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March 24, 2006

The Left's Answer to Rove

Glenn Reynolds is fond of pointing to examples of Democrats and left-leaning folk who make such outrageous statements about the war or other right-leaning policies that they tend to discredit by association those who oppose such things, calling them secret agents for Karl Rove. It's all tongue-in-cheek and a mildly amusing recognition of one of the unfortunate facts of argumentation: you are often judged by the worst of those on your side. Opponents of the right can point to Pat Buchanan's support for a measure as a means of discrediting it, while their mirror images can pull Jesse Jackson out for similar scare tactics. It's an irrelevant point: if it's wrong to go to war in Iran, the fact that Al Sharpton or Ann Coulter agrees with that opinion makes it no less correct, and vice versa. Nonetheless, it's not an uncommon reaction, along the lines of 'the enemy of my enemy' theories.

In that same vein comes the interesting news that Ben Domenech, newly anointed conservative blogger for the Washington Post, apparently had a problem penning original material when he was writing for The Flat Hat, the college paper at Domenech's alma mater, William and Mary (which has already posted a well-written editorial deploring the practice; let's hear it for rapid response; I see nothing yet on the Post addressing the issue, interestingly.). The estimable Hilzoy at Obsidian Wings points to some damning evidence of plagiarism in Domenech's writings, including a P.J. O'Rourke essay lifted word-for-word. As the editors at The Flat Hat note, despite Domenech's impressive accomplishments (co-founder of RedState, speechwriter for a Cabinet secretary), this incident will soil everything he ever does in the future. Just as I cannot see Doris Kearns Goodwin without remembering her own infamous plagiarism scandal (which at least, as Gary Farber points out, came after she had amassed an impressive body of work on her own), so too will anything Domenech ever does in the future come with an asterisk reminding everyone of reports of his unethical behavior.

RedState claims that this is simply a smear campaign, and that the web site (perplexingly referred to as outdated and out-of-business; a quick check of the main page demonstrates the paper is clearly still in operation, unless the old gang got together again just to post the editorial referenced above) didn't note that the appropriate permissions were obtained for use in Domenech's writings. Perhaps this is so, and certainly Domenech should be afforded the opportunity to demonstrate that if it is the case. Still, it's hard to imagine how the O'Rourke excerpt can be explained away as appropriate; unless the web page is completely unrepresentative of how the piece appeared in print, it sure looks like Domenech tried to pass off O'Rourke's work as his own.

There is much more out there on this. The warriors of RedState and DailyKos are using this as yet another opportunity to demonstrate how horrible the other side is, illustrating the phenomon of 'racing to the bottom' better than any economics professor I've ever seen. Lost in all the shouting, in all likelihood, will be the facts. For me, I think the Post needs to seriously reconsider its decision to hire Domenech as its right-wing blogger if these allegations pan out (and as I noted above, I cannot imagine how they won't). There are many, many excellent bloggers out there on either side of the political divide. It shouldn't be hard at all to find another right-leaning blogger to balance out some of the Post's blogging coverage. (And if they want to add a blogger who comes at the debate tangent to the right-left divide, I think I could make myself available.) This may seem unfair to Domenech, who is not accused of plagiarizing anything recently, but I think that writing for one of the biggest papers in the country demands adherence to truly exemplary ethical standards, and assuming the plagiarism happened, Domenech needs some time to reestablish his ethical bona fides.

Update: And just like that, it's over. Domenech has resigned. Well, ok, it's not over, because the lefties are explaining how Domenech is representative of all conservatives and the righties are explaining how this is one more example of the left-wing lynch mob mentality. Thank goodness the other side is so evil, that it justifies everything we do on our side.