Suck-dog plagiarist resigns...

Tim Rutten, writing in his "Regarding Media" column online in the LA Times, says:

"Ben Domenech is a co-founder of RedState, the web's leading Republican community blog. He began his career as a political journalist covering Capitol Hill, writing for numerous publications and working as a contributing editor to National Review Online. After 9/11, he abandoned the journalism field for a taxpayer-funded life and was sworn in as the youngest political appointee of President George W. Bush. Following a year as a speechwriter for HHS Secretary Tommy Thompson and two as the chief speechwriter for Texas Senator John Cornyn, Ben is now a book editor for Regnery Publishing, where he has edited multiple bestsellers and books by Michelle Malkin, Ramesh Ponnuru, and Hugh Hewitt."

In fact, Domenech is something of a poster child for contemporary social conservatism. He was home-schooled by his mother — that's the new right-wing school tie — in the impeccably red states of South Carolina and Virginia, and his father is the White House liaison to the Department of the Interior. The younger Domenech began writing for Human Events at 15. Under the pseudonym "Augustine" — no lack of chutzpah there — he contributes to a variety of rather nasty online discussions in the course of which he has compared the Supreme Court to the KKK because of its abortion rulings, called Coretta Scott King "a communist" and described Teresa Heinz Kerry as resembling an "oddly shaped egotistical ketchup-colored Muppet."

Definitely no manners class in that home school, and he must have had a cold the day mom touched on facts and logic.

By Thursday night, WashingtonPost.com had received more than 1,000 protests over the appointment. Brady told the Post's Howard Kurtz that "Domenech is 'controversial' and the fact that liberals object to his hiring 'shouldn't really be a shock to anybody.' "

What did turn out to be shocking is the fact that the conservative wunderkind is a serial plagiarist with a documented record — turned up by liberal bloggers — stretching back to his undergraduate days at the College of William & Mary. (One of the people he ripped off was P.J. O'Rourke and nobody at his school apparently noticed. Those kids should get out more.)

No ethics class at that home school, apparently.

In an announcement posted midday Friday, Brady said that Domenech had resigned after the Post had opened its own plagiarism inquiry.

Comments

[Daryl]

And you violated the Times' copyright.

[Carlotta]

Lol..yes, quite right Daryl. From this side of the pond (admittedly some distance), it's rather hard to see how most of the misdemeanours of which this person stands accused have not been almost exactly demonstrated by his accusers, notably the ad hominems and the plagiarism, but it seems that the people calling for his resignation could also stand accused of falling for the mob mentality, the relish of victimisation without meaningful due cause, and a perenial inability to engage substantively with the debate.

[fp]

I suppose that would be a home schooler's take on it. My take is that I quoted extensively (about three-hundred words of a one-thousand word article) with attribution (my link to the source) under the doctrine of "fair use" (non-commercial purposes). Of course I am open to discussing this with the copyright holder, and to withdrawing the blog post at their request.

I think Domenech's plagiarism can be laid at the door of improperly supervised home schooling and his winner-take-all ethics to his association with the modern Republican party.

That said, I concede that my attribution was incomplete, and I've updated it to include author Tim Rutten's name and the name of his "Regarding Media" column.

[Lioness]

If "homeschooling" is the excuse for plagarism, how come the problem shows up across the board? Seems like you've got a faulty attribution there.

[liz]

Ben Domenech--faugh! I commend to you the blog Schenectady Synecdoche, who thinks and writes about plagiarism

"My welcome-home present

Is this tasty little tale. Most of all, I love Ben Domenech's "apology":

"I'm a young man, and I hope that in time that I can earn a measure of the respect that you have given me."

Hubris just doesn't get any bigger, or better, than this. And I do have to admit I'm jealous. I'd just love to have friends who, whenever I screw up, immediately declare, "Now that the story is complete, we can move on."

Zippeddy do. Dah."

(the original post, at

http://wrt-howard.syr.edu/stepaside/archives/2006/03/my_welcomehome.html

has links)

Archives on authorship, IP, and plagiarism

http://wrt-howard.syr.edu/stepaside/archives/authorship_ip_plagiarism/index.html

[Scott W. Somerville]

I know Ben Domenech, and the only comfort I've been able to come up with in this sad story is that he's a young man, and this will be good for him in the long run. I'm twice his age and I shudder at what the blogosphere could do to me in 24 hours...

[fp]

The kid needs to get a job in a factory or a warehouse unloading trucks. He needs to find his way around in this world a little before he accepts another responsibility that is too big for his ethical framework.

[J. Alva Scruggs]

Frank, that comment resonates with me. I think it's good advice. I'd recommend that he learn a skilled trade as well. That's a good fallback at any time and it would give him some easy distance from the world of punditry. It can't be easy trying to maintain integrity in Beltway circles. I know some people who dipped their toes in the edges of that water. They're all glad to be shed of it.

[fp]

Thanks J. Alva... I appreciate the support. Your recent observation that "I could vote for a candidate who swore to shut down the torture gulags, free the victims, pay them reparations and send the organizers of their torment to stand trial in den Hague" rang true with me also.

[Bette]

Why is it that one of the major interesting facts of this case is that Ben was homeschooled? There are over 2,000,000 homeschooled students; once in a while one will turn out bad. How many public and privately schooled children have been found to plagiarize and why aren’t their educations and the ethical teaching of their parents, and teachers since they were publicly educated, under the microscope? It wasn't Ben's education that caused him to commit plagiarism, it was his ethics...

Okay, I admit that homeschooling is much more interesting than public school. But do you really think homeschoolers plot to produce children who will break all the rules and shame their families and communities? Including this fact in reporting this story, blaming his mother for his ethical choices, and pulling other homeschoolers into the story just exposes a bias against homeschooling and reduces the credibility of the writer for not doing a better investigation.

[fp]

Wait. Have I ever said anything to indicate that I am NOT biased against home schooling? Public education in the United States is one of the noblest experiments our democracy ever tried. It worked. But somewhere along the line complexities were introduced that need resolution if it is to continue to work. Private education, whether home schooled, parochial schooled, or upper-class prep schooled just dilutes the potential of public schools.

Your fact that 2,000,000 kids are home schooled is depressing no matter how I interpret it. Does it mean that at any time 2,000,000 kids are being schooled in the home, or that so far 2,000,000 have been schooled in the home (not counting the Abe Lincoln generations of course... and we all know how he turned out).

I'd say I blame Ben's mother and father equally for the quality of his ethical instruction, and of course there aren't really any public school teachers to blame here. If there were I'm sure the home schooling claque would be jumping up and down, so don't be such a self righteous prig, please.