Dowd’s plagiarism one of many instances of declining media standards

That's me on a New York visit, taking in the view from atop the Empire State Building.The Talking Points Memo blog is probably getting record page views today, after an admission from The New York Times that neo-liberal columnist Maureen Dowd lifted some lines from a neo-liberal blogger at TPM. This is really just another sorry chapter in the decline of media standards.

But Dowd's infraction will have short legs—Dowd is part of pomp media and they always give themselves a pass. The NYT has already worked in the attribution that should have been there in the first place. If Dowd were a conservative writer, inflammatory stories would be passed from blogger to blogger and even to publications perhaps such as The Columbia Journalism Review. Funny thing is the conservative wouldn’t even have to be guilty for that to happen. For pomp media, only rumor is required when the target is a conservative.

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Couple of real winners: Churchill and Ayers proselytize for media

By Kay B. Day

These are a couple of Bill Ayers' Weather Underground cronies. Courtesy of the FBI.(Denver, Colo.)—A couple of real academic winners, Ward Churchill and Bill Ayers, showed up together in Denver to lecture at the University of Colorado. They allegedly talked about the importance of academic freedom. I say allegedly because I didn’t attend. Listening to these two old socialists (or whatever you might call them) would be like volunteering for a root canal.

The Denver Post said Ayers told attendees, "As a teacher, your responsibility is to challenge dogma and orthodoxy, not to just accept it."

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