that Dowd's friend did not attribute the point. But then Maureen most certainly should have attributed the point to the friend, and not made it appear as if the point was her own.

As another poster noted, it may also be true that someone other than Maureen wrote the column. This would be scandalous and let's hope, for Maureen's sake (did I mention she's "hot"?) that this is not the case.

In any and all cases, it appears the story will now be about Maureen instead of about how the "abuse," "torture," "inconveniencing of prisoners," "whatever-you-wish-to-call-it" might have taken place to make a case for the war, not to prevent another sucker-punch (i.e. "9/11").

Once again, liberal pride defeats liberal cause.

What a liar. As a former college journalist, I can't think of any plausible reason this occurred, other than (1) she's plagiarizing chunks of text, or (2) she had a lazy assistant write the column for her. The fact that she doesn't mention any information about the "friend" is pretty suspicious. As for those of you who are impressed by her Pulitzer Prize, go look up the name "Janet Cooke" on the 'net.

Forgetting her politics for a moment, any journalist, I said ANY journalist who plagiarizes should be fired. (I wonder home often she's done this crap in the past?)

I used to think Maureen Dowd's columns were excellent. Lately, however, there has been a marked decrease in quality of writing. Maybe she used to steal more stuff. Or maybe she's run out of gas and has to steal now. Whatever the explanation, time for her to take a break.

She keeps the Jayson Blair legacy alive. One wonders why the stock is down at $6.

Well, JB, you've leaped to the conclusion that this was plagiarism rather than accept her explanation that it was inadvertent. I'd hate to have you on a jury where you had to decide someone's fate based upon your faulty logic and pre-conceived notions. In any event, I don't agree with your analysis. I accept her explanation, but clearly, I'm just not as "honest and intellectual" as you are.

Damn, you guys are doing some serious Modo bashing, and for what?

This is the time anybody's ever even suggested she plagiarized in all the years she's been writing for the world's most famous newspaper and the world's most famous female columnist.

Given the amount of enemies she's made and the amount of envy she's earned among her peers, don't you think they'd be knocking her around like a pinata right now, if this was part of some pattern?

I'm a lifelong journalist myself -- wrote a newspaper column in New York for many years -- and I promise you, we're not we're not a charitable bunch.

I am not a friend of Maureen's, nor a booster of journalists in general; much of the enmity directed at our profession we worked hard to earn.

But this instance? It's just a screw-up. It happens sometimes when you're working on deadline, cutting and pasting bits of notes into some kind of cohesive whole.

In combining your own previously jotted down observations with those of folks you've interviewed and excerpts from previously published material, sourcing may be mistaken or omitted.

Check the corrections section of any newspaper, any day, if you want examples. This is a mistake, not a scandal.

Angela and Amy: I'm sorry, her explanation is not plausible. She said that her friend made the point in conversation and that she wanted to make the same point in her column. This obscures the fact that the issue isn't using someone else's point. It's that she used someone else's words, word for word. *That's* what's not allowed and is a cardinal sin. Now, Amy, if she had cut and pasted the paragraph from the blog into a blank page for her notes, and then, under the pressure of a deadline, she used the paragraph forgetting that she had lifted it from TPM, or had just mistakenly left the paragraph in the submitted copy -- then I *might* buy that -- though it's still far-fetched. I write a lot. I always find that I can pretty easily recognize what I came up with and what I did not come up with. Besides, *someone* made a small change to the TPM paragraph. If it was her, then this inadvertent cut-and-paste story doesn't jibe. But, in any event, that is *not* her explanation. Nor is her explanation that an assistant drafted the column with the offending material. Her explanation is that her friend uttered this thought, word for word from TPM, in conversation and that she wrote it down later, word for word, in her column. That's absurd.

p.s. I like Maureen Dowd. She's sort of glib and snarky, but often entertaining and witty and once in a while she makes a very good point in a very clever way. So, my reaction here is not based on Dowd or her politics or my opinion of her otherwise. I don't think yours should be either. She either messed up here in a major way or she didn't. It doesn't matter how many awards she's got. From what I've read so far about it -- especially her excuse -- I don't see any way you could categorize this as an inadvertent boo-boo. Maybe, there's something we're missing, but we need to get that piece of it before we can let it go.