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Copycat.

I feel bad about what I’m going to do here.

I’ve had a lot of fun at Tim Goeglein’s expense over the last few months. Mean-spirited fun, cer­tainly, but my prob­lem with him has always been one of per­sonal taste. In his columns for The News-Sentinel, my old news­pa­per, he per­son­i­fies a cer­tain sort of apple-cheeked Hoosier drip­pi­ness, which undoubt­edly masks a core of white-hot ambi­tion. I mean, he worked at the right hand of Karl Rove, and remains in the White House. But while he works in the West Wing, he chooses to write awful, turgid essays on the won­ders of Hoagy Carmichael, deceased oper­atic com­posers and his par­ents’ mar­riage. I know it’s unfair to expect pol­icy analy­ses, but it’s mad­den­ing to think that here’s this guy, a home-towner, eye­wit­ness to an epochal period in Amer­i­can his­tory, and he gives us Odes to Sum­mer. Why he chooses to do so for the fail­ing paper in a two-newspaper town, one with a cir­cu­la­tion that prob­a­bly barely nudges 30,000 these days, remains a mys­tery. (I’ve heard the­o­ries: He does it for his mother, and He plans to run for office soon, and he’s rais­ing his local pro­file. Don’t really care, any­way. He’s just fun to make fun of.

When William F. Buck­ley died this week, one of my first thoughts was that he’d been friends with Tim, and we would almost cer­tainly have a long, over­wrought, superlative-packed col­umn com­ing down the pike soon, and we’d have our­selves a good time gig­gling over it. When I saw he had a piece in the paper Thurs­day, the day after Buck­ley died, I thought for a sec­ond the wait was over, then spot­ted the head­line — Edu­ca­tion: Ideas worth defend­ing, hon­esty of reflec­tive thought — and real­ized, no, this has been in the pipeline for a while.

Not that it was a total dis­ap­point­ment. I started to read, and a name jumped out at me — “Eugene Rosenstock-Hussey,” described as a “notable pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy at Dart­mouth.” Now, I’m sure Tim’s spare brain space isn’t clut­tered, as mine is, with “Amer­i­can Idol,” the inter­net and what’s-for-dinner con­cerns. Cer­tainly string quar­tets waft through his pan­eled study, where he reads and thinks under the mounted ibex head, far from the vul­gar buzz of pop cul­ture. Surely he can acquaint him­self with notable pro­fes­sors of phi­los­o­phy at Dart­mouth while I watch the Oscars. But this name was so goofy, just for the hell of it, I Googled it. And look what I found.

Tim:

A notable pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy at Dart­mouth Col­lege in the last cen­tury, Eugene Rosenstock-Hussey, expressed the mat­ter suc­cinctly. His wis­dom is not only pro­found but also worth pon­der­ing in this new cen­tury. He said, “The goal of edu­ca­tion is to form the Cit­i­zen. And the Cit­i­zen is a per­son who, if need be, can re-found his civilization.”

He meant that, I think, in quite a large sense. He did not mean that you had to mas­ter all the spe­cial­ties you can think of, but rather to be an edu­cated man or woman, you needed to be famil­iar with the large and indis­pens­able com­po­nents of our civilization.

This does not mean you should not study other cul­tures and civ­i­liza­tions. It does mean that to be a cit­i­zen of this one, you should be aware of what it is and where it — we — came from. It can hardly be chal­lenged that the United States of Amer­ica is part of the nar­ra­tive of Euro­pean history.

“What is a Col­lege Edu­ca­tion?” by Jef­frey Hart, writ­ing in the Dart­mouth Review (cite is unclear, but from the URL it appears to be from 1998):

A notable Pro­fes­sor of Phi­los­o­phy at Dart­mouth, Eugene Rosenstock-Hussey often expressed the mat­ter suc­cinctly, “The goal of edu­ca­tion,” he would say, “is to form the Cit­i­zen. And the Cit­i­zen is a per­son who, if need be, can re-found his civilization.”

He meant that in quite large a sense. He did not mean that you had to mas­ter all the spe­cial­ties you can think of.

He meant that you need to be famil­iar with the large and indis­pens­able com­po­nents of your — this — civilization.

This cer­tainly does not mean that you should not study other cul­tures and civ­i­liza­tions. It does mean that to be a Cit­i­zen of this one you should be aware of what it is and where it came from.

It can scarcely be chal­lenged that the United States is part of the nar­ra­tive of Euro­pean history.

My, my, my. Tim Goe­glein, direc­tor of the White House office of pub­lic liai­son, is a plagiarist.

Not an acci­den­tal or del­i­cate one, either. The piece (Tim’s) goes on:

It can hardly be chal­lenged that the United States of Amer­ica is part of the nar­ra­tive of Euro­pean his­tory. Europe is over­whelm­ingly the source, and some parts of Europe more than oth­ers: Our lan­guage, lit­er­a­ture, legal tra­di­tion, polit­i­cal arrange­ments derive, demon­stra­bly, from Eng­land. This Britain-America con­nec­tion is central.

There have been many ways of answer­ing the ques­tion: What is Europe? A handy way to think of the mat­ter is the par­a­digm of “Athens” and “Jerusalem.” In this par­a­digm, those terms des­ig­nate both the two cities we have all heard of but also two kinds of mind. The tra­di­tion des­ig­nated “Athens” is asso­ci­ated with phi­los­o­phy and with crit­i­cal exer­cise of mind, with rea­son. The tra­di­tion asso­ci­ated with “Jerusalem” is asso­ci­ated with monothe­ism, with faith.

Hart:

It can scarcely be chal­lenged that the United States is part of the nar­ra­tive of Euro­pean his­tory. It owes lit­tle or noth­ing to Con­fu­cius or Laotse or to Chief Shaka or to the Aztecs. At the mar­gin it owes a bit to the Amer­i­can Indi­ans, but not a great deal — corn, tobacco, some leg­endary mate­r­ial. But Europe is over­whelm­ingly the source. And some parts of Europe more than oth­ers: Our lan­guage, legal tra­di­tion, polit­i­cal arrange­ments derive, and demon­stra­bly so, from England.

There have been many ways of answer­ing the ques­tion, “What is Europe?” But a handy way to think of the mat­ter is the par­a­digm of “Athens” and “Jerusalem.” In this par­a­digm, those terms des­ig­nate both the two cities we have all heard of, and also two kinds of mind.

The tra­di­tion des­ig­nated “Athens” is asso­ci­ated with phi­los­o­phy and with crit­i­cal exer­cise of mind. The tra­di­tion asso­ci­ated with “Jerusalem” is asso­ci­ated with monotheism.

Note that Tim leaves out the gra­tu­itous swipe at non-European cul­tures. Well, the orig­i­nal was writ­ten a few years ago, and times have changed. But other than a word here and there — Hart likes “scarcely,” while Tim goes for “hardly” — these two great minds think alike. A lot alike:

On the side of Athens, you would want to learn some­thing about Homer, who in many ways laid the basis of Greek phi­los­o­phy, and you would need to meet Plato, Aris­to­tle, Socrates — the three great­est Greek philoso­phers — as well as the Greek drama­tists, his­to­ri­ans, archi­tects and sculptors.

Over in Jerusalem, you would find the epic account of the career of monothe­ism as it worked its way out in his­tory. The scrip­tures, like Homer, have their epic heroes — Moses most dra­mat­i­cally — and like the Greek tra­di­tion in some ways, they refine and inter­nal­ize the epic virtues. Athens and Jerusalem, rea­son and faith, inter­act, and much flows from this inter­ac­tion that results in the fullest expres­sion of the edu­cated man and woman.

The intel­lec­tu­ally excit­ing thing is that with Athens and Jerusalem as the foun­da­tions, you would fol­low all of this down through the cen­turies, through Vir­gil (the great Roman poet), Augus­tine, Dante (who is per­haps the great­est poet of West­ern cul­ture), Shake­speare (who is prob­a­bly our great­est play­wright), Cer­vantes, Mon­taigne, Moliere, Voltaire, Goethe and on to moder­nity. “The best that has been thought and said,” as Matthew Arnold called it. The mind of Europe as T.S. Eliot put it, “from Homer to the present.”

That was Tim. This is Hart:

On the side of “Athens” you will want to learn some­thing about Homer, who in many ways laid the basis of Greek phi­los­o­phy, and you will need to meet Plato, Aris­to­tle, the Greek drama­tists, his­to­ri­ans, archi­tects and sculptors.

Over in “Jerusalem” you will find the epic account of the career of monothe­ism as it worked its way out in his­tory. The scrip­tures like Homer, have their epic heroes, and, like the Greek tra­di­tion in some ways they refine and inter­nal­ize the epic virtues. “Athens” and “Jerusalem” inter­act and much flows from the interaction.

You will fol­low all of this down through the cen­turies, through Vir­gil and Augus­tine, and Dante, in Shake­speare, Cer­vantes, and Mon­taigne, Moliere, Voltaire, Goethe and on to moder­nity. “The best that has been thought and said, “ as Matthew Arnold called it. The mind of Europe as T.S. Eliot put it, “from Homer to the present.”

Inter­est­ingly, Jef­frey Hart him­self is quite the char­ac­ter, another aide to a pres­i­dent (Nixon, Rea­gan), a spir­i­tual and intel­lec­tual brother to Tim. As for the Dart­mouth Review, well, most peo­ple know the story of one of the first high-profile right-wing stu­dent pub­li­ca­tions, that gave an early-career boost to Dinesh D’Souza and Laura Ingra­ham, among oth­ers. (Tim went to Indi­ana Uni­ver­sity.) All accounts paint a pic­ture of a ded­i­cated aca­d­e­mic who, you’d think, would frown on one of academia’s most seri­ous sins. I look for­ward to hear­ing his reac­tion, if any.

I men­tioned at the top of this post that I feel bad about what I’m going to do here. (I stole that line, by the way; it’s Nora Ephron’s open­ing for her dev­as­tat­ing pro­file of Dorothy Schiff’s New York Post. Now that I’ve given credit, it’s not pla­gia­rism, it’s an homage. See how it works?) I feel bad because my old buddy Leo Mor­ris, who edits the op-ed pages, is going to bear the brunt of this — the inves­ti­ga­tion, the uncom­fort­able announce­ment to read­ers, the search through the archives for more time bombs, the embar­rass­ment of being took by some­one any edi­tor would trust, a self-styled intel­lec­tual and senior White House aide, for cry­ing out loud. But either this stuff is impor­tant or it isn’t, and I say it is.

UPDATE: Thanks to the Kenosha Kid, in com­ments, who finds more evi­dence of unat­trib­uted sourc­ing, in the Hoagy Carmichael essay linked above. The rifled pock­ets were those of Jonathan Yard­ley in the Wash­ing­ton Post. Way to pick an obscure source, Tim.

UPDATE 2: Since we’re get­ting some out­side link­age today, a word about com­ments: I have mine set for “first-timers go to mod­er­a­tion,” and after that, you’re in. So if you’re a new­bie, feel free to com­ment, but if it doesn’t appear right away, don’t keep try­ing. I’ll stay close to my com­puter today, but I have to run a few errands today, too, and will be out.

UPDATE 3: Tim comes clean. Thanks, Natalie, for the tipoff.

UPDATE 4 (and it’s hardly noon yet): Thanks to com­menters Adam Stan­hope and Gryt­pype Thynne, who did the work on the oper­atic com­posers piece, down in the com­ments. (Click here to go there directly.) I am reminded of a recent scene from “The Wire”: “You think the first time he gets caught is the first time he does it?” Appar­ently not.

UPDATE 5: And MOOOOOOOORE.

UPDATE 6: OK, this is funny, the News-Sentinel’s response. The sub­hed should be, “Nall? Never heard of her.” Oh, and keep fol­low­ing our bird dogs, Adam Stan­hope and Gryt­pype Thynne, in the com­ments. I can’t keep up any more and I have to step out for half an hour.

Posted on Friday, February 29th, 2008 at 7:38 am
in Media.

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570 responses to
“Copycat.”

  1. Kirk said on February 29th, 2008 at 8:18 am

    One nail in each hand, one in his head and one in his feet. Excel­lent work, Nancy. Reminds me of when a then-OU stu­dent (not you that time), now man­ag­ing edi­tor, threw the switch on a Sun­day mag­a­zine writer.

    And you’re damned right. It is important.

  2. basset said on February 29th, 2008 at 8:29 am

    It is indeed. Gonna be fun to watch this play out.

  3. brian stouder said on February 29th, 2008 at 8:36 am

    Sort of dove­tails with the To Catch a Self Abuser post…

    Given the Bush admin con­nec­tion, this could well become a minor national story, maybe even a ‘Worse (or Worser, or Worst) Per­son in the World turn on Olbermann!

  4. nancy said on February 29th, 2008 at 8:39 am

    In the Depart­ment of Small Worlds, I couldn’t help but note that the orig­i­nal essay, Hart’s, opens with an anec­dote that takes a back­handed swipe at the then-president of Brown Uni­ver­sity, Var­tan Gre­go­rian. Who also hap­pens to be the father of one of my fel­low j-fellows, Vahé Gre­go­rian, a sports­writer for the St. Louis P-D. The elder Gre­go­rian, now the pres­i­dent of the Carnegie Corp., was one of our speak­ers that year, and while Hart describes him as “almost super­nat­u­rally charm­ing,” that doesn’t even begin to cover it. Hart took him to task for fail­ing to sup­port an Athens/Jerusalem core cur­ricu­lum at Brown. All I can say is, if Var­tan thinks an all-elective cur­ricu­lum works, I’ll trust him.

    (Super­nat­u­rally charm­ing story: After the sem­i­nar, I shook his hand and he said, “What intel­li­gent ques­tions you asked! Why aren’t you work­ing for the New York Times?” Ha.)

  5. ashley said on February 29th, 2008 at 8:45 am

    Mother. Fuck­ing. Templeton.

    I’m sure there is a sourc­ing pol­icy at the News-Sentinel, and you know it.

    Nail his ass to the wall, Gus.

  6. del said on February 29th, 2008 at 8:51 am

    Mother. Fuck­ing. Tem­ple­ton. (My homage to ash­ley)
    Brian’s right. Get this to Olber­mann for Worst Per­son in the World.

  7. michaela said on February 29th, 2008 at 8:53 am

    When­ever I’ve caught a pla­gia­rist at work (and I think my grand total is two), it’s because of that same nag­ging curios­ity that led you to Google the oddly named prof. It always gives me the heebie-jeebies, though, because how many times have I felt that lit­tle twinge of some­thing not quite right and dis­missed it out of hand?

    Good for you, Nance. Rome­nesko, here you come…

  8. Wire mirroring reality #739: Templeton works at the Ft. Wayne News-Sentinel « Got that New Package! said on February 29th, 2008 at 9:02 am

    […] and has found that Tim Goeglein, White House Pub­lic Liai­son offi­cer and Karl Rove gopher, is a stone cold red-handed plagiarist.Look for the chat­ter to come down from Romanesko today like wild.Kudos to Nancy.  Kudos to […]

  9. Jeff said on February 29th, 2008 at 9:03 am

    This is really bizarre, and yet it isn’t, because if col­lege stu­dents who flip­pin’ *live* on-line don’t get it, why would this loon?

    But wouldn’t you think a guy with his job and involve­ments under­stand in his bones that a pajama-clad blog­ger can casu­ally Google-check stuff like this, and it just falls off the screen and into your lap? What level of will­ful stu­pid­ity does it take? (Hint — one of the top lev­els, heavy on the willfulness.)

    I sure know the anx­i­ety of the deferred dead­line and the sense of dry­ness grop­ing for the start of the next para­graph, but even if i didn’t have RUDIMENTARY ethics, this middle-aged scrib­bler who still doesn’t own a dig­i­tal cam­era and hates his cell phone knows that PLAGIARISM is not only theft, it’s eas­ier to catch than theft, and my aver­sion to jail food (i’ve eaten a lot of it actu­ally, but as a pas­toral vis­i­tor who gets to leave when he wants) and the con­tempt of my peers would/has/will always keep me from even being tempted.

    And Goe­glein appar­ently not only has no ethics, he has no real sense of what the tech­nol­ogy is capa­ble of, or a peer group whose approval mat­ters to him.

    Nancy, very good work. I’ll say i had a vague sense of ven­tril­o­quism about his stuff, but i’ve only read what i see linked on your site, and had just put it down to a fairly lim­ited mind aping his bet­ters. Turns out i should have thought like he was a fresh­man, and then i might have had the grim sat­is­fac­tion of point­ing this one out to you myself.

    Good news, Alex — he will never rep­re­sent you in Con­gress! But i wouldn’t bet against him a few years from now run­ning for the Indi­ana House, or Allen County recorder or some­thing chas­ten­ing like that.

  10. Cathy D. said on February 29th, 2008 at 9:03 am

    As a sub­scriber to said paper, sub­jected to afore­men­tioned essays reg­u­larly, all I can say is: Thank you, Nancy.

  11. Jeff said on February 29th, 2008 at 9:16 am

    I see Tim Goe­glein is just a “red let­ter” text entry within Mace­don­ian Amer­i­cans at Wikipedia — time for an arti­cle on the fel­low, any­one? (Yeah, yeah, but i gotta get to work now. Any­one? Bueller? Bueller?)

  12. merrill said on February 29th, 2008 at 9:32 am

    Go, Nancy!

  13. Danny said on February 29th, 2008 at 9:40 am

    Wow. Big haps around here this morn­ing. Very good spot, Nancy.

  14. 4dbirds said on February 29th, 2008 at 9:50 am

    Wow. Good for you. Is there a process now? Where does it go from here? I’m inter­ested in how the polic­ing of your pro­fes­sion works.

  15. Mindy said on February 29th, 2008 at 9:59 am

    Wow, again. Thank you, Nancy. Read­ing your blog every day is a treat on so many lev­els. But it also makes the echo in the paper where your col­umn used to be that much louder. We miss you in the Fort.

  16. nancy said on February 29th, 2008 at 10:01 am

    4db, the process is pretty sim­ple: Ball’s in their court. It’s been brought to the paper’s atten­tion, so it’s up to them to con­tact the writer and get an expla­na­tion, then share it with their readers.

  17. virgotex said on February 29th, 2008 at 10:03 am

    I don’t think even Tem­ple­ton would be so ham-fisted as this.

    damn, girl.

    way to go.

  18. alex said on February 29th, 2008 at 10:04 am

    The News-Sentinel still hasn’t taken the damn thing down as of 10:00 AM.

  19. colleen said on February 29th, 2008 at 10:12 am

    Wow. And not even GOOD plagarism…more like some­thing a not too bright col­lege fresh­man would pull in ENG 101.

    Wow.

  20. David Mastio said on February 29th, 2008 at 10:18 am

    I say this as a for­mer Bush admin­is­tra­tion speech­writer: Any­thing that cuts down the num­ber of dis­hon­est morons in DC, regard­less of the party to which the morons are attached, is a good thing.

    Con­grats on fol­low­ing those instincts and I hope the con­se­quences of this fol­low Tim across the Potomac. There are too many hard work­ing writ­ers and thinkers of right and left in DC, many of whom strug­gle to find a place in pol­i­tics, think tanks and the media, to have this kid tak­ing up space.

  21. alex said on February 29th, 2008 at 10:23 am

    It’s up on Romenesko.

  22. Kirk said on February 29th, 2008 at 10:28 am

    I didn’t real­ize he was such a punk. Had always thought from pre­vi­ous ref­er­ences that he was an old fart. He looks the part of a typ­i­cal sucky-butt, eager-beaver frat-rat dork who’d think noth­ing of plagiarizing.

  23. Kim said on February 29th, 2008 at 10:29 am

    Well done, Nancy. The sad thing, peo­ple, is that any­body who thought this guy’s writ­ing was a tad hinky could have done the same thing. I mean, google’s not just for check­ing out would-be suitors.

    When the folks in TG’s cor­ner start whin­ing about lib­er­als, blah blah, I hope every­body reminds ‘em who did what to whom.

    I won­der where he’ll go for rehab.

  24. Peter said on February 29th, 2008 at 10:31 am

    While I hope there will be the appro­pri­ate smack­down, I’m afraid you guys are just get­ting set up for a fall.

    This schmuck works for a guy who doesn’t care that he’s drained the trea­sury and sent thou­sands of sol­diers to their death. The same one who threw peo­ple under the bus (Valerie Plame) for shits and gig­gles. What’s copy­ing obscure sources com­pared to that?

    If Mr. Morals had any to begin with, he wouldn’t have done it, but then that fact’s been estab­lished a long time ago.

  25. Dorothy said on February 29th, 2008 at 10:33 am

    I bow before Nancy’s unbe­liev­able tal­ents. This is truly amaz­ing to watch it unfold! Props to Nance.

  26. brian stouder said on February 29th, 2008 at 10:42 am

    OK — 2 liters of icy cold Diet Coke says that TG will even­tu­ally offer up some lame excuse, such as “Shoot! I For­got the foot­note!” or “Dang! Did I for­get to say that the arti­cle was a homage?”…or if he’s really dar­ing — “Great Balls of Fire!! I have been SET UP!! My deputy admin­is­tra­tive assis­tant was tasked with the final edit of the piece”

    But one card he can­NOT play is “That Gol-durned lib­eral media is out to get me!”, ’cause my fam­ily and I have sub­scribed to the N-S for years, and read it, and it has been a close friend of ours.….and, folks, it’s NOT the ‘lib­eral media’!

  27. Mnemosyne said on February 29th, 2008 at 10:44 am

    This schmuck works for a guy who doesn’t care that he’s drained the trea­sury and sent thou­sands of sol­diers to their death. The same one who threw peo­ple under the bus (Valerie Plame) for shits and gig­gles. What’s copy­ing obscure sources com­pared to that?

    I don’t think anyone’s expect­ing that he’s going to get fired from his job with the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, but he’ll prob­a­bly lose his news­pa­per col­umn and his hopes of run­ning for state office. The Bushies might not care that he’s a pla­gia­rist, but vot­ers sure would.

  28. Danny said on February 29th, 2008 at 10:45 am

    I say this as a for­mer Bush admin­is­tra­tion speech­writer: Any­thing that cuts down the num­ber of dis­hon­est morons in DC, regard­less of the party to which the morons are attached, is a good thing.

    Well said, David. Of course, the prob­lem is that many folks are so blindly par­ti­san that it only cuts one way for them. Me, I say get as many of the crooks and cheats out too. I don’t care if it is my own ox get­ting gored.

  29. rhetorical tool said on February 29th, 2008 at 10:49 am

    Con­grats on link at Atrios.

  30. The Mystery of the Republican Plagiarist « virgotext said on February 29th, 2008 at 10:54 am

    […] hap­pen­ings over at Nan​cy​Nall​.com this a.m. It appears that detec­tive Nancy (who is, btw, one of the crew over at NuPac) has reeled […]

  31. blogenfreude said on February 29th, 2008 at 10:57 am

    Remem­ber what Tom Lehrer said — if you copy, it’s pla­gia­rism, if you foot­note, it’s research!

  32. The Kenosha Kid said on February 29th, 2008 at 11:03 am

    He even ripped off the Hoagy Carmichael essay

  33. Connie said on February 29th, 2008 at 11:04 am

    And now it is stuck in my head, I will have to lis­ten to the men­tal tune all day: “Pla­gia­rize. Let no one else’s work evade your eyes”.….. Blo­gen­freude, it’s your fault.

  34. Jeff said on February 29th, 2008 at 11:05 am

    Nope, he will cer­tainly lose his Old Exec­u­tive Office Build­ing restroom key, park­ing per­mit, and White House Mess priv­i­leges for this one. Point taken on scale re: Iraq and other issues, but this is a job (Office of Pub­lic Liai­son) where he can’t blot his copy­book in such a fash­ion and keep his post.

    Sadly, they may not fire him, but he will “leave to pur­sue other oppor­tun­ties” before March decides on end­ing leonine-ically or sheepishly.

  35. Chemnitz said on February 29th, 2008 at 11:07 am

    Curi­ously, I searched your blog for ref­er­ences to “Obama pla­gia­rism” and got these results: “No posts found.” I guess it’s only inter­est­ing if it’s a conservative…

  36. nffcnnr said on February 29th, 2008 at 11:15 am

    Tim Goeglin, schooled!!

  37. Athenae said on February 29th, 2008 at 11:16 am

    Damn, that’s just … bla­tant. It’s one thing to uncon­ciously echo a phrase here or there, but to pull whole grafs?

    Ouch.

    Oh, and Chem­nitz, that’s the cheap­est defense. “You didn’t write about this when so-and-so did it, so there­fore this doesn’t mat­ter!” Either the SENIOR WHITE HOUSE AIDE ripped some­body off or he didn’t. Most of us out­grow the “but Billy did it FIRST!” dodge by the time we hit typ­ing age.

    A.

  38. cornbread said on February 29th, 2008 at 11:17 am

    just saw this:

    “Tim Goe­glein, for­mer Fort Wayne res­i­dent and now a spe­cial assis­tant to Pres­i­dent George Bush, has been accused of pla­gia­rism over a guest col­umn about edu­ca­tion that we car­ried on our edi­to­r­ial page on Thurs­day. While we look into the mat­ter, we have taken the col­umn down from our Web site. We are also check­ing out pre­vi­ous guest columns of Mr. Goeglien’s that we pub­lished. We will promptly report what we find.”

    http://​www​.news​-sen​tinel​.com/​a​p​p​s​/​p​b​c​s​.​d​l​l​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​?​A​I​D​=​/​2​0​0​8​0​2​2​9​/​E​D​I​T​O​R​I​A​L​/​9​8​7​174482

  39. Jason T said on February 29th, 2008 at 11:20 am

    Nope. You done good, Nance. Don’t feel bad.

    I’ve been pla­gia­rized a few times, and it made me very angry every time.

    When you’re a pro­fes­sional writer, the only things you can offer of value are your words. When some­one takes those from you, it’s plain and sim­ple theft.

    There are cases where peo­ple acci­den­tally lift a phrase or two. I’ve caught myself doing it at least once, and I was embar­rassed. (Espe­cially since the writer I bor­rowed from was a hero of mine.)

    But lift­ing entire pas­sages of hun­dreds of words is larceny.

    It’s bad enough that pub­lish­ers expect us to write for free. It’s insult­ing when other peo­ple take our words with­out so much as “thank you.”

  40. Kirk said on February 29th, 2008 at 11:20 am

    It’s the Amer­i­can way for lit­tle chicken turds like him to slink away and wind up with a more obscure cor­po­rate or gov­ern­ment post rak­ing in a few hun­dred thou­sand a year for very lit­tle work, but at least he’s been outed and the whole episode has bright­ened my long, busy Friday.

  41. robert green said on February 29th, 2008 at 11:20 am

    curi­ously, i searched your blog for ref­er­ences to “janet cooke made up story pulitzer prize” and got these results: “No posts found.” I guess you don’t write about what I want you to write about and you have not exhaus­tively cov­ered this sub­ject to my sat­is­fac­tion – there­fore either a) you are pure evil or b) i’m a total con­ser­v­a­tive idiot.

    prob­a­bly the latter.

  42. Chemnitz said on February 29th, 2008 at 11:26 am

    Just try­ing to point out that if you don’t like it from Goe­glein, I would think you’d hate it from Obama. Clearly, Obama’s speeches in cam­paign­ing for pres­i­dent are more sig­nif­i­cant than an essay for a Fort Wayne news­pa­per. Wake up to your hypocrisy.

  43. natalie said on February 29th, 2008 at 11:30 am

    Ha! Good work. I just saw this: http://​www​.jour​nal​gazette​.net/​a​p​p​s​/​p​b​c​s​.​d​l​l​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​?​A​I​D​=​/​2​0​0​8​0​2​2​9​/​N​E​W​S​/​1​9​4​943667

  44. Julie Robinson said on February 29th, 2008 at 11:32 am

    How ironic is it that he pla­gia­rized an arti­cle about edu­ca­tion? Kinda like the teach­ers who send home let­ters filled with spelling and gram­mar errors.

    He’ll keep his job because all the other rats have deserted the sink­ing ship and Bush needs some friends around.

  45. Sue said on February 29th, 2008 at 11:33 am

    Aw, come on Chem­nitz. This isn’t a polit­i­cal blog. If it were, you wouldn’t see such a vari­ety of peo­ple post­ing. Nancy points out idiocy where she finds it and this is a real coup.

  46. brian stouder said on February 29th, 2008 at 11:36 am

    From Natalie’s great link

    “It is true,” Tim Goe­glein wrote to The Jour­nal Gazette in an email. “I am entirely at fault. It was wrong of me. There are no excuses.”

    Wow! He manned up!

    And now, he has to copy/paste his “It is true” state­ment, for Jonathon Yard­ley, and what­ever other exam­ples emerge.…but he’s good at that!

  47. bergman said on February 29th, 2008 at 11:40 am

    To our readers:

    Build­ing Strength and Mus­cle with­out Ille­gal Substances

    Con­sid­er­ing A Career Change? Go Where The Jobs Are
    Now on the paper’s website’s front page:

    Tim Goe­glein, for­mer Fort Wayne res­i­dent and now a spe­cial assis­tant to Pres­i­dent George Bush, has been accused of pla­gia­rism over a guest col­umn about edu­ca­tion that we car­ried on our edi­to­r­ial page on Thurs­day. While we look into the mat­ter, we have taken the col­umn down from our Web site. We are also check­ing out pre­vi­ous guest columns of Mr. Goeglein’s that we pub­lished. We will promptly report what we find.

    oops, see I’m way behind.…

  48. del said on February 29th, 2008 at 11:41 am

    The Hoagy Carmichael story was pla­gia­rized too? Wow.
    And Chem­nitz … shame on you.

  49. alex said on February 29th, 2008 at 11:44 am

    Chem­nitz, if Obama were truly guilty of pla­gia­rism, then so would be Ronald Rea­gan (a/k/a Peggy Noo­nan). As Obama responded dur­ing his last debate with the Ice Queen, his national cam­paign co-chair gave him those words to use. If you believe this is pla­gia­rism then surely you believe he’s an Islam­o­fas­cist in dis­guise because his mid­dle name’s Hus­sein. Just put a cork in it already, beeyotch.

  50. DB said on February 29th, 2008 at 11:51 am

    God, Chem­nitz, talk about your dou­ble standard.

    Obama uses words that *he has prop­erly attrib­uted in the past*, words that the orig­i­nal author told him to use as his own, and that’s “plagiarism”.

    No. it’s not.

    This WH turd used words that the authors were unaware were being used, changed a few, and passed them off as his own.

    Now, *that’s* plagiarism.

    I real­ize many GOoP­ers suf­fer from cranio-anal impaction, but it shouldn’t be too hard a job to fig­ure out what’s steal­ing and what’s not.

    Inci­den­tally, how’s the air up there?

  51. White House Jesus-Freak-In-Chief Caught Plagiarizing | Cynics' Party said on February 29th, 2008 at 11:53 am

    […] the ranks of con­ser­v­a­tive copy­cats like Ann Coul­ter and Ben “Box Tur­tle” Domenech.  Nancy Nall: I feel bad about what I’m going to do […]

  52. James said on February 29th, 2008 at 11:58 am

    from the News-Sentinel:

    “…Nancy Nall, a for­mer News-Sentinel colum­nist who writes a blog from her home in Michigan…”

    I won­der if that’s a dig, that “from her home” part? It just seems unnec­es­sary. How do they know she didn’t write it from a coffee-shop, or a train, or while she was get­ting her oil changed?

    “… she didn’t write it from our oh-so pro­fes­sional offices staffed with the rem­nants of a dying profession…”

  53. Jeff said on February 29th, 2008 at 11:59 am

    Chem­nitz, i searched your blog for ref­er­ences to … wait, you don’t show a blog. Speak­ing as a life-long reg­is­tered Repub­li­can, “It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stum­bles [or blog­mistress — ed.] or where the doer of deeds could have done bet­ter. The credit belongs to the man [or blog­ger — ed.] who is actu­ally in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort with­out error or short­com­ing, but who knows the great enthu­si­asms, the great devo­tions, who spends him­self for a wor­thy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the tri­umph of high achieve­ment, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while dar­ing greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew nei­ther vic­tory nor defeat.”

    From Teddy Roosevelt’s 1910 Sor­bonne speech. Lighten up, Francis.

  54. Adam Stanhope said on February 29th, 2008 at 11:59 am

    The “oper­atic com­posers” arti­cle appears to be pla­gia­rized as well.

    Goe­glein:

    http://​tinyurl​.com/​2wxluz

    Robert Reilly in Cri­sis Magazine:

    http://​tinyurl​.com/​2j2uqo

  55. Grytpype Thynne said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:00 pm

    There’s more. See here:
    http://​www​.cri​sis​magazine​.com/​j​u​n​e​2​0​0​7​/​m​u​s​ic.htm
    vs. here:
    http://​www​.news​-sen​tinel​.com/​a​p​p​s​/​p​b​c​s​.​d​l​l​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​?​A​I​D​=​/​2​0​0​7​0​7​0​5​/​E​D​I​T​O​R​I​A​L​/​7​0​7​050320

    GOEGLEIN:
    Menotti’s operas — there are 25 — achieved a high degree of pop­u­lar­ity, for which he was pun­ished with con­de­scen­sion. He was deemed too old-fashioned. In fact, in 1971, Menotti wrote a let­ter to the New York Times in which he said, “I hardly know of another artist who has been more con­sis­tently damned by crit­ics … The insults that most of my operas had to endure through the years.”

    REILLY:
    Menotti’s operas (there are 25) achieved a high degree of pop­u­lar­ity, for which he was pun­ished, typ­i­cally, with the afore­men­tioned con­de­scen­sion. He was deemed too
    “old-fashioned.” In 1971, Menotti wrote a let­ter to the New York Times in which he said, “I hardly know of another artist who has been more con­sis­tently damned by the crit­ics.… The insults that most of my operas had to endure through the years would make a book­let as ter­ri­fy­ing as Malleus Malefi­carum [The Witches’ Ham­mer, a medieval guide­book for pros­e­cut­ing sor­cery cases].”

    GOEGLEIN:
    Despite the crit­i­cism, he never sur­ren­dered the role of beauty. We can now hear one of his strongest expres­sions of it in his mas­ter­piece, Missa: O Pul­chri­tudo, released on a record­ing for the first time ear­lier this year.

    REILLY:
    Despite crit­i­cism, Menotti never sur­ren­dered the role of beauty. We can now hear one of his strongest expres­sions of it in the appro­pri­ately named Missa: O Pulchritudo.

    GOEGLEIN:
    My first reac­tion upon hear­ing it was: What kind of cul­tural prej­u­dice kept this remark­able piece on ice for 25 years? This may be the most beau­ti­ful music Menotti com­posed. Beauty is actu­ally its theme…

    REILLY:
    My first reac­tion was: What kind of cul­tural prej­u­dice kept this record­ing on ice for 25 years? This may be the most beau­ti­ful thing Menotti wrote. Beauty is its theme.

    [This part is intel­lec­tu­ally disgusting:

    GOEGLEIN:
    Menotti once said, “I have to face Him [God] one of these days, and we have lit­tle dis­cus­sions, pri­vate dis­cus­sions … I’m try­ing to get an answer from God,” which in my mind raised a rhetor­i­cal ques­tion, namely that maybe God has asked him a ques­tion and He is the one wait­ing for an answer. Music has a way of answer­ing ques­tions with­out words, and the answers are in Menotti’s music. What shines through is Menotti’s faith-longing. Another great com­poser, Anton Bruck­ner, said of his mag­nif­i­cent Te Deum: “When God finally calls me and asks ‘What have you done with the tal­ent I gave you, my lad?’ I will present to Him the score of my Te Deum, and I hope He will judge me mercifully.”

    REILLY:
    Dur­ing our visit in 2001, I read to Menotti his own words: “I have to face Him [God] one of these days, and we have lit­tle dis­cus­sions, pri­vate dis­cus­sions.… I’m try­ing to get an answer from God.” I sug­gested to him that “maybe God has asked you a ques­tion, and He’s the one wait­ing for an answer.” Menotti replied, “Yes, I know. He has asked me a few ques­tions. That’s the trou­ble, that’s the dia­logue, because I don’t know what to answer.” The answers are in Menotti’s music, and nowhere is that answer stronger than in the Missa: O Pul­chri­tudo. What shines through is not Menotti’s unbe­lief but his belief. Anton Bruck­ner said of his mag­nif­i­cent Te Deum: “When God finally calls me and asks ‘What have you done with the tal­ent I gave you, my lad?’, I will present to Him the score of my Te Deum and I hope He will judge me mercifully.”

    GOEGLEIN:
    One hopes and prays that Menotti gained a sim­i­lar recep­tion, though he seems to have had a mod­est under­stand­ing of him­self. He once said, “I do not know my own worth — I’m not Bach, but I like to think I’m not Offen­bach either!” Very clever, very hum­bling. Indeed, Offen­bach could not have writ­ten a Mass like Menotti’s. Beauty wins out in the end; excel­lence lasts. Why? Because God is beau­ti­ful, and he embod­ies an excel­lence and radi­ance pre-eminent that brings a glimpse of the eter­nal into our tem­po­ral lives.

    REILLY:
    One hopes and prays that Menotti gained a sim­i­lar recep­tion. Menotti had a mod­est under­stand­ing of him­self. In 1998 he said, “I do know my own worth — I’m not Bach, but I like to think I’m not Offen­bach either!” Indeed, Offen­bach could not have writ­ten a Mass like this. It must have been a source of great sat­is­fac­tion to Menotti at the very end of his long life to know that this record­ing was finally being released. Beauty wins out in the end — because God is Beauty.

    GOEGLEIN:
    Menotti once told a friend of mine, “I say, at least in music, that beauty is a search for the inevitable, that great music is music that can only be that way and no other way. And only God can give you the inevitable.” This rings in one’s ears of angel bells, so pow­er­ful and lovely is its evo­ca­tion of the roots of great music.

    REILLY:
    In his inter­view for cri­sis, we spoke of the Catholic Faith, with which he had strug­gled, and his mis­sion as a com­poser. He remarked, “I say, at least in music, that beauty is a search for the inevitable, that great music is music that can only be that way and no other way. And only God can give you the inevitable.”

    [I sup­pose we can con­clude from read­ing this last pair­ing that Goe­glein ripped off his *friend*?]

  56. Grytpype Thynne said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:00 pm

    Stan­hope — you cheated, just post­ing the urls!!!

  57. Jeff said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:00 pm

    That’s three — yer out, buddy. Back to the bench.

  58. Sue said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:04 pm

    I love how this is hap­pen­ing, lit­er­ally, as we speak (type). I hope you don’t become toooo famous, Nancy, or we’ll have to share you with everyone.

  59. David Mastio said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:06 pm

    How lame that the Gazette couldn’t give the url to this blog.

  60. Adam Stanhope said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:11 pm

    Ha — I beat Gryt­pype Thynne by ONE MINUTE!

  61. Grytpype Thynne said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:11 pm

    Still more — com­pare:
    http://​www​.nysun​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/56905

    with:
    http://​www​.newssen​tinel​.com/​a​p​p​s​/​p​b​c​s​.​d​l​l​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​?​A​I​D​=​/​2​0​0​7​0​7​2​3​/​E​D​I​T​O​R​I​A​L​/​7​0​7​230315

  62. Adam Stanhope said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:12 pm

    You snooze, you lose, Gryt­pype! hehe

    It really was too easy.

    How did you go about it?

    I started plug­ging in names from the arti­cle and Googling, adding one name at a time until the Cri­sis arti­cle emerged at the top of the results.

  63. at Citizen Jake said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:18 pm

    […] head of the White House’s Office of Pub­lic Liai­son Tim Goe­glein get’s nailed pretty good for pla­gia­rism. Pub­lished on Feb­ru­ary 29, 2008 in Odds and Ends. Tags: plagerism, TimGoeglein, […]

  64. Adam Stanhope said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:18 pm

    Another tip for look­ing for plagiarism:

    Often­times the hard­est part of writ­ing an essay or arti­cle or even a blog post is the clos­ing. You’ve laid out the facts and you need to sum­ma­rize it with­out sound­ing dumb. When my daugh­ter was in sixth grade she’d end all of her essays with a sen­tence start­ing with “All in all…” as in:

    “All in all, time and again, the world proves to us that pla­gia­rism doesn’t pay.”

    The clos­ing paragraph(s) of a given arti­cle are often the ones that have been pla­gia­rized. If you sus­pect pla­gia­rism, this is a good place to look.

    All in all.

  65. MonkeyBoy said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:20 pm

    I thought the col­umn had been taken down. I guess that means that it is no longer linked to the from the edi­to­r­ial page, not that it has been removed.

    http://​newssen​tinel​.com/​a​p​p​s​/​p​b​c​s​.​d​l​l​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​?​A​I​D​=​/​2​0​0​8​0​2​2​8​/​E​D​I​T​O​R​I​A​L​/​8​0​2​280323
    http://​newssen​tinel​.com/​a​p​p​s​/​p​b​c​s​.​d​l​l​/​s​e​c​t​i​o​n​?​c​a​t​e​g​o​r​y​=​E​D​I​TORIAL

  66. Max Renn said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:20 pm

    Chem­nitz Says:

    Feb­ru­ary 29th, 2008 at 11:26 am
    Just try­ing to point out that if you don’t like it from Goe­glein, I would think you’d hate it from Obama. Clearly, Obama’s speeches in cam­paign­ing for pres­i­dent are more sig­nif­i­cant than an essay for a Fort Wayne news­pa­per. Wake up to your hypocrisy.

    Man, I hurt too much from laugh­ing. Poor lit­tle Chemny all in a lather because one of his (lying, dis­hon­est) peeps got utterly outed as a crea­ture of low character.

    Chemny, Chemny, Chemny, why don’t you start post­ing as ‘Sprez­zatura’ and some­one might care.

    Oh, and Ben Domenech called. He needs you to come to his defence.

    Love your blog, Nancy!

  67. Grytpype Thynne said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:20 pm

    Yet more — com­pare:
    http://​www​.tfas​.org/​N​E​T​C​O​M​M​U​N​I​T​Y​/​P​a​g​e​.​a​s​p​x​?​p​i​d​=​1​0​3​4​&​a​m​p​;​s​r​c​id=431
    with:
    http://​newssen​tinel​.com/​a​p​p​s​/​p​b​c​s​.​d​l​l​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​?​A​I​D​=​/​2​0​0​7​0​8​0​9​/​E​D​I​T​O​R​I​A​L​/​7​0​8​090323

    HAYWARD:
    Let’s start with great­ness as an abstract idea. How is it defined? Aris­to­tle said that polit­i­cal great­ness is the abil­ity to trans­late wis­dom into action on behalf of the pub­lic good. In order to do this, Aris­to­tle said, you must have a com­bi­na­tion of moral virtue, prac­ti­cal wis­dom and pub­lic spiritedness.

    In sim­ple terms, it is hard enough to know what is good for our own selves, but to be a states­man, you must know what is good for every­one. Aris­to­tle adds that intel­li­gence is not enough; the prac­ti­cal wis­dom of a states­man is not some­thing that can be mas­tered through stan­dard­ized training.

    GOEGLEIN:
    The philoso­pher Aris­to­tle said great­ness is the abil­ity to trans­late wis­dom into action on behalf of the pub­lic good. In order to do this, you must have a com­bi­na­tion of moral virtue, prac­ti­cal wis­dom and pub­lic spirit­ed­ness. In the sim­plest of terms, it is dif­fi­cult enough to know what is good for our­selves, but the truly great men and women among us have a deeper sense of what is good for the larger pub­lic. Intel­li­gence, Aris­to­tle reminded his charges, is not enough, because prac­ti­cal wis­dom is not some­thing that can be mas­tered through stan­dard­ized training.

    HAYWARD:
    If you break it down, there are a few things that a great states­man must pos­sess. First, a great states­man has a cen­tral idea. Sec­ond, they have a strong ele­ment of demo­c­ra­tic respon­si­bil­ity. Third, and per­haps most impor­tantly, the great­est of states­men has an extra­or­di­nary inde­pen­dence of mind and of imag­i­na­tion. They are very uncon­ven­tional thinkers. Often, much of their uncon­ven­tional think­ing comes from being, in cer­tain respects, self-educated.

    GOEGLEIN:
    I think the truly great men and women have a cen­tral idea that moti­vates their lives. They also have a strong ele­ment of what I might call demo­c­ra­tic respon­si­bil­ity. They think largely of other peo­ple in remark­ably free and equal terms regard­less of wealth, sta­tus, power or edu­ca­tion. Per­haps most impor­tantly, the great­est among us have the gift of an extra­or­di­nary inde­pen­dence of mind and of imag­i­na­tion. They are uncon­ven­tional thinkers who see beyond their time to the larger good. This is a rare gift indeed, and it is, in part, what makes true great­ness so rare.

  68. moe99 said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:22 pm

    As a for­mer res­i­dent of Defi­ance OH, who looks back fondly and at times w/ hor­ror at that part of the US (and for whom, grow­ing up, Fort Wayne was THE BIG CITY), mad props to you, Nancy for this jour­nal­is­tic coup! This made my day.

  69. Grytpype Thynne said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:22 pm

    “You snooze, you lose, Gryt­pype! hehe

    It really was too easy.

    How did you go about it?”

    My tech­nique is to search for quo­ta­tions, par­tic­u­larly those where Geoglein “once heard so and so say…” or “so and so once said to a friend of mine…”, though this last one I caught throught the Aris­to­tle paraphrase

  70. Grytpype Thynne said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:23 pm

    “You snooze, you lose, Gryt­pype! hehe”

    Also, be nice — I wasn’t snooz­ing, I was copy­ing and pasting!!!!

  71. beb said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:23 pm

    Wow, Your story has been linked by both Atios and Talk­ing­PointsMemo! And God knows who else.

    The weird thing about this, it doesn’t sound like he had a reg­u­lar dead­line to hit. He could have just skipped writ­ing that week instead of steal­ing from oth­ers. So this was not a crime of des­per­a­tion but a crime of arro­gence. It must be some­thing in the Bush White House that does that to people.

    Remem­ber that guy in the White House who was caught in a com­pli­cated shoplift­ing scheme by abus­ing a store’s returns pol­icy? He didn’t need the money. It was like, he could do it so he did.

  72. "Tim Goeglein, director of the White House office of public liaison, is a plagiarist." | Writes Like She Talks said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:25 pm

    […] So writes Nancy Nall. […]

  73. Kevin Shay said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:28 pm

    I feel bad about what I’m going to do here.

    I feel your pain; I just did this.

  74. GOP, GOP, Uber Alles « The Elvisberg Report said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:28 pm

    […] GOP, Uber Alles This is, admit­tedly, just one silly guy get­ting caught doing some­thing silly.  There are more impor­tant peo­ple out there than the direc­tor of the White House office of public […]

  75. Tim Goeglein, director of White House office of public liaison, plagiarizes, then apologizes said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:29 pm

    […] So writes Nancy Nall. […]

  76. chris said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:32 pm

    YES –nail the asshole -

  77. Grytpype Thynne said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:33 pm

    beb: “The weird thing about this, it doesn’t sound like he had a reg­u­lar dead­line to hit.”

    which time?

  78. MonkeyBoy said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:33 pm

    Hmmm. The NS dis­claimer on their edi­to­r­ial page about pla­gia­rism ques­tions has been removed. It was up for what?, maybe 2 hours?

    http://​www​.news​-sen​tinel​.com/​a​p​p​s​/​p​b​c​s​.​d​l​l​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​?​A​I​D​=​/​2​0​0​8​0​2​2​9​/​E​D​I​T​O​R​I​A​L​/​9​8​7​174482
    http://​newssen​tinel​.com/​a​p​p​s​/​p​b​c​s​.​d​l​l​/​s​e​c​t​i​o​n​?​c​a​t​e​g​o​r​y​=​E​D​I​TORIAL

  79. Robert Cogan, Ph.D. said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:33 pm

    Hello. I’m a retired pro­fes­sor, pro­gres­sive and some­time pla­gia­rism sleuth. Im stumped at this time by a pas­sage I’m sure is pla­gia­rized. I’ve run dis­tinc­tive parts through con­cate­na­tion in Google, and FYI, free pal­gia­rism check­ers on the inter­net listed in http://​www​.copy​wight​ing911​.com/​c​h​e​c​k​-​y​o​u​r​-​c​o​ntent/ I’d appre­ci­ate learn­ing by e-mail if you have any other means of detec­tion. Thanks

  80. Mad Librarian said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:35 pm

    Wow! What a metaphor for the intel­lec­tual and moral bank­ruptcy of the entire “con­ser­v­a­tive” move­ment, too!

    At least William F. Buck­ley actu­ally wrote his own sonorous, sesquipedalian hogwash.

  81. Jeff said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:36 pm

    I’m los­ing track — are we up to seven columns, or six?

    And you gotta think, well, if six or seven, then prob­a­bly … well, won­der if any of his col­lege profs are thumb­ing through their big grey file cab­i­nets right now. I’d give a nickle to see the resume he sub­mit­ted to Karl (ha, Karl just called and said “I’m gonna change yer life, boy” and never looked at his resume — you bet?), which will doubt­less have the most cre­ative writ­ing the fellow’s ever done, apparently.

  82. ashley said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:40 pm

    Maybe if you blogged out of a Star­bucks, the N-S wouldn’t have been so condescending.

  83. blogenfreude said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:40 pm

    @ Kevin Shay: And I felt awful doing this.

  84. Apprentice to Darth Holden said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:40 pm

    Let me come up with an orig­i­nal sen­ti­ment here: I’m shocked, shocked! to dis­cover that a White House aide is a thief.

    BTW, this edit­ing tool is the cat’s pajamas!

  85. cavjam said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:41 pm

    To steal someone’s ideas absent attri­bu­tion is, of course, intel­lec­tual dis­hon­esty of the basest order. To not even bother to rewrite those ideas in one’s own words is lazi­ness at which a sloth would scoff. To ignore the prob­a­bil­ity that one might get caught dis­plays the cere­bral activ­ity of the dead.

    The above com­menter who sug­gested that Mr. Obama’s use of another’s words — words which, as rightly noted, had been pre­vi­ously acknowl­edged as another’s — some­how con­sti­tutes equiv­a­lence inhab­its the cir­cle of unin­formed and/or men­da­cious swine unfor­tu­nately far too large for the preser­va­tion of an enlight­ened republic.

  86. David Mastio said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:51 pm

    Mad Librar­ian,

    You are aware that from time to time, good lib­er­als have copied the work of oth­ers, are you not? Heard of Dor­ris Kearns Good­win, perhaps?

    Pla­gia­rism by a sin­gle doo­fus only tells us some­thing about the char­ac­ter of the per­son who did it, not any groups to which he belongs. It makes no more sense to attribute his pla­gia­rism to his polit­i­cal beliefs than it does to attribute his acts to a Lutheran upbring­ing or, for that mat­ter, his Indi­ana roots.

  87. Jeff said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:52 pm

    Just to bend your brain a bit fur­ther on this sub­ject — appar­ently L. Ron Hub­bard pla­gia­rized “Sci­en­tol­ogy” from, er “Sci­en­tolo­gie” auf Deutsch –
    http://​forums​.entur​bu​la​tion​.org/​v​i​e​w​t​o​p​i​c​.​p​h​p​?​f​=​3​&​a​m​p​;​t=4829

  88. Lex said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:53 pm

    I’m late to this, but, wow, nice catch.

  89. Grytpype Thynne said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:54 pm

    David Mas­tio:
    “You are aware that from time to time, good lib­er­als have copied oth­ers work, are you not? ”

    Just so long as you don’t call Joe Biden a “good liberal.”

  90. Rob said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:55 pm

    More google tid­bits: Turns out that we, as tax­pay­ers, are fund­ing Goe­glein to the tune of $125,000 a year:
    http://​www​.wash​ing​ton​post​.com/​w​p​-​s​r​v​/​o​p​i​n​i​o​n​s​/​g​r​a​p​h​i​c​s​/​2​0​0​7​s​t​a​f​f​l​i​s​t​s​a​l​a​r​y.html

  91. Grytpype Thynne said on February 29th, 2008 at 12:57 pm

    swiped from Rob com­ment­ing at Atrios:
    Goe­glein is paid $125K annu­ally by…um…you and me.
    http://​www​.wash​ing​ton​post​.com/​w​p​-​s​r​v​/​o​p​i​n​i​o​n​s​/​g​r​a​p​h​i​c​s​/​2​0​0​7​s​t​a​f​f​l​i​s​t​s​a​l​a​r​y.html

  92. Grytpype Thynne said on February 29th, 2008 at 1:05 pm

    lol — and this time Rob beat me to accrediting…Rob.

  93. blogenfreude said on February 29th, 2008 at 1:07 pm

    @David Mas­tio — DKG is a lib­eral? Who knew. And the point is that “con­ser­v­a­tives” and reli­gious nutjobs far more sat­is­fy­ing tar­gets. David Vit­ter steps to the Sen­ate floor fresh from bang­ing a hooker to tell me that mar­riage is the most impor­tant insti­tu­tion EVAR. Ted Hag­gard says gays are bad then runs off to schtup (sp?) a male escort. And this clown han­dles reli­gious affairs for a moral scold who’s respon­si­ble for hun­dreds of thou­sands of need­less deaths. Par­don my delight in their destruction.

  94. Undercover Black Man said on February 29th, 2008 at 1:07 pm

    Cheers, Nancy! Splen­didly done.

  95. earthandstaplesthat said on February 29th, 2008 at 1:10 pm

    Here’s another one:

    When “The Big Trail” failed at the box office, Wayne spent the bet­ter part of a decade play­ing cow­boys of the nuance-free vari­ety in cheap B-Westerns. What came next, though, was a rev­o­lu­tion in his life and in the life of Amer­i­can film. It took the direc­tor John Ford to finely etch Wayne’s cow­boy per­sona with scratches and cracks, allow­ing to emerge a tan­ta­liz­ing glimpse of the angry, hurt and unloved actor within. Ford and Wayne, one of the most famous director/actor teams in all of Hol­ly­wood his­tory, was born, and they made not only more than two dozen films together but also Hol­ly­wood movie history.

    http://www.newssentinel.com/apps…ORIAL/ 707230315

    When “The Big Trail” failed at the box office, Wayne spent the bet­ter part of a decade play­ing cow­boys of the nuance-free vari­ety in cheap B-Westerns. It took direc­tor John Ford to finely etch Wayne’s cow­boy per­sona with scratches and cracks that allowed tan­ta­liz­ing glimpses of the angry, hurt, and unloved “Mar­ion” within. Appro­pri­ately, the bulk of the MoMA ret­ro­spec­tive is drawn from the nearly two-dozen films that Ford and Wayne made together.

    http://​www​.nysun​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/56905

    And that’s not all, pretty much the whole Goe­glein piece is a hash of the Bruce Ben­nett piece.

  96. Mindless, pointless celebrity news, leavened with redeeming snark « Blog on the Run: Reloaded said on February 29th, 2008 at 1:11 pm

    […] cream as a kind of anti-aging agent but that it has given her chest hair … to which White House-plagiarism-exposing ex-journo and all-around cool blog­ger Nancy Nall says, “I’m sure that goes really well with […]

  97. Kirk said on February 29th, 2008 at 1:14 pm

    I’m guess­ing that the Goe­gler plays golf for $100 a hole and kicks his ball out of the rough when the other guys aren’t looking.

  98. Grytpype Thynne said on February 29th, 2008 at 1:28 pm

    earth­and­sta­ples: see 12:11pm (I was lazy)

  99. Think Progress » White House aide caught plagiarizing. said on February 29th, 2008 at 1:31 pm

    […] Nall googled the name, only to find that full sec­tions of Goeglein’s 16-paragraph essay were copied nearly word-for-word from a 10-year old Dart­mouth Review essay by Jef­frey Hart. Con­fronted about the plagiarism, […]

  100. Mad Librarian said on February 29th, 2008 at 1:31 pm

    Mas­tio,

    What blo­gen­freude and Gryt­pype Thynne said.

    I would never deny that lib­er­als could be guilty of the same offense (obvi­ously!). But your exam­ple is kind of weird (Doris Kearns Good­win is a mem­ber of the belt­way Kewl Kidz in good stand­ing, IMO, and not what I’d call a lib­eral, merely a token [not-obviously-a-barking-mad-wingnut-so-‘liberal’-by-default], in other words).

    The point I was try­ing to make is that hypocrisy, intel­lec­tual bank­ruptcy, and moral deprav­ity are the defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics of Move­ment Wingnut­tism, not merely occa­sional lapses. It’s a fea­ture, not a bug! A few coun­ter­vail­ing exam­ples (even if more apt than yours) do not dis­prove this observation.

  101. Danny said on February 29th, 2008 at 1:37 pm

    Nance, you prob­a­bly already know this, but us reg­u­lars are very proud of you.

  102. Kirk said on February 29th, 2008 at 1:41 pm

    Kind of cool to be in on an Inter­net Sen­sa­tion, huh, Danny?

  103. Jeff said on February 29th, 2008 at 1:43 pm

    If being an aide to LBJ doesn’t qual­ify you for admis­sion to “The Lib­eral Club,” i can’t imag­ine what the pass­word is. The point being not about Kearns Good­win, but that this is an equal oppor­tu­nity prob­lem, one that sur­vives in peo­ple count­ing on the rest of us to be too lazy to bird-dog their thefts deep into the swamps. (Except the inter­net has filled the swamp with GPS and trail sig­nage that wasn’t there ten years ago.)

    And their assump­tions about our las­si­tude and indif­fer­ence usu­ally hold true, mak­ing moments like this worth jump­ing on head­long, feet-first. Don’t EVEN get me started on clergy and sermons …

  104. Dorothy said on February 29th, 2008 at 1:44 pm

    Danny took the words right out of my mouth. But that’s not pla­gia­rism, I swear.

    Love you lots today Nancy!!

  105. Mad Librarian said on February 29th, 2008 at 1:47 pm

    It’s inter­est­ing to me, too, how in nearly every instance the small emen­da­tions Goe­glein makes (why did he bother, I won­der?) end up mak­ing the text less inter­est­ing and eloquent.

  106. Laura said on February 29th, 2008 at 1:48 pm

    Nancy, you are my hero. The end.

  107. Connie said on February 29th, 2008 at 1:49 pm

    Oh my Nancy, you are every­where. You are almost hav­ing an instalanche!

  108. Timmer said on February 29th, 2008 at 1:51 pm

    I believe there’s another. Mr. Goe­glein pub­lished an op-ed in the News Sen­tinel called, “Remem­ber Puri­tan Roots of Lib­erty.” Oddly, the link to the edi­to­r­ial is no longer work­ing (http://​www​.fort​wayne​.com/​m​l​d​/​n​e​w​s​s​e​n​t​i​n​e​l​/​n​e​w​s​/​e​d​i​t​o​r​i​a​l​/​1​2​0​3​4​4​7​0​.​h​t​m​?​t​e​m​p​l​a​t​e​=​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​M​o​d​u​l​e​s​/​p​r​i​n​t​s​t​o​ry.jsp). Per­haps the paper has pulled it.

    How­ever, the edi­to­r­ial is quoted at length in a blog called Bril­liant Medi­oc­rity (http://​www​.bril​liantmedi​oc​rity​.com/​a​r​c​h​i​v​e​s​/​7​0​-​M​u​s​i​n​g​s​-​o​n​-​a​-​P​u​r​i​t​a​n​-​A​m​e​r​i​c​a.html). Here’s one of the para­graphs the author quotes from Goeglein:

    “We remain the coun­try of John Winthrop and Ralph Waldo Emer­son, a cumu­la­tive por­trait of faith and rea­son, but not faith with­out rea­son or rea­son with­out faith. Amer­ica is the place where we begin anew and an arena in which each indi­vid­ual should enno­ble and serve the whole.”

    And here’s a brief para­graph from a National Review book review writ­ten by Michael Potemra (http://​nrd​.nation​al​re​view​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​?​q​=​N​T​F​k​M​2​N​l​M​T​d​k​O​W​Q​z​M​2​F​m​Y​m​Y​2​N​G​E​5​N​m​E​2​Z​D​U​4​Z​Dk4OTI=):

    “We have been, and remain, the coun­try of John Winthrop and Ralph Waldo Emer­son. The author suc­ceeds in cre­at­ing what he calls a ‘cumu­la­tive por­trait of Amer­ica as a place to begin anew, [and] an arena in which each indi­vid­ual should enno­ble and serve the whole.’”

    Note the inter­nal quo­ta­tion marks. TG lifts from both the reviewer and the author of the work being reviewed. How efficient.

  109. Danny said on February 29th, 2008 at 1:51 pm

    Very cool, Kirk and Dorothy.

    And I really like how you put that, Jeff. I was going to say some­thing along the lines of:

    The point I was try­ing to make is that hypocrisy, intel­lec­tual bank­ruptcy, and moral deprav­ity are the defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics of Move­ment Wingnut­tism, not merely occa­sional lapses.

    There cer­tainly are a lot of phonies in the con­ser­v­a­tive ranks. But Mad Librar­ian and you other johnny-come-todays, you should take a deep breath, get a grip on your­selves. And real­ity. That is all.

    I’m a helper. Jeff is nicer and smarter though.

  110. Timmer said on February 29th, 2008 at 1:55 pm

    Here are those links again:

    The sen­tinel piece, which has been pulled.

    Bril­liant Medi­oc­rity blog.

    The National Review book review.

  111. bergman said on February 29th, 2008 at 1:59 pm

    I got a weird one, and it cost me 6 bucks. He wrote a lit­tle screed for Poetry mag­a­zine and ripped off a nov­el­ist guest writ­ing at the WSJ.

    “But as one can legit­i­mately see design in the chaos of evo­lu­tion and rec­og­nize prov­i­dence behind the mask of his­tory, so God unde­ni­ably may be known to live in the expe­ri­ence of being human.”

    Andew Kla­van, WSJ Online, 12/24/2004
    http://​opin​ion​jour​nal​.com/​t​a​s​t​e​/​?​i​d​=​1​1​0​006071

    “that one can legit­i­mately see design in the chaos, and rec­og­nize and know per­son­ally Prov­i­dence behind the mask of his­tory; best, that God may unde­ni­ably be known to live in the expe­ri­ence of being human.”

    Goglein, A Sense of the Sacred, Poetry Mag­a­zine, April 1, 2005

  112. earthandstaplesthat said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:00 pm

    Gryt­pype Thynne deserves all the credit for the NYSun/Bennett catch!

    (Sorry, I missed your link and got all excited when I Goe­gleined the Ben­nett piece. Hey, every­one wants to play now.)

  113. 4dbirds said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:02 pm

    Oh my, they keep on com­ing. I won­der what rock he’s crawl­ing under even as we ‘speak’.

  114. Mad Librarian said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:06 pm

    Jeff,

    See my response to David Mas­tio, above. Sure, it’s an “equal oppor­tu­nity” prob­lem. But I was remark­ing on how it seems endemic to the party of G.W. Bush, not an occa­sional con­tained out­break. Think Ben Dommenech, think Jeff Gan­non, etc., etc., ad inini­tum, ad nau­seam. And gay-bashing closet cases, mil­i­taris­tic draft-dodgers, Constitution-shredding “freedom-spreaders”, mur­der­ing right-to-lifers, welfare-hating Scaife Foun­da­tion lam­preys, und­soweiter… You name it, there’s a hyp­ocrite doing it in the mod­ern Repub­li­can Party.

    As for Good­win, that was a long damn time ago, and these days she chiefly serves as a Colme­sesque foil for the reac­tionary loons, so they can say, “even ‘libruls’ like Doris Kearns Good­win think we should nuke Tehran…”, as well as pro­vid­ing irrel­e­vant cutesy anec­dotes about what was in Richard Nixon’s sock drawer. So give me a fuck­ing break about her “liberalism”.

  115. Mad Librarian said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:10 pm

    There cer­tainly are a lot of phonies in the con­ser­v­a­tive ranks. But Mad Librar­ian and you other johnny-come-todays, you should take a deep breath, get a grip on your­selves. And real­ity. That is all.

    I didn’t know you had to be a reg­u­lar to have a right to express an opin­ion here. I just dis­cov­ered this site through Atrios today. I’ll desist now, so you won’t get your prissy panties in a wad, Danny Boy.

  116. Grytpype Thynne said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:13 pm

    What I love about this is that he was rip­ping off his “friends” on the Right:

    The Dart­mouth Review
    The New York Sun
    The National Review
    Crisis

    He doesn’t even go out of his com­fort zone to plagiarize!

  117. bergman said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:13 pm

    There cer­tainly are a lot of phonies in the con­ser­v­a­tive ranks. But Mad Librar­ian and you other johnny-come-todays, you should take a deep breath, get a grip on your­selves. And real­ity. That is all.

    I didn’t know you had to be a reg­u­lar to have a right to express an opin­ion here. I just dis­cov­ered this site through Atrios today. I’ll desist now, so you won’t get your prissy panties in a wad, Danny Boy.
    ===
    He’ll get over it. The water’s just a bit choppy in his pond today.

  118. Cathy D. said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:14 pm

    WaPo picks up the story»

  119. Grytpype Thynne said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:16 pm

    Danny Boy: “‘Tis you, ’tis you must go and I must bide.”

    OK — I admit I stole that one. And you, of course, will know from where.

  120. If He Has Written More, It Is By Standing On the Shoulders Of Giants | Popehat said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:17 pm

    […] in point — Tim­o­thy S. Goe­glein, a trea­cly colum­nist for the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel, was accused of pla­gia­rism by a blog­ger in an email to his paper last night, exposed pub­licly by the blog­ger this morn­ing, further […]

  121. Grytpype Thynne said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:19 pm

    “WaPo picks up the story»”

    NOW you’re famous, Nancy!

  122. Dan M. said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:25 pm

    Con­grat­u­la­tions, Nancy. Well caught, well written.

  123. Danny said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:26 pm

    Wow. “Panties in a wad” and what­ever else you all want to say. I’m wounded. But please be gen­tle because if you hurt my last feel­ing, I will be invincible.

    Lis­ten, my point is not that I am upset about things being active and chippy on the blog today. To the con­trary. I am very happy about that. And I don’t think any of the peo­ple who con­tribute here reg­u­larly feel any sense of rank or enti­tle­ment. It’s just that if you are new here and unfa­mil­iar, you should know that you won’t get a pass if you make assi­nine com­ments. That’s just the way we roll here. Real­ity. Dig it.

    And we all usu­ally get along. Don’t hate me because I’m right.

  124. bergman said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:26 pm

    “The point that we are to respond both to cre­ation and to God not after the man­ner of need but of true delight is a del­i­cate one. It is bound up with the very idea that God is com­plete in Himself,”

    James V. Schall, S. J.
    Pro­fes­sor
    Depart­ment of Gov­ern­ment, George­town
    http://​www9​.george​town​.edu/​f​a​c​u​l​t​y​/​s​c​h​a​l​l​j​/8.htm
    (date too hard to fig­ure out)

    ” we are to respond both to cre­ation and to God not after the man­ner of need but of true delight. It is bound up with the idea that God is com­plete in Himself. ”

    Goglein, A Sense of the Sacred, Poetry Mag­a­zine, April 1, 2005

  125. wade said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:26 pm

    Good catch, Nance. Or should we refer to you as “Scoop Der­ringer” now?

  126. Grytpype Thynne said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:27 pm

    Mad Librar­ian — care­ful, or Danny Boy will kick you in your Lon­don Derriere.

  127. alex said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:27 pm

    Stan­hope, Grytpype–

    See if you can find the prove­nance of this, his eulogy to William F. Buck­ley in the National Review:

    http://​arti​cle​.nation​al​re​view​.com/​?​q​=​O​G​Q​x​Y​z​F​j​O​D​Y​5​Z​j​c​4​M​T​F​h​N​m​I​3​M​j​J​j​Y​2​Y​y​N​D​E​0​N​TA4OTE=

    I’m at work and don’t have the time to fuck with it. Keep up the good work! Lovin’ it!

  128. Danny said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:29 pm

    Good job, Nance. Or should we call you “Scoop Der­ringer” now?

    Ha! Good one, wade. How about the “All-Knowing Nall?”

  129. Catherine said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:29 pm

    And you made it into the Wash­ing­ton Post today, Nancy!! Congrats!

    http://​www​.wash​ing​ton​post​.com/​w​p​-​d​y​n​/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​l​i​n​k​s​e​t​/​2​0​0​5​/​0​4​/​1​1​/​L​I​2​0​0​5​0​4​1​1​0​0​8​7​9.html

  130. Laura said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:31 pm

    Nancy Nall: defender of truth, jus­tice and the Amer­i­can way.

  131. Hawk said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:32 pm

    My My,

    “Tim­o­thy S. Goe­glein, for­mer Fort Wayne res­i­dent and now a spe­cial assis­tant to Pres­i­dent George Bush, has been accused of pla­gia­rism over a guest col­umn about edu­ca­tion The News-Sentinel pub­lished on our edi­to­r­ial page on Thursday.”

    Or

    Tim Goe­glein, an assis­tant to the Pres­i­dent and deputy direc­tor of the White House Office of Pub­lic Liaison

  132. brian stouder said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:33 pm

    I still like Madam Telling Tales (which she invented for a col­umn or two, back in her old-media days, approx­i­mately a life­time ago!)

    or sim­ply The Pro­pri­etress — which has a fuller, deeper mean­ing, given her scoop today

  133. David Mastio said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:34 pm

    Oh lord, the NRO piece looks dubi­ous too …

    http://www.google.com/search?q=Friendship%2C+at+its+best%2C+is+a+foretaste+of+heaven.+I&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

  134. Grytpype Thynne said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:36 pm

    Sorry alex — I’m out of time myself. David Mas­tio, maybe we should all save our­selves some time and try to come up with a list of arti­cles which this knuck­le­head DIDN’T plagiarize.

  135. Mad Librarian said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:36 pm

    …you should know that you won’t get a pass if you make assi­nine [sic]com­ments…

    If I do make any, I should expect no less. But what is ‘asi­nine’ about point­ing out the truth about the Cons? You just told me to, in effect “STFU, New­bie”, you didn’t refute my point or pro­vide any evi­dence that “lib­er­als do it, too” (and are there­fore just as bad as the bas­tards who are fuck­ing up our coun­try, presumably).

  136. Jeff said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:37 pm

    Whose red woolen union suit is in a twist? We’re not fling­ing the f-bombs to make a sim­ple point.

    OK, fine — pla­gia­rism is a unique prob­lem endemic to the shal­lower waters of the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment gene pool. Please note the lengthy ros­ter of self-declared con­ser­v­a­tives happy to say imme­di­ately and with­out qual­i­fi­ca­tion: he’s an idiot, an amoral wretch, and cast out he shall be from the West Wing and the cash bar of the next C-PAC event. You watch, he’s blown chunks across the WaPo (nice, nice work Nancy, from a purely journo per­spec­tive — get any into the WaPo when you were writ­ing for ink and not pix­els?). That gets you the door, pure and sim­ple [cue wails about Rove’s many unin­dicted crimes].

    I’m a mildly con­ser­v­a­tive clergy-person in highly lib­eral cir­cles, denomination-wise, and i’d never say that lib­er­als have cor­nered the mar­ket in unat­trib­uted ver­ba­tim rip-offs of ser­mons (includ­ing phrases like “my friend said” and “a woman i met on the side­walk down­town” with­out cavil), but it is most assuredly an equal oppor­tu­nity dis­ease among preach­ers, which i could cite you up on the left ad nau­seum. Con­ser­v­a­tives just get shot, per­haps jus­ti­fi­ably, by their wives (or get found in odd rub­ber suits, i hear).

    Smite them all, hip and thigh, i say. (That last stro­phe on smit­ing was bor­rowed; i’ll let you Google for fun.)

  137. Grytpype Thynne said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:40 pm

    Danny — I actu­ally think one ought to be a bit more reserved on enter­ing a room full of strangers than when enter­ing a room full of friends, so even if you were defend­ing “reg­u­lars” I wouldn’t take it par­tic­u­larly amiss (as a “new­bie” moon­light­ing from Atrios myself), so I should clar­ify that my last cou­ple of posts directed at you were really just excuses to make ref­er­ences to Danny Boy and Lon­don­derry Air.

  138. Julie Robinson said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:40 pm

    So who has called for inter­views, Nance? NPR? ABC? CNN? Surely not Fox.

  139. alex said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:41 pm

    Don’t feel bad, Mad Lib. Danny takes swipes at me too. Regularly.

    He’s actu­ally a pretty decent dude regard­less of his lean­ings. He just fights like a con­ser­v­a­tive, that’s all.

  140. Sue said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:47 pm

    Wade and Danny, did you see the Nancy Drew ref­er­ence (vir­go­text, 10:54 a.m.)? Click on it and you will even see the cover art­work for, if I remem­ber cor­rectly, The Mys­tery of the Hid­den (Lost?) Stair­case. I am bask­ing, just bask­ing in Nancy’s reflected jour­nal­is­tic AND bad-child-lit glory. Also, the posters who are hav­ing a lit­tle trou­ble with atti­tudes on this site? Danny’s right. We’re like a bunch of bar friends at the begin­ning of the evening, and I think we’re care­ful to keep it that way. Let’s not turn it into a closing-time bar fight. This is the only blog I have ever encoun­tered that doesn’t degen­er­ate like that. (Takes another hit on her mar­garita, starts to cry.) …I mean, I love you guys, yaknow?

  141. nancy said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:48 pm

    So who has called for inter­views, Nance?

    So far? The News-Sentinel. I expect that’ll change if Tim resigns, but for now, the White House is merely “dis­ap­pointed” in him (accord­ing to the AP).

    Actu­ally, my head is whirling right now. I need to write some­thing about the whole expe­ri­ence, but it’ll take a day or two to fig­ure out what.

  142. kerry said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:53 pm

    Hey, Nance — the pla­gia­rism story just hit Drudge. Alas, no men­tion of the sleuth who uncov­ered it.

  143. Kafkaz said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:54 pm

    “Fore­taste of heaven” is more along the lines of a com­mon­place, I would think, David.

    As for the rest …

    It’s thiev­ery, pure and sim­ple. There’s no fine dis­tinc­tion to make about it , no enlight­en­ing dis­cus­sion about the nature of pla­gia­rism vs. the nature of echo­ing and allu­sion for it to prompt, no fan­tas­tic oppor­tu­nity to con­sider the art of ora­tory vs. the art of writ­ten rhetoric. It’s just stealing.

    And it’s sad, unspeak­ably sad. I don’t really care about this guy’s polit­i­cal lean­ings. I just come at this sort of thing as a writer. The whole fun of writ­ing comes in shap­ing an idea, explor­ing it, see­ing where it leads, find­ing exactly the shades of mean­ing that you’re after, utter­ing some­thing new, or zero­ing in on some­thing so com­mon that it’s usu­ally invis­i­ble, and find­ing a pointed, poetic, or oth­er­wise mem­o­rable way to make it seen anew. It’s so won­der­ful to get lost in the writ­ing, and then to tin­ker with the flow and dic­tion and music of it. What fun to go zig zag­ging around in the war­ren of ety­molo­gies, or to dis­cover where research might lead, or to select just the right bits to quote, para­phrase, and (for gosh sakes) cite and doc­u­ment so that oth­ers might fol­low your trail, see it entirely dif­fer­ently than you did, blaze new ones.

    Such a joy to be a writer. Such a gift. A priv­i­lege, even.

    It’s a major bum­mer that there are so many writ­ers who appar­ently don’t get that at all.

    Big sigh.

  144. Dexter said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:56 pm

    …and it was choco­late milk, not cof­fee, for Terry & Tem­ple­ton that day. You can’t sling stuff like that past Gus…or nancy.

  145. Cathy D. said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:59 pm

    Now this is just funny:
    Won­kette»

  146. Dorothy said on February 29th, 2008 at 2:59 pm

    I’m so wound up you’d think that I was the one who did the scoop­ing! It’s so excit­ing to be on the side­lines for this. And even more excit­ing to won­der what comes next.

  147. Danny said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:05 pm

    Alex/Sue. You guys crack me up. Sue, the Drew ref­er­ence was great. I was more of a Three Inves­ti­ga­tors reader, myself.

    Nancy, let me help your writer’s block. Always try to begin with, “It was a dark, stormy night…”

    Bar­ring that, a lot of pos­i­tive ref­er­ences to me: some­thing like “intel­li­gent muse” or “wind beneath wings,” but noth­ing toooo sappy, would do.

    Mad Librar­ian, I saw no rea­son to have to “refute” or “pro­vide evi­dence” about some­thing so obvi­ous. I mean, if a state­ment is made that pla­garism and/or scan­dalous behav­ior is con­fined to and/or the defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment, it seems obvi­ous that it is hyper­bole. With­out irony or humor.

    Gryt­pype Thynne, no problem

  148. Jugomugo said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:06 pm

    Hey, you’ve made the Drudge Report as well!

  149. Mad Librarian said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:06 pm

    Jeff,
    Being new here, I am unaware of the cus­tom­ary lev­els of deco­rum. I’m used to inhab­it­ing the rougher purlieus of left blo­gis­tan, where “f-bombs” are flung with aplomb and wild aban­don. I can make an argu­ment with­out resort­ing to them, though. If I decide to become a reg­u­lar here, I will cer­tainly try to adapt my usage to the appro­pri­ate level.

    OK, fine — pla­gia­rism is a unique prob­lem endemic to the shal­lower waters of the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment gene pool.

    I. Never. Said. That. Never said it was unique.

    Please read what I actu­ally wrote, instead of the straw argu­ment that you think I wrote. Why do you and Danny keep mis­rep­re­sent­ing what I said. Am I speak­ing Choctaw? Is it writ­ten in Devanagari?

    Your pol­i­tics pre­vent you from see­ing it, I guess, but there is some­thing very wrong, sys­tem­i­cally wrong, irre­demably sick and per­verted and bro­ken, with the mod­ern Con­ser­v­a­tive Move­ment as incar­nated in the present Repub­li­can party and exem­pli­fied by George W. Bush, the rot­ten head of the whole putrid fish. That is what I am say­ing. How­ever, your mileage may vary, of course.

  150. Mad Librarian said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:08 pm

    …pla­garism and/or scan­dalous behav­ior is con­fined to and/or the defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic of the con­ser­v­a­tive movement…

    Never. Said. That.

  151. Grytpype Thynne said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:08 pm

    Kafkaz, you sound like Joe Rogan bemoan­ing the pla­gia­rist that is Car­los Men­cia (nee Ned some­thin­gorother), and I agree with both of you.

  152. Grytpype Thynne said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:10 pm

    “Hey, Nance — the pla­gia­rism story just hit Drudge. Alas, no men­tion of the sleuth who uncov­ered it.”

    Hey — this pla­gia­rism thing is really catch­ing on!

  153. Grytpype Thynne said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:11 pm

    “Never. Said. That.”

    The straw Mad did, Mad.

  154. brian stouder said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:11 pm

    Actu­ally, my head is whirling right now

    This expe­ri­ence must be an exquis­ite cock­tail (to con­tinue the early ‘friends at a bar’ anal­ogy, for this place); when you made the dis­cov­ery, and KNEW you had some­thing here — excite­ment! The gen­uine ‘juice’ of being a journalist…and then pub­lish­ing it, and watch­ing the story blaze across the inter­net and into the national news.…and then — what?

    The fel­low — who is get­ting what he deserves, by the way — will always have the word ‘pla­gia­rism’ asso­ci­ated with his name; cer­tainly his $2000/week pay­check is gone, and get­ting another gig like that ain’t in the cards. And — sure, it’s not Ms Nall’s fault (at all), but it does tem­per the gid­di­ness, a bit.

    The best line in Clint Eastwood’s movie Unfor­given is when the kiddo is ask­ing for reas­sur­ance from Clint, that the guys they just shot and killed “had it comin’” — and Clint says some­thing like “We’ve all got it comin’, kid”

    A story like this gives one pause.

  155. Tbogg said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:13 pm

    I was totally going to call him on this but I’ve been so busy on my turn-of-the-century whal­ing adven­ture, Moby Steve, that I never got to it.

    So, good for you Nancy.

  156. Princess Sparkle Pony said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:19 pm

    Bril­liant report­ing, Nancy and all the rest of you. I’m very impressed.

  157. Danny said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:20 pm

    Mad Lib, I do agree that the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment is sick. Just not irre­demably so. As long as there are a few of us who are just as ardent and enthu­si­as­tic for the out­ing of the phonies within our own ranks, it’ll prob­a­bly be okay.

    As for my pol­i­tics pre­vent­ing me from see­ing a truth. I dunno. I try to be real­is­tic. I couldn’t have been hap­pier when they finally caught my con­gress­man tak­ing bribes and he got his 8 year prison term. Slime­ball, he was. And any of us here who iden­tify as con­ser­v­a­tives are pretty happy about Goeglein’s (even­tual) demise.

    Nance, wow, I was won­der­ing if you were going to get men­tioned on Drudge. Big time!

  158. Allen Gathman said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:20 pm

    Not exactly mooor­ree… but although he didn’t pla­gia­rize the col­umn you refer to above as “Odes to Sum­mer”, he did cadge every sin­gle quote in it from a Dart­mouth Review quote page:

    http://​dartre​view​.com/​a​r​c​h​i​v​e​s​/​2​0​0​7​/​0​8​/​0​5​/​t​h​e​_​l​a​s​t​_​w​o​rd.php

    It’s the easy way to appear like you do a lot of reading.

  159. Bullish on Rhubarb said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:21 pm

    This is good news!!! For Hillary!!!!

  160. bergman said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:21 pm

    Just a per­sonal thing about the, what­ever, pil­ing on. I’m a writer. It’s HARD WORK – the caps thing alone is tough enough. I’ve writ­ten lots of bad stuff, some good stuff and a whole lot in between, but I’ve never been tempted to rip any­one off.

    The guy has com­mit­ted a writ­ing offense, noth­ing more, noth­ing less. As much as some of us would like it to be more, or some of us less, that’s really all it is.

    But it’s the worst writ­ing offense, and deserv­ing of cen­sure and shame. AND a bright, white spotlight.

  161. Kafkaz said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:22 pm

    Hah! I had to go find that ref­er­ence, Gryt­pype – now *there’s* some tal­ented f-bomb dropping.

    It offends (or maybe “wounds” is the bet­ter word, there) my inner writer, that’s all.

    High dud­geon with more than tinge of mournfulness.

  162. Danny said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:22 pm

    Brian, that line from Unfor­given is absolutely the best.

  163. 4dbirds said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:24 pm

    Nancy I hope you get an invite to The Daily Show.

  164. WP Denver said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:27 pm

    Great work, Nance. Salon also has it now:
    http://​www​.salon​.com/​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​w​a​r​_room/

  165. Sue said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:29 pm

    Oh my God! The Daily Show! That would be so fab­u­lous! Which one(s) of your loyal read­ers are you going to casu­ally men­tion? Have I told you lately how very much I admire you?

  166. Cathy D. said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:30 pm

    Run­ning list of references…long and get­ting longer»

  167. Danny said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:31 pm

    Nance, the arti­cle linked to at Drudge does have attribution:

    Goeglein’s action was brought to light in a post­ing by a blog­ger, Nancy Nall.

  168. Mad Librarian said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:32 pm

    Mad Lib, I do agree that the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment is sick. Just not irre­demably so. As long as there are a few of us who are just as ardent and enthu­si­as­tic for the out­ing of the phonies within our own ranks, it’ll prob­a­bly be okay.

    ‘Tis damn glad to hear it, I am. And may your tribe increase! If there were more like you (and intel­lec­tu­ally hon­est recov­er­ing con­ser­v­a­tives like John Cole), we’d be a lot bet­ter off.

    Now I think I’d bet­ter go and do some actual “work” at my “job”.

  169. brian stouder said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:32 pm

    WP Den­ver — great link! They might fix it, but the OPENING para­graph at Salon is

    Fri­day morn­ing, Tim­o­thy Goe­glein, a spe­cial assis­tant to Pres­i­dent Bush and deputy direc­tor of the Office of Pub­lic Liai­son, admit­ted that he pla­gia­rized a lengthy por­tion of a recent col­umn he wrote for the Fort Wayne Jour­nal Gazette.

    haha­ha­ha­ha­ha­ha­haha!!!

    The News-Sentinel might say “Nall? Never heard of her” — and then karma (or Salon!) lists their arch-rival as the agrieved party!

  170. Dorothy said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:34 pm

    Who’s up for a trip to be in the audi­ence when Madam Telling Tales sits in the visitor’s chair on The Daily Show?? Should we all get match­ing tee shirts that “We Knew Nancy Before She Was Scoop”??

  171. Matt Mendelsohn said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:36 pm

    Some­one already cited the piece by Goe­glein titled “Remem­ber Puri­tan Roots of Lib­erty,” which appears to have been taken down by the News Sen­tinel. But in a blog cri­tique of that piece pub­lished in July, 2005, Goe­glein is quoted as hav­ing writ­ten, “Pope John Paul II, a great friend of Amer­ica and him­self a great advo­cate for human free­dom, required only a decade to demon­strate how much more pow­er­ful is faith in God than the banal­i­ties of dialec­ti­cal mate­ri­al­ism. This is not unre­lated to our own national sense of per­sonal free­dom and dig­nity. Pre­pon­der­antly, the forces of free­dom favor the devout rather than a bright idyll of ratio­nal human­ism. Sec­u­lar­ism cre­ates a cul­ture of almost mys­ti­cal triviality.”

    I took that last unique phrase – “cul­ture of almost mys­ti­cal triv­i­al­ity”– and Googled it and found a blog which dis­cusses the con­tents of the June, 2005 (one month ear­lier) issue of The New Cri­te­rion. In his review of that issue, Thomas C. Reeves writes, “David B. Hart, one of the great reli­gious thinkers of our day, reviews a book on the rise and fall of athe­ism in the West. Hart com­ments, “…rather than a bright idyll of ratio­nal human­ism, sec­u­lar­ism cre­ates a cul­ture of almost mys­ti­cal triviality…”

    The link for the first site is:

    http://www.brilliantmediocrity.com/?serendipity%5Baction%5D=search&serendipity%5BsearchTerm%5D=strappado

    The link for the sec­ond site is:

    http://​hnn​.us/​b​l​o​g​s​/​e​n​t​r​i​e​s​/​1​3​4​8​9.html

    Since I can’t find the orig­i­nal News Sen­tinel col­umn I can only rely on the truth­ful­ness of that blog cri­tique of it by “Chris” at http://​www​.bril​liantmedi​oc​rity​.com

    Per­haps some­one with bet­ter Googling skills can help me out. Or per­haps the News Sen­tinel can look in their own archives.

    Best,

    Matt Mendel­sohn

  172. harry near indy said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:36 pm

    to nancy and every­one else,

    won­kette has cited nancy’s take down of goeglin. since i don’t know how to do html, just go to won​kette​.com and go from there.

    great snark from won­kette, iirc:

    so goeglein’s been googled?”

  173. Sue said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:37 pm

    I’ll bet she could hold her own against Stephen Col­bert, too.

  174. Marilyn Tarnowski said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:41 pm

    Not every news­pa­per is as con­cerned over pla­gia­rism as it should be. The Char­lotte Sun (Port Char­lotte, Fla.) has built a small fam­ily empire out of the prac­tice — and I have con­structed a blog devoted almost entirely to point­ing out this out. The Sun needs a new writer’s title: Staff Pla­gia­rist.
    Why do it? Because it’s cheap and easy to get novices and the unscrupu­lous to write (not that Goe­glein is a novice); it’s eas­ier to ignore than check; and in the end, there’s no penalty for pla­gia­rism unless a source or the news­pa­per chooses to retal­i­ate — rare events both. In fact, it’s eas­ier for the news­pa­per to ignore the infrac­tion that go through the pub­lic embar­rass­ment of vet­ting old columns, fir­ing the creep, and mak­ing a pub­lic apol­ogy — at least that’s the de facto pol­icy at the Char­lotte Sun-Herald.
    http://​www​.old​word​wolf​.blogspot​.com

  175. Cathy D. said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:43 pm

    From Editor&Publisher (via CNET blogs):
    “The prob­lem is: More exam­ples have now been iden­ti­fied at The Wash­ing­ton Post and New York Sun, with fur­ther searches (includ­ing at the News-Sentinel) just start­ing. As recently as Wednes­day, Goe­glein wrote a trib­ute to the late William F. Buck­ley for the National Review site.”

  176. alex said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:46 pm

    Hey, Nance, you finally got attri­bu­tion in the News-Sentinel. By way of the AP, but anyhoo…

    http://​fort​wayne​.com/​a​p​p​s​/​p​b​c​s​.​d​l​l​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​?​A​I​D​=​/​S​E​/​2​0​0​8​0​2​2​9​/​N​E​W​S​/​8​0​2​290345

  177. David Mastio said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:51 pm

    kafkaz … re: “fore­taste of heaven” — that’s why I wrote “dubious” — when you add “friend­ship is a fore­taste of heaven” it becomes a lit­tle more dubi­ous. And its the first line of his piece on WFB. With all that has been exposed here today, I didn’t think it worth the effort to research beyond the first line, adding it to the pile for oth­ers more enthu­si­as­tic for the chase.

    Regard­less, if any­one on the planet deserved some­thing bet­ter that a “com­mon­place” to lead off a trib­ute, it was WFB.

  178. Jonathan Tankel said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:53 pm

    Hi Nancy:

    What’s up? Remem­ber me?

    Jonathan Tankel
    still at IPFW

    Linked through Huff Post. And that was the sec­ond national link. Nice job.

  179. Cathy D. said on February 29th, 2008 at 3:54 pm

    And it spreads around the world:
    White House Aide Accused of Pla­garism
    Guardian, UK
    Tim­o­thy Goe­glein, who has worked for Pres­i­dent Bush since 2001, was accused of lift­ing mate­r­ial from an essay that appeared in a Dart­mouth College …

  180. DJMurphy said on February 29th, 2008 at 4:00 pm

    Is there noth­ing admirable about this White House and its staff?

  181. Gena Taylor said on February 29th, 2008 at 4:08 pm

    Yep — AP and on the home­page of the NYT!

  182. Danny said on February 29th, 2008 at 4:08 pm

    Yes. Tony Snow.

  183. Wally Wilson said on February 29th, 2008 at 4:14 pm

    Jeff (above) asks the ques­tion, “What level of will­ful stu­pid­ity does it take,” and I can only empha­size his right­ful asser­tion of “will­ful stu­pid­ity.” This leaves me sick in the seat of every cre­ative thing I have ever done, ever read, ever won­dered at, or ever enjoyed.

    What kind of “think­ing” allows a per­son to ratio­nal­ize the theft of oth­ers’ cre­ativ­ity? Is this non-attributive act of aggres­sion indica­tive of a false sense of enti­tle­ment? Or, is this merely another act of polit­i­cal expe­di­ency with­out regard for consequences?

    For the life of me, I can­not under­stand why peo­ple do these things. Excel­lent catch of yet another verburglar.

  184. Timmer said on February 29th, 2008 at 4:20 pm

    Tony Snow?!

  185. jcburns said on February 29th, 2008 at 4:21 pm

    What a per­fect Fri­day story…gonna watch and see what the main­stream folks (Shields and Brooks on the New­sHour? CNN’s Reli­able Sources? Olber­mann?) have to say as they ful­mi­nate over the week­end. (UPDATE: 4:32 pm: the story hits CNN’s Sit­u­a­tion Room.)

    Nancy, you should be (and I know you are) as proud of your read­ers as you are of this post. The inter­ac­tion and the will­ing­ness to pick up the baton and go see what they can find through their friendly neigh­bor­hood search engine…and then talk about it intel­li­gently from a spec­trum of polit­i­cal points of view — that’s why it’s nice hav­ing this site pro­vide fine car­diac exer­cise for our ven­er­a­ble rag­tag server.

  186. Nancy said on February 29th, 2008 at 4:22 pm

    Nancy “Drew” Nall… you go girl. I’m sure you will be get­ting a call from The Daily Show soon.

    Well done!

  187. Cathy D. said on February 29th, 2008 at 4:23 pm

    Wow Nancy…over 200 sto­ries found by Google at 4:20 p.m.

  188. Emma said on February 29th, 2008 at 4:31 pm

    Nancy Nall, stir­ring the turd. I miss work­ing with you.

  189. James said on February 29th, 2008 at 4:37 pm

    Nance.

    You just made “The Sit­u­a­tion Room” on CNN.

    “Just Break­ing” news, indeed…

  190. Steve said on February 29th, 2008 at 4:38 pm

    Nancy Nall, I miss work­ing across the hall from you

  191. Jeff said on February 29th, 2008 at 4:40 pm

    Mad Librar­ian — 

    Looks like you and Danny found the com­mon ground i was look­ing for, re: our desire in the con­ser­v­a­tive camp to keep the trash packed out of the back­coun­try and prop­erly buried. Didn’t mean to mis­char­ac­ter­ize you, it’s just that between these two state­ments: “Never said it was unique…(to the Con­ser­v­a­tive Move­ment)” and “there is some­thing very wrong, sys­tem­i­cally wrong, irre­demably sick and per­verted and bro­ken, with the mod­ern Con­ser­v­a­tive Move­ment” i don’t see the distinction.

    Love the Devana­gari ref’n — this why the inter­nets is so fun! May the tribe of Librar­i­ans (and their cousins the media spe­cial­ists) increase, they be mad, lib­eral, or four-years-aged-in-oak.

  192. The Teacher’s Mailroom : Don’t Touch ‘Em! said on February 29th, 2008 at 4:47 pm

    […] Feb­ru­ary 29th, 2008 by admin in Florida News No Tags First, Michi­gan free­lance writer Nancy Nall stum­bled on evi­dence of pla­gia­rism by Tim Goe­glein — who is the “the White House’s point man with evangelical […]

  193. Lynn said on February 29th, 2008 at 4:47 pm

    How strange and awe­some to be catch­ing up on a lit­tle Salon and to see “Goeglein’s admis­sion comes after blog­ger Nancy Nall alleged that he had lifted entire pas­sages of the col­umn…” I’m hav­ing a lit­tle thrill of celebrity here: her kid was in my sto­ry­time at the library! We do miss you in FW, but that a great catch like this makes it back to us is small solace.

  194. Danny said on February 29th, 2008 at 4:49 pm

    Dorothy, I thought you were sup­posed to be keep­ing an eye on CNN. How did you just let your­self get scooped by James?

  195. Howie said on February 29th, 2008 at 4:56 pm

    Nancy — i was out all day and just spent an hour catch­ing up. Nice find and nice writ­ing. This will be fun to watch it all play out.

  196. Ennealogic said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:00 pm

    What a delight­ful find! No, not Tim’s pla­gia­rism, as scrump­tious an out­ing as it is, but this blog. It’s linked from a com­ment on ThinkProgress’s story about Bush Library Donors which is how I found it. Hope you don’t mind if I visit now and then.

    Gah, I wish I could write! What a joy to read most of the com­ments here!

  197. David Mastio said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:01 pm

    More from the WFB tribute:

    from http://​www​.catholi​cism​.org/​i​n​d​e​x​.​p​h​p​?​id=739

    “Here is Sis­ter Marie Aquinas’ resume of Cicero’s ideas:
    ’Cicero defined friend­ship as an ACCORD OF WILLS, TASTES, AND THOUGHTS as a har­mo­nious agree­ment in all mat­ters, divine and human, ACCOMPANIED BY MUTUAL GOODWILL AND AFFECTION.’ ”

    The White House “Ver­bur­glar” at nation​al​re​view​.com:

    “We will remem­ber our dear friend who so gen­er­ously and con­sis­tently and will­ingly, over many years, gave us a fore­taste of heaven by his fun, his wit­ti­cisms, his seri­ous­ness about seri­ous things, his patri­o­tism, his verve, his … the list is end­less. Above all, he gave his love and friend­ship, A PERFECT AGREEMENT OF WILLS, TASTES, AND THOUGHTS ACCOMPANIED BY A BENEVOLENCE AND AFFECTION WITHOUT PEER.”

    I’d put this more in the bor­der­line cat­e­gory. Maybe in more edu­cated cir­cles para­phras­ing Cicero is obvi­ous in a way that doesn’t require a nod. Still, it does make you won­der whether he every writes any­thing in his own words.

    I won­der whether for­mer Indi­ana Sen­a­tor Dan Coats should be check­ing any op-eds or speeches that Goe­glein helped write as his spokesman?

  198. ashley said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:04 pm

    And now at CNN. Read it, and watch the spin cycle begin.

    In the CNN arti­cle, Hart claims he received an email apol­ogy from Goe­glein on THURSDAY.

    Bull­shit. Bull­shit. Bullshit.

    That would mean that he was apolo­getic before Nancy’s discovery.

    Bull­shit.

  199. alex said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:06 pm

    I knew every­thing out of Sen­a­tor Coats’ mouth was phony. Aha!

  200. Gary S. said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:11 pm

    Hey Nancy,

    Great Job! Yet another chink in GOP’s care­fully nur­tured and cul­ti­vated Moral Supe­ri­or­ity complex.

    Now, it’d be great if one could gain access to some of Goeblien’s inter­nal WH memos. I won­der how much has Goe­blein, whose name in Ger­man could be loosely inter­preted as “Lit­tle Goebbels”, pla­gia­rized from Papa Goebbels’s writ­ings — in his day job as direc­tor of the WH’s Office of Pub­lic Liaison.

    Of course, in the mod­ern Bushist/Rovian GOP cir­cles lift­ing from the Great Josef’s (both Goebbels and Stalin) is not con­sid­ered pla­gia­rism: it’s merely a trans­la­tion of core Party documents…

  201. Sue said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:14 pm

    Ash­ley: Plus, Hart stated that he was flat­tered by it. Can you explain why he only would have con­sid­ered deal­ing with it if it were in an “aca­d­e­mic context”?

  202. alex said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:15 pm

    Actu­ally, Nance gave the news­pa­per the heads up on Thurs­day that she’d be writ­ing about this. A very decent and hon­or­able thing to do for your for­mer employer.

  203. Rick T. said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:21 pm

    Absolutely hilar­i­ous sit­u­a­tion. I used to work with Tim Goe­glein at Coney. It will be inter­est­ing to see how this plays out. I’m guess­ing his polit­i­cal ambi­tions have just taken quite a hit. This is more fun with the N-S than I’ve had since I got to write the story about the cat that painted mod­ern art

  204. Leap Thoughts « Notes from Stonesthrow said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:21 pm

    […] a story I’ve been fol­low­ing all day about a White House staffer pla­gia­riz­ing in a news­pa­per (this post started it all). A lot. What is inter­est­ing to me in the aca­d­e­mic hand-wringing about Google and […]

  205. Kim said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:25 pm

    Re: Friend­ship, foretaste

    Looks like he may have cribbed the line, which then segues into a CS Lewis-ism, from a cam­pus min­is­ter at Cor­nell U’s reflec­tions at a recent memo­r­ial ser­vice.

    Tim, you should be ashamed of your ser­ial steal­ing self. I believe the com­mand­ments you so fer­vently dis­cuss con­sider tak­ing another’s words and pass­ing them off as your own a sort of thievery.

    Ash­ley, I won­der if all these other vic­tims got apolo­gies in advance of outing.

  206. Orion said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:26 pm

    Con­grat­u­la­tions on your 15 mini­utes of fame. Well done. It’s not in the same class as, say, reveal­ing Dan Rather’s fake Texas Air National Guard memos but it’s up there in that league.

  207. nancy said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:28 pm

    Offi­cial word from The News-Sentinel:

    We reported what we knew online Fri­day. As in the case three years ago, we used the Inter­net search engine Google to check other Goe­glein columns from the past and found pla­gia­rism in sev­eral — 19 at last count. That means Goe­glein lifted whole pas­sages from other sources and mis­rep­re­sented them as his own.

    Nine­teen. (!!!) Sort of qual­i­fies for the “every word is a lie, includ­ing ‘and’ and ‘the’” test, doesn’t it?

  208. Danny said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:30 pm

    …that’s why it’s nice hav­ing this site pro­vide fine car­diac exer­cise for our ven­er­a­ble rag­tag server.

    jc, have you ever heard of the slash­dot effect? I reg­u­larly read slash­dot and when a story gets linked to a server that is not up to the task, it is reck­oned that it is left in a smok­ing pile of ashes.

  209. ashley said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:30 pm

    News­flash: God and the admin­is­tra­tion have already for­given Goe­glein, and he’s going to “move forward”.

    At least, I lay 200:1 that’s what we’ll see in a day or so.

  210. Dorothy said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:32 pm

    Ah rats, Danny, you outed me: I’ve become a closet Scrab­u­lous freak. Any­one for a game???

  211. Mad Librarian said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:32 pm

    Jeff,
    I’m glad we have some com­mon ground, too. If I’m some­times intem­per­ate in my speech, it’s only because I love my coun­try and hate see­ing what is being done to it (yes, I – a lib­eral!!!) by the Bushisti.

    …it’s just that between these two state­ments: “Never said it was unique…(to the Con­ser­v­a­tive Move­ment)” and “there is some­thing very wrong, sys­tem­i­cally wrong, irre­demably sick and per­verted and bro­ken, with the mod­ern Con­ser­v­a­tive Move­ment” i don’t see the distinction.

    I think the dis­tinc­tion is between the intel­lec­tu­ally hon­est con­ser­v­a­tives (like you and Danny), and the devo­tees of the Bush Cargo Cult, the Nuke Tehran to Bring on the Rap­ture boys (like the “Rev.” Hagee who just endorsed McCain), and other assorted Dead Enders and Real­ity Denial­ists. To clar­ify, that is what I meant by the “mod­ern Con­ser­v­a­tive Move­ment”. If you and I can agree on large chunks of what con­sti­tutes real­ity, I’ve got no prob­lem with you, even though we may dis­agree on spe­cific policies.

    Gary S.,

    Loved that bit about “Lit­tle Goebbels”. Wish I’d pla­gia­rized that, myself. ;-)

  212. Henry Holland said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:32 pm

    Frankly, I’m more wor­ried that you wrote “deceased oper­atic com­posers” than any pla­gia­rism by this nonen­tity. It’s “deceased opera com­posers”. Menotti wrote operas, he didn’t write music operatically.

  213. Sue said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:34 pm

    Given that Nancy said that Mr. Goe­glein wrote columns about his par­ents’ mar­riage, I think his imme­di­ate fam­ily mem­bers should begin check­ing their high school and col­lege essays, Christ­mas newslet­ters and pos­si­bly gro­cery lists for sus­pi­cious similarities.

  214. Jeff said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:34 pm

    I wanna see the weasel’s resume. I’ll bet you a Jef­fer­son buf­falo nickle there’s more cre­ative spark in that tin­der than in any of his “columns.”

    And thanks for dirty­ing up the con­cept of “col­umn” for us, Timbo. But a good reminder to those of us who write them reg­u­larly that a lame for­mu­la­tion (or just cut­ting it a graf short if the edi­tor doesn’t mind) is bet­ter than being a thief.

  215. jcburns said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:34 pm

    Yes Danny, that’s why I’ve spent the day in the dig­i­tal equiv­a­lent of the engine room, mon­i­tor­ing the valves and levers and creaky gauges. We’re hang­ing in there. For­tu­nately, Nancy’s exposé didn’t touch on some­one really famous to peo­ple who hold mice and stare at screens all day, like Linus Tor­valds, Steve Jobs, or Steve Ballmer.

  216. ashley said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:35 pm

    “Can you explain why he only would have con­sid­ered deal­ing with it if it were in an “aca­d­e­mic context”?”

    My guess is that Hart isn’t view­ing this as a case of aca­d­e­mic rivalry, but rather one neo­con help­ing out another neo­con. As long as their end goal is fur­ther­ing the cause, it’s excus­able. Thats my guess.

    I want the other vic­tims of Goeglein’s pla­gia­rism to sue the News-Sentinel.

  217. del said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:35 pm

    Just a snark, but the plagiarism’s not the half of it — it’s the con­tent of trea­cle that stirred Nancy’s jour­nal­is­tic instincts. That was the crime. Nancy knew it stunk, and there was some­thing not-right about it, so she did what any good, no GREAT jour­nal­ist would do and investigated.

  218. Kirk said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:36 pm

    Oops. News-Sentinel says it’s up to 20 now.

  219. Jeff said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:36 pm

    Last com­ment from me on Leap Day: “I love the smell of over­loaded server in the morn­ing — it smells like … justice!”

    (See, trite, but original.)

  220. Gary S. said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:39 pm

    Ok, the story is now every­where on the net — authored by AP (its WH flak Ter­rence Hunt gets the byline), and with full attri­bu­tion to Nancy incl. a link to her web site. Here’s the link to the story as seen on Yahoo news.

    http://​news​.yahoo​.com/​s​/​a​p​/​2​0​0​8​0​2​2​9​/​a​p​_​o​n​_​g​o​_​p​r​_​w​h​/​w​h​i​t​e​_​h​o​u​s​e​_​p​l​a​g​iarism

    Bravo, Nancy. Well done!

  221. ashley said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:40 pm

    The News-Sentinel is really a bas­tion of jour­nal­is­tic pro­fes­sion­al­ism, eh?

    “We truly apol­o­gize to you for this breech of trust in the accu­racy and hon­esty of what you read in this news­pa­per.”

    Breech? Like I care about Goeglein’s wardrobe.

    Breach, maybe.

  222. Matt Mendelsohn said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:42 pm

    Wow, talk about bury­ing the lede. It’s not until the third graf – and then, almost like an after­thought – that the News-Sentinel let’s it’s read­ers know that this guy hap­pens to work for the pres­i­dent of the United States and is the White House point per­son on all things devout and holy. Another non-newspaper employee, they say! It’s like the Mitchell Report say­ing, “…and some other pitch­ers, includ­ing Roger Clemens.”

    About three years ago a reader noti­fied The News-Sentinel that a free­lance writer we had been using was guilty of pla­gia­rism. That is, he was mis­rep­re­sent­ing oth­ers’ words as his own. Free­lancers are not news­pa­per employ­ees, but some­one whose sto­ries we con­tract to purchase.

    We found that three arti­cles the free­lance writer had sub­mit­ted to us as his own orig­i­nal work con­tained whole pas­sages from other news­pa­pers and sources with­out attri­bu­tion. Our response, then, was to pub­lish a story by our edi­tor at the time that explained what hap­pened, explained our pol­icy and response and apol­o­gized to the read­ers for the writer’s mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tion. And, of course, the writer was not used again.

    It has hap­pened again by another non-newspaper employee. Fort Wayne native Tim­o­thy S. Goe­glein, spe­cial assis­tant to the pres­i­dent of the United States, has sub­mit­ted what we call guest columns to this news­pa­per for the past decade, writ­ing about a vari­ety of subjects.

  223. grytpype thynne said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:43 pm

    “Well done. It’s not in the same class as, say, reveal­ing Dan Rather’s fake Texas Air National Guard memos but it’s up there in that league.”

    Great anal­ogy — in both cases the writ­ing itself was fake even though the under­ly­ing sen­ti­ment was true.

  224. J.T. said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:43 pm

    The plot thick­ens once you rec­og­nize the source of Jef­frey Hart’s cen­tral dis­tinc­tion, which he lifts with­out attri­bu­tion from Matthew Arnold’s “Hebraism and Hellenism”:

    … Hebraism and Hellenism, — between these two points of influ­ence moves our world. At one time it feels more pow­er­fully the attrac­tion of one of them, at another time of the other; and
    it ought to be, though it never is, evenly and hap­pily
    bal­anced between them.
    The final aim of both Hel­lenism and Hebraism, as of all great spir­i­tual dis­ci­plines, is no doubt the same:man’s per­fec­tion or sal­va­tion.… Still, they pur­sue this aim by very dif­fer­ent courses.The upper­most idea with Hel­lenism is to see things as they really are; the upper­most idea with Hebraism is con­duct and obedience …

    Hart returns (silently) to the scene of the crime with that offhanded ref­er­ence to “the best that has been said” etc, which is from another essay of Arnold (“The Func­tion of Crit­i­cism”); either poor cita­tion man­ners or sim­ply lousy schol­ar­ship. Or worse.

    Arnold’s essay was orig­i­nally pub­lished in 1869, in his ‘Cul­ture and Anar­chy’; my copy is from my beat-up edi­tion of ‘Matthew Arnold: Prose and Poetry’ (Scribner’s, 1927) .

  225. del said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:44 pm

    Orion, this is a hel­luva lot bet­ter than the Dan Rather mess.

  226. Cowpatty said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:46 pm

    Typ­i­cal; I hope he gets fired and sued.

  227. grytpype thynne said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:46 pm

    “which then segues into a CS Lewis-ism”

    Shite! This liberal’s favorite atheist-cum-theologian!

  228. grytpype thynne said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:49 pm

    “Plus, Hart stated that he was flat­tered by it. Can you explain why he only would have con­sid­ered deal­ing with it if it were in an “aca­d­e­mic context”?”

    Because he and Goe­glein are on the same “team”??

  229. Jonathan Maze said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:49 pm

    I can’t believe they didn’t men­tion your name. Pathetic.

    Did you see this?

    http://​www​.news​-sen​tinel​.com/​a​p​p​s​/​p​b​c​s​.​d​l​l​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​?​A​I​D​=​/​2​0​0​8​0​2​2​9​/​N​E​W​S​/​8​0​2​290342

  230. grytpype thynne said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:50 pm

    Gary s at 5:11

    Just peed myself.

  231. Ray said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:53 pm

    Ash­ley, you’re think­ing of a “breech­cloth”. The “breech” accord­ing to Amer­i­can Her­itage online:

    1. The lower rear por­tion of the human trunk; the buttocks.

    In which case “breech of trust” is not far off the mark. I imag­ine the News-Sentinel stands by its apology.

  232. Dorothy said on February 29th, 2008 at 5:59 pm

    Google shows 1 — 20 of 773 links when you search “Nancy+Nall+Goeglein”

  233. Rtqii said on February 29th, 2008 at 6:01 pm

    I am not sur­prised. Bush speech­writ­ers have been pla­gia­riz­ing old Goebbels speeches since day one (for real).

  234. John said on February 29th, 2008 at 6:03 pm

    Poor Tim. We should be less hard on him. With all the work he has to do in the WH, he obvi­ously doesn’t have time to think for him­self. It seems clear, though, that he has mas­tered the MS Word hot keys [ctrl]-C and [ctrl]-V.
    Most of the lifted mate­r­ial is so sim­i­lar to the orig­i­nal that I doubt that he had time even to read the stuff. Most likely had to take advan­tage of “Find and Replace,” as well. Again, work­ing at the WH has to be a killer.

  235. Masson’s Blog - A Citizen’s Guide to Indiana » Nancy Nall Nails Hoosier White House Plagiarist said on February 29th, 2008 at 6:04 pm

    […] Nall Nails Hoosier White House Pla­gia­rist By Doug Nancy Nall has a post that thor­oughly takes down White House Aide and Fort Wayne News Sen­tinel colum­nist Tim Goe­glein for […]

  236. Ragebot | Now That’s Plagiarism said on February 29th, 2008 at 6:14 pm

    […] Mitch Harper of Fort Wayne, Observed says his blog is a friend to both Goe­glein and the blog­ger who caught Goe­glein by googling his work (well, actu­ally not really his work), blog­ger Nancy Nall. Harper sums up how […]

  237. MonkeyBoy said on February 29th, 2008 at 6:47 pm

    Town­hall is now say­ing that Goe­glein has resigned.

  238. Mike said on February 29th, 2008 at 6:54 pm

  239. MonkeyBoy said on February 29th, 2008 at 6:57 pm

    White House state­ment: “Pres­i­dent Bush accepted Tim’s res­ig­na­tion today.”

  240. Kirk said on February 29th, 2008 at 7:03 pm

    Way to go, Nancy! A slime­ball plagiarist’s scalp for your belt, well-earned.

  241. Ken said on February 29th, 2008 at 7:14 pm

    Ezra, one of my co-bloggers, said “I thought it was in bad taste to sug­gest in his res­ig­na­tion that ‘you won’t have Tim­o­thy Goe­glein to kick around anymore.’”

  242. Ted said on February 29th, 2008 at 7:20 pm

    Hi Nancy,

    I am won­der­ing if you can share some infor­ma­tion on Tim­o­thy Goeglein.

    I am a Fort Wayne native liv­ing on the west coast (Left Coast to my par­ents back in Ft. Wayne!) and saw the story in national news. I fell over when I saw the con­nec­tion of Goe­glein to the News Senti­nal. Can you pro­vide some bio infor­ma­tion on him if he is from Ft. Wayne. I am try­ing to fig­ure out if he is a Fort Wayne native, and how old he is, etc. I grew up hang­ing out with a kid named Tim­o­thy Goe­glein that lived across Maysville Rd. from the Goeglein’s Barn Recep­tion Hall which his fam­ily owned and oper­ated. I am just try­ing to get all of my right wing infor­ma­tion down for the next din­ner at the fam­ily table when I am back in the Fort. Also, glad to see you are still writ­ing. I am out here and out of touch, but your name rang an instant bell of cred­i­bil­ity when I saw it. Keep up your good work, and thanks!!!

  243. Gary S. said on February 29th, 2008 at 7:27 pm

    Let me amend my above com­ment (from 5:39pm) — this story is NOT everywhere.

    You won’t find a men­tion of it on the major con­ser­v­a­tive blogs. I quickly skimmed through hard­core Wingnut­tia (NRO’s The Cor­ner, Red State, Power Line) and Wingnuttia-light (InstaPutz, bare­back­ing Andy, Politico), and, as of 7:00pm EST, not a word!

    As I write this, Newsweek/AP reports that Goe­blein has resigned. Ah, so many inno­cent vic­tims of the vicious lib­eral blog­ger attack machine. Is there enough room in the GOP Pan­theon for all these “fallen heroes” ?

    P.S. Does any­one keep a com­plete scalp count ?

    P.P.S. Any guesses on which GOP mouth­piece or “think tank” will ben­e­fit from Goeblein’s sud­den “avail­abil­ity” ? My bet is on WashTimes.

  244. Bonnie Blackburn said on February 29th, 2008 at 7:30 pm

    Nice job Nancy — from one who know and remembers…

  245. Crabby said on February 29th, 2008 at 7:37 pm

    Nice catch, Nancy!

  246. MonkeyBoy said on February 29th, 2008 at 7:43 pm

    Any­body notice the social sta­tus games going on here?

    Goe­glein wants to be con­sid­ered a Big Impor­tant Per­son like (William F. Buck­ley) and signs his columns Tim­o­thy Goe­glein.

    The White House press release refers to him as Tim Goe­glein or just Tim. Notice the power dif­fer­en­tial of names in the real meat of the story: Pres­i­dent Bush accepted Tim’s res­ig­na­tion today.

    At least the WH did not call him our boy, Timmy.

  247. Brian Schmidt said on February 29th, 2008 at 7:44 pm

    Kind of petty of the White House to not hat-tip Nancy. Where’s their inter­net etiquette?

  248. Kafkaz said on February 29th, 2008 at 8:10 pm

    “Fore­taste of Heaven”

    Well, since it is such a com­mon­place of a phrase (per­haps itself a “C.S. Lewis-ism”, as Kim so aptly puts it above, though I’ve seen more than one writer, includ­ing Lewis, cited as the orig­i­nal source), you’re going to find it in com­bi­na­tion with all sorts of good things: love, friend­ship, sex, humor, even choco­late. (Not nec­es­sar­ily in that order, but all things that can be fun, both in and of them­selves and in com­bi­na­tion, in any case.) And, of course, you find it com­bined with reli­gious things of every stripe, as well, so that prayer, com­mu­nion, the spirit, and the church itself are all “fore­tastes of heaven.”

    Per­son­ally, I’d go with the love, friend­ship, sex, humor, choco­late combo, if given the oppor­tu­nity to define my heaven, but (fore)tastes do vary.

    David, nat­u­rally a heart­felt eulogy would always be prefer­able to some vanilla send­off, but then again eulo­gies are one of the most com­mon places to find, ta da, com­mon­places. Births, birth­days, grad­u­a­tions, wed­dings, deaths – all key times when peo­ple most des­per­ately want to say the fresh and mem­o­rable thing, but all times when the weight of the event (these are all moments that are both cen­trally sig­nif­i­cant and end­lessly repeated) itself makes escap­ing the trite darned hard.

    My per­sonal favorite to crib when encoun­ter­ing a new baby: “Now *that’s* a baby!”

  249. behindthefall said on February 29th, 2008 at 8:16 pm

    May I come over and play occa­sion­ally? I like the tone of the blog, and the time might come when I want to com­ment, so per­haps if you could just vet me ahead of time … I promise to behave. I’m usu­ally over at FDL. Emp­ty­wheel tol­er­ates me — although IANAL.

  250. Terry said on February 29th, 2008 at 8:17 pm

    Picked up by BBC (w/ NN credit):
    http://​news​.bbc​.co​.uk/​1​/​h​i​/​w​o​r​l​d​/​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​s​/​7​2​7​2​2​12.stm

  251. MonkeyBoy said on February 29th, 2008 at 8:26 pm

    From perus­ing NS’s list of 20 pla­gia­rized columns, I can only con­clude that prac­ti­cally nobody read them.

    Only peo­ple on the right wing would want to read them, but of such read­ers none read very widely or else they might of rec­og­nized some of the month old right wing sources he cribbed from. Or maybe his read­ers were going senile.

  252. Jude said on February 29th, 2008 at 8:37 pm

    Con­grat­u­la­tions, Nancy.

    You are a bea­con of hope for us all. We can shake up the biggest estab­lish­ments in the world, and all we need is a blog! ;p

  253. Don said on February 29th, 2008 at 8:53 pm

    Nancy, Fan­tas­tic work in expos­ing yet another hyp­o­crit­i­cal political-type. But, I don’t know what to quite make of this sit­u­a­tion. I was close friends with Tim in high school (Paul Hard­ing, class of 82) but have not had con­tact with him in 20+ years. Yeah, he appears to be another right-wing hack job. Since I no longer live in Ft. Wayne I have not seen any of his columns and as I said I have not had con­tact with him in over 20 years. I have caught part of a pre­sen­ta­tion he did on C-SPAN and knew that he was a Bushie doing the reli­gious right’s bid­ding. But, I also knew Tim when he was 16 and he expressed con­cern about neo-nazis hav­ing the right to march in Skokie or about unrest in far off lands. (I was wor­ried about gym class and zits and couldn’t even com­pre­hend some of the things Tim was think­ing about.) He obvi­ously had ambi­tion from an early age (I think I met him when we were about 13) and he cared a lot about his fam­ily and issues back then. If I wasn’t such a lunkhead maybe he could have got me to think about some lofty issues as well. Unfor­tu­nately, he threw his lot in with Bush & Co. and his ambi­tions, per­sonal and/or polit­i­cal, got the best of him. Any­way, he brought the cur­rent prob­lems on him­self. But, my ini­tial delight in see­ing yet another White House staffer get exposed for wrong-doing is tem­pered by remem­brances of the guy I knew 25 years ago. But, that guy did a really stu­pid thing. I’m not sure why.

    My hat’s off to you Nancy for writ­ing a superb entry on this matter.

  254. Blogger Takes Down White House Aide said on February 29th, 2008 at 9:00 pm

    […] is damn yaya-papaya? We might have to “wait long long”. But this inspir­ing news about blog­ger Nancy Nall vs White House aide Tim­o­thy Goe­glein gives us hope. A pub­lic rela­tions aide to US Pres­i­dent George […]

  255. Kim said on February 29th, 2008 at 9:01 pm

    “Now that’s a baby!”

    Now that’s hilarious!

    My lede for the FWNS story:

    Thanks to the dozen or so key­strokes of a for­mer colum­nist, the FWNS has launched an inves­ti­ga­tion that has revealed native son and White House min­ion Tim(othy) Goe­glein stole the work of oth­ers for more than half the columns he sub­mit­ted to this paper.

    Nancy Nall, a colum­nist until she left for a fel­low­ship some jour­nal­ists con­sider pres­ti­gious, revealed in a blog she writes from her lovely Michi­gan home (and occa­sion­ally on the road, but only if it’s impor­tant or funny) that Mr. Goe­glein, whose par­ents still live in The Fort, really doesn’t write the way he speaks. Well, he does, but he takes the writ­ten words of oth­ers, then appar­ently uses that as his script for life.

    But that is beside the point. We at the FWNS want to assure read­ers that these columns were nei­ther solicited nor paid for by the FWNS. In other words, we ran them because they were free. And because Mr. Goe­glein kept send­ing them every month and, you know, he’s at the White House, which lends a cer­tain fore­taste of grav­i­tas — you know, an appe­tizer of substance.

    So, any­way, we regret that Mr. Goe­glein made these errors. But, like we said, they were his errors and you should feel assured that the FWNS remains your trusted news source.

  256. commie atheist said on February 29th, 2008 at 9:02 pm

    In case you haven’t seen it…

    http://​www​.white​house​.gov/​n​e​w​s​/​r​e​l​e​a​s​e​s​/​2​0​0​8​/​0​2​/​2​0​080229 – 9.html

    Great job, Nancy. Peo­ple like you give me hope that there really is jus­tice in this world.

  257. Anthony Juliano said on February 29th, 2008 at 9:25 pm

    […]The Tim Goe­glein pla­gia­rism story broke just 12 hours ago, and it’s already moved from hum­ble blog post to national news sen­sa­tion. It’s a great exam­ple of the speed at which com­mu­ni­ca­tion moves today, with lessons for blog­gers, writ­ers and any­one else who’s inter­ested in old or new media.[…]

  258. MonkeyBoy said on February 29th, 2008 at 9:42 pm

    Nancy, you made it into The New York Times. The best arti­cle about it so far.

    Nancy Nall

    Nancy Nall, a for­mer colum­nist for the paper, often used her Web site, http://​www​.nan​cy​nall​.com, to poke fun at his writ­ings, which she called “drippy and awful.”

    Ms. Nall said she was struck by Mr. Goeglein’s most recent col­umn, on Thurs­day, which included a ref­er­ence to a “notable pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy at Dart­mouth,” Eugene Rosenstock-Hussey. Curi­ous, she searched the Inter­net, and found that Mr. Goe­glein had lifted major chunks of the col­umn from an arti­cle pub­lished 10 years ago in The Dart­mouth Review.

    [[ why are block­quotes styled so funny here? ]]

  259. JamesK said on February 29th, 2008 at 9:42 pm

    *tips hat in respect*

    Not a bad day’s work, all con­sid­ered. Congrads.

  260. Timothy Goeglein gets his ass Googled! « White Noise Insanity said on February 29th, 2008 at 9:43 pm

    […] Hys­ter­i­cal. While Hillary Clin­ton was run­ning around and point­ing out all the times Barack Obama “pla­gia­rized” some­one else’s work (then did it her­self, of course…..shhhhhhhhh), the Spe­cial Assis­tant to George W. Bush, Tim­o­thy Goe­glein was pla­gia­riz­ing WHOLE PAGES of arti­cles writ­ten by oth­ers. Oh boy! And guess who exposed him? A blog­ger who Googled his work! Way to go, Nancy Nall! […]

  261. Tori said on February 29th, 2008 at 9:46 pm

    I’m speech­less. Good work!

  262. Kafkaz said on February 29th, 2008 at 9:46 pm

    Kim – yeah. Kind of falls into the “with a voice like that, you ought to take lessons!” cat­e­gory. I think the baby thing begins with Steve Allen, but I don’t really know. I stole it from a funny old priest a long time ago, and have heard it repeated in vary­ing forms too many times to men­tion in the years since then. (Ser­mon swip­ing is exceed­ingly com­mon, btw. There are “ser­mon mills” just as there are paper mills. Oral tra­di­tion and elec­tive shar­ing gets us into a whole sep­a­rate cat­e­gory, though. Assign­ments are another cat­e­gory of com­po­si­tion often shared and adapted to vary­ing extents. Wouldn’t shock me to learn that there are some stu­dents out there who have been caught pla­gia­riz­ing essays in response to assign­ments that were them­selves bor­rowed or swiped wholly with­out penalty. Out­right steal­ing makes my heart hurt, but these other areas I do con­fess to find­ing pretty fas­ci­nat­ing. Good cita­tions don’t always make good writ­ing. I like the play of allu­sion, and don’t think we ought to waste time being frosted by every delib­er­ate nod to or echo of another text.) Any­way, I also like the “now that’s …” con­struc­tion because it is so highly adapt­able: now that’s a meal, now that’s a point, now that’s an out­fit, now that’s a hairdo, etc.

    I love “fore­taste of gravitas.”

    P.S. to all – Thanks for let­ting me join in on your con­ver­sa­tion. Fas­ci­nat­ing, all around.

  263. Imelda Blahnik said on February 29th, 2008 at 9:47 pm

    So fit­ting that one of the main arti­cles he ver­bur­gled* from con­cerned the alleged cul­tural cri­sis in Amer­ica. He being one of the good guys, of course, culture’s defenders.

    I’m stoked by this find, and to find your blog, via Atrios. I may use this exam­ple next fall in my col­lege courses when I attempt to explain to my stu­dents why pla­gia­rism is bad. How­ever, I fear that some of them may come away with the mes­sage that if they pla­gia­rize they too might get to work in the White House.

    *ver­bur­gled: great word, who­ever coined it

  264. joodyb said on February 29th, 2008 at 9:51 pm

    oh no! sheryl gay S. has it wrong! she says

    A blog­ger in Goeglein’s home­town, Fort Wayne, Ind., found the plagiarism.

    gd nyt.

  265. RudigerVT said on February 29th, 2008 at 9:57 pm

    Is some­body going to tell this poor soul that his beloved Gian Carlo Menotti was the long-time, er, com­pan­ion of the US-born Samuel Barber?

    Odd how nei­ther arti­cle (Reilly’s vapid orig­i­nal; Goe­glein uncom­pre­hend­ing regur­gi­ta­tion) man­aged to get into that lit­tle fac­toid. That would prob­a­bly also mean acknowl­edg­ing that it was Menotti’s para­mour (Bar­ber) who was arguably the more impor­tant com­poser who also wrote in an essen­tially con­ser­v­a­tive, acces­si­ble style.

    http://​gay​for​to​day​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​0​7​/​0​7​/​g​i​a​n​-​c​a​r​l​o​-​m​e​n​o​t​t​i.html

  266. Think Progress » White House aide resigns over admissions of plagiarism. said on February 29th, 2008 at 10:01 pm

    […] and then admit­ting to — pla­gia­riz­ing arti­cles that he wrote for a local paper. After blog­ger Nancy Nall revealed that Goe­glein had pla­gia­rized a recent Fort Wayne News-Sentinel col­umn, an investigation […]

  267. Jim said on February 29th, 2008 at 10:08 pm

    I never thought I’d say this, but God bless you, Nancy Nall! I have known Tim Goe­glein since we com­peted in speech tour­na­ments in 1982. He was a smarmy cheat then and it has always gnawed at me that he’s been suc­cess­ful despite that flaw. I check your blog almost every day, but I spot­ted this on Drudge — imag­ine that. My wife saw my jaw hang­ing open and asked me what was wrong. I sim­ply told her that it was nice to see jus­tice pre­vail. I will sleep well tonight.

    Please don’t feel bad about this. He wrecked his own career — you merely exposed what has been going on for a very long time. Isn’t that what good jour­nal­ism is all about?

    Thank you!

  268. del said on February 29th, 2008 at 10:13 pm

    Here’s the LA Times’ story link — with this lit­tle nugget –
    “The sim­i­lar­i­ties between his work and that in the Dart­mouth pub­li­ca­tion were dis­closed by a blog­ger, Nancy Nall, a for­mer News-Sentinel colum­nist.“
    http://​www​.latimes​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​p​o​l​i​t​i​c​s​/​l​a​-​n​a​-​p​l​a​g​a​r​i​s​m​1​m​a​r​0​1​,​1​,​3​6​3​5​7​7​3​.story

  269. wade said on February 29th, 2008 at 10:22 pm

    BULLETIN KILL
    AP — 18 min­utes ago

    WASHINGTON — Kill the short head­line in BC-White House-Plagiarism, 9th Ld, which moved at 6:35 p.m. EST. A pres­i­den­tial aide resigned, not Bush.

    … damn lib­eral media…

  270. Steve said on February 29th, 2008 at 10:22 pm

    Great job, Nancy. But your writ­ing style sucks.

  271. BLamm said on February 29th, 2008 at 10:25 pm

    Nancy:

    Bravo!

    How about per­form­ing some addi­tional pub­lic ser­vice and look­ing into Mark Souder’s writings?

  272. Howard Epstein said on February 29th, 2008 at 10:42 pm

    “I feel bad about what I’m going to do here.”

    This is about the phoni­est state­ment I have ever read.

  273. 4dbirds said on February 29th, 2008 at 10:50 pm

    Here come the trolls.

  274. Helen said on February 29th, 2008 at 10:57 pm

    Great report­ing. Well done, Nancy. Other jour­nal­ists could learn a lot from you.

  275. Gena said on February 29th, 2008 at 10:59 pm

    As if it were your fault.

  276. Colleen said on February 29th, 2008 at 11:10 pm

    Lead story on News 15 at 11. You were iden­ti­fied by the NS source as “a for­mer columnist”.

    Wow. This really ended up huge, didn’t it? But…WHY would he do it and think he could get away with it, not a cou­ple of times, but TWENTY?!

    I’m pretty sure he shat­tered one of the com­mand­ments the xtian right is so fond of.…

  277. nancy said on February 29th, 2008 at 11:13 pm

    I was only the fourth or fifth story on Detroit’s local news, behind a police tas­ing of two teenagers, an oncom­ing snow squall and a cou­ple things I forget.

    Guys, I’m tak­ing a day or two to absorb all this before I write any­thing more. Any­one still read­ing down here, we gen­er­ally take the week­end off, but stop back around Sun­day night/Monday morn­ing for Jerry Springer’s Final Thoughts.

  278. Bluey Blog | RobertBluey.com » Even Good Men Make Mistakes said on February 29th, 2008 at 11:15 pm

    […] out to Tim Goe­glein and his fam­ily. Goe­glein resigned from his job at White House today after a blog­ger doc­u­mented pla­gia­rism in a col­umn he wrote for his home­town news­pa­per in Indi­ana. More evi­dence turned up through­out the […]

  279. Joe Carson said on February 29th, 2008 at 11:25 pm

    The NY TIMES has an AP story about his res­ig­na­tion, White House state­ments of “unac­cept­able” etc

  280. Saskboy said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:00 am

    Well done. Aside from shut­ting down a spam­mer, this has to be the next most ful­fill­ing thing for a blog­ger to do on the Internet.

  281. Abandoned Stuff by Saskboy » Blog Archive » Blogger Drudge Not About To Win Popularity Contest said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:05 am

    […] [like that one about Russia’s new pres­i­dent] gath­ered now and then. And he doesn’t copy other peo­ples’ work and claim it is his own. Link­ing to other peo­ples’ work, doesn’t count as copy­ing. Sphere: Related […]

  282. Amy Alkon said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:16 am

    Didn’t you break this? How come your name isn’t in the paper for it in Indi­ana? Same as on the Huff­in­g­ton Post? Per­haps I’m miss­ing some­thing, but it seemed to me that this story exists and the douche-o resigned…because of you. Is that incor­rect? Just saw a new link on Rome­nesko and there’s nary a men­tion of you.

  283. George Stuteville said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:23 am

    I was the for­mer Wash­ing­ton DC colum­nist for The Indi­anapo­lis Star. I knew Goe­glein quite well dur­ing the 1990’s when he worked as a press aide for Sen. Dan Coats.

    Tim was then a smart, funny, highly prin­ci­pled man. I liked him and we played golf together a cou­ple of times.

    I can only believe that he would engage in this intel­lec­tual lar­ceny as a result of his daily asso­ci­a­tion with the likes of Karl Rove and those other mon­sters in the White House. What I detest most about them is how under such pious cam­ou­flage they have self-justified the cre­ation of one of the most evil admin­is­tra­tions in Amer­i­can his­tory. Chi­canery ush­ered these peo­ple into the White House in 2000 and their legacy will be the lies and the thou­sands of deaths those lies spawned. I truly believe Goe­glein got caught up in this dark polit­i­cal cul­ture at 1600 Penn­syl­va­nia Ave. and gulped their pecu­liar Kool-Aid. As for his future, he’ll end up at the Hud­son Insti­tute. If goe­glein needs or wants to pur­sue a redemp­tive path, say on the same order of mag­ni­tude as the Apos­tle Paul, then he should find a way to expose the far worse lies and sins of his boss and boss’s boss. That would be ser­vice to truth and to the coun­try. Mean­while, I will still be glad to golf with him.

  284. Zach Williams said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:36 am

    Such a party this is! Why do I feel like break­ing out the fine plas­tic and the Martinelli’s? Let me sum­ma­rize thusly: The answer to the ques­tion, “What would Jesus do?”, is NOT, in fact, “Plagiarize.”

    (smug laugh­ter ensues)

    How­ever, I must say that my hide is quite chapped by the ridicu­lously obtuse state­ment released by the white house, (http://​www​.white​house​.gov/​n​e​w​s​/​r​e​l​e​a​s​e​s​/​2​0​0​8​/​0​2​/​2​0​080229 – 9.html)
    which fails to use the word “pla­gia­rize”, and also uses the phrase, “columns pub­lished under his name”, which will equate to fod­der for right-wing radio talk show hosts and their anti-left con­spir­acy theories.

    Ciao!

  285. Lesley said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:48 am

    You know what would be a mir­a­cle? Find­ing a sin­gle eth­i­cal per­son in the Bush Whitehouse.

  286. bill m said on March 1st, 2008 at 1:09 am

    Thank you, Thank you again.….… but I expect no less from this admin­is­tra­tion. Any­thing.….. not if, when.

  287. Fitzalot said on March 1st, 2008 at 1:38 am

    Good night Ms Nall, and thank you for reveal­ing another right wing hypocrite.

  288. tony said on March 1st, 2008 at 2:08 am

    Con­grat­u­la­tions. Good work. Good blog.

  289. Tim Goeglein said on March 1st, 2008 at 4:42 am

    You will pay Woman. One way or another. If it’s the last thing I ever do. You will pay and pay dearly. You cost me my job and now I have to find another one to feed my family.

    You’re an jerk of the high­est order.

    What comes around, goes around, remem­ber that.

    Tim

  290. links for 2008-03-01 « Guavalog: “They said this day would never come.” said on March 1st, 2008 at 6:20 am

    […] nan​cy​nall​.com » Blog Archive » Copy­cat. White House pres­i­den­tial assis­tant pla­gia­rizes his columns writ­ten for the home­town news­pa­per. (tags: pla­gia­rism jour­nal­ism white_house) […]

  291. daniel said on March 1st, 2008 at 6:46 am

    Nicely done.

    Daniel

  292. Jason Brody said on March 1st, 2008 at 6:53 am

    Nice work!

    The unfold­ing of this story through the real time com­ments has been a thrilling read. [for most of the com­ments anyway…]

    I hope the great sleuthing doesn’t stop at Tim’s Fort Wayne News-Sentinel arti­cles. The real story, as some­one has pointed out, is that Tim worked as a White House aide. The White House has played dam­age con­trol: they char­ac­ter­ize this is some­thing that one staffer did while writ­ing for a news­pa­per with­out their knowl­edge or approval. But Tim was so cav­a­lierly dis­hon­est, in so many arti­cles, that it is hard to believe that he wasn’t as dis­hon­est in his work for the White House. That’s some­thing that I would really care about.

  293. Pensacola Beach Blog said on March 1st, 2008 at 7:15 am

    Nancy,

    Your email link on the front page doesn’t work. Wanted to send you this hilar­i­ous AP notice, all thanks to your good work: An E.B. White Moment

  294. Kevin Knuth said on March 1st, 2008 at 8:01 am

    And to think.….we knew Nancy before she was famous!

    ;)

  295. Peter said on March 1st, 2008 at 8:05 am

    Well I retract my pre­vi­ous state­ment from WAY up there (in the ’20’s) about how this will all be like howler mon­kees and noth­ing will come of it.

    Huz­zah Ms. Nall!

    Don’t for­get to spray paint Tim’s vis­age with the X through it next to Bob Greene’s on your car’s quar­ter­panel, ala WWII bombers!

    And as for “I feel bad doing this”, I can believe it. But don’t feel too bad — he should have stuck to his day job.

    And as for the sub-debate on Doris the Pla­gasaurus — she’s pond scum as well. My biggest beef is that she remained (and for all I know, still remains) on Harvard’s board after that inci­dent, in an insti­tu­tion where an under­grad would get the auto­matic heave ho if they did any­thing nearly as bad as Doris.

  296. Donna Maria said on March 1st, 2008 at 8:29 am

    If this story goes Hol­ly­wood, I have a great name for the movie…

    “An Abridg­ment Too Far”

  297. Get out your popcorn: Michigan woman calls a columnist a fraud, sets off a firestorm... - SpartanTailgate.com - Michigan State Spartans Forums said on March 1st, 2008 at 8:38 am

    […] story. Shortly after, a whole bunch of read­ers noticed other cases of pla­gia­rism. Good read­ing: nan​cy​nall​.com � Blog Archive � Copy­cat. Please keep pol­i­tics out of this thread. — —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  —  — — […]

  298. michaelj said on March 1st, 2008 at 8:51 am

    Nancy Nall in the LAT.

  299. michaelj said on March 1st, 2008 at 8:54 am

    As for any scru­ples or feel­ings of regret about expos­ing this guy, he’s a Kom­mis­sar Karl acolyte and they all deserve exactly what they get.

  300. michaelj said on March 1st, 2008 at 9:24 am

    And in the NYT, with a work­ing link. Oh shit. Bat­ten down the hatches. I don’t know how this works, but does this shake out some sort of finan­cial windfall?

  301. William Walters said on March 1st, 2008 at 9:26 am

    Your gloat­ing belies your trite state­ment that you “feel bad about what I’m going to do here.” Obvi­ously, you take great pride in being cen­ter stage in pub­lic. More­over, and con­trary to what you may have expected, Tim Goe­glein took imme­di­ate and full respon­si­bil­ity for his actions. The White House acted imme­di­ately as well. Tim, a hus­band and father of two, is now job­less. If the issue of pla­gia­rism is so dear, and is the sole core of your inten­tions in expos­ing this mat­ter, then you could have han­dled this pri­vately. Nev­er­the­less, you chose to smear this man pub­licly. Now that you have assisted in the destruc­tion of his career, are you big enough to step up and offer your sup­port to his fam­ily? I do not fault you for hold­ing any pub­lic servant’s feet to the fire, but your man­ner of exe­cu­tion is shame­ful.
    William Wal­ters — a for­mer col­league and friend of Tim Goeglein.

  302. Super Doomed Planet » Blog Archive » Truth in Editorial Interjections said on March 1st, 2008 at 9:31 am

    […] Yes­ter­day Tim Goe­glein, a spe­cial assis­tant to Pres­i­dent Bush who has essen­tially func­tioned as a polit­i­cal oper­a­tive keep­ing right-wing activists in touch with the pres­i­dent, was caught pla­gia­riz­ing columns for his home-town newspaper. […]

  303. Matt Mendelsohn said on March 1st, 2008 at 9:38 am

    »>The real story, as some­one has pointed out, is that Tim worked as a White House aide. The White House has played dam­age con­trol: they char­ac­ter­ize this is some­thing that one staffer did while writ­ing for a news­pa­per with­out their knowl­edge or approval.«<

    I agree. Only eight months ago, Mr. Goe­glein was rep­re­sent­ing the pres­i­dent of the United States as he deliv­ered a eulogy at the funeral of Jerry Fal­well. (Who knows if that eulogy was pla­gia­rized. That would be pretty low.)

    To sim­ply write this guy off as a some low-level aide is naive. He was the point per­son for this admin­is­tra­tion to the evan­gel­i­cal right and that is significant.

    I don’t know if Mr. Goe­glein con­tributed in this regard but it would be inter­est­ing to look back at some of the president’s speeches before evan­gel­i­cal groups to see if any of these pur­loined let­ters (I stole that from a guy named Edgar) found their way in.

  304. TAG said on March 1st, 2008 at 9:42 am

    Hey Nancy, I grew up just down the road from the Fort and I used to read your columns exclu­sively (after, of course, check­ing out crime and acci­dent news — you know how Hoosiers are). When­ever I’d be back home to visit, I’d always catch up on what you had to say. I guess I lost track and didn’t real­ize you had moved on.

    I’m liv­ing in DC now and was doing my morn­ing news read­ing online when I came across this story and saw a name I knew well. Kudos to you! Frankly, any small expo­sure of hypocrisy within this admin should be cel­e­brated as a suc­cess — they’ve ele­vated sub­terfuge to an art form.

    I don’t know Tim Goeglin nor do I really care. The sooner the peo­ple of this coun­try boot out this admin and their apol­o­gists, the bet­ter. If Tim loses his News Senti­nal col­umn, he can always ped­dle it down the road to the Htgn Herald-Press — they’d eat up his maudlin right-wing dri­vel. Or maybe he can find a new job giv­ing tours in the Quayle museum.

    And one last thing, pla­gia­rism is just plain lazy hypocrisy. Tim, if you’re going to emu­late the best of the best in that bunch, you need to put some effort into this and ele­vate your game to actual lying to the public’s face and pass­ing it off as per­fectly rea­son­able pol­icy. Try harder!

    ps. Glad to have found you again, Nancy!

  305. Tiagara said on March 1st, 2008 at 9:43 am

    I love your prose, it is so mor­dant! I really enjoyed the “apple-cheeked Hoosier drip­pi­ness”. Won­der­ful! I will return for more of your scin­til­lat­ing sar­casm soon.

    I won­der if you have a lot more of these suc­cu­lent morsels sprin­kled gen­er­ously through­out your other articles?

    I will read on, antic­i­pat­ing more won­der­fully crafted phrases such as “…he chooses to write awful, turgid essays on the won­ders of Hoagy Carmichael…”

    You turn a word in a won­der­fully refresh­ing way. I am turgid with antic­i­pa­tion :-)

    T

  306. KamaAina said on March 1st, 2008 at 10:06 am

    Geaux Nancy! Obvi­ously, I’m one of Ash­ley Mor­ris’ syco­phants. This is the only way to chip away at the Bush machine: one loser at a time. As AshMo him­self might say, “So many mooks, so lit­tle time”…

    The story has made it all the way to the New York Times, com­plete with your URL!

    Con­grat­u­la­tions, Nancy: you are no longer a blog­ger but a Blogger!

  307. White House public liaison Tim Goeglein resigns after blogger reveals plagiarism | Writes Like She Talks said on March 1st, 2008 at 10:08 am

    […] wrote about this inci­dent, which began with this post by blog­ger Nancy Nalls yes­ter­day, less than 24 hours […]

  308. michael heaton said on March 1st, 2008 at 10:11 am

    ALL HAIL NANCY NALL!!!!!!!!!

  309. Jeff said on March 1st, 2008 at 10:11 am

    Damn, Nall, you’re the epit­ome of prej­u­dice and hate. You obvi­ously don’t believe that other points of view should be allowed by your first amendment.

    Here’s a few of my observations.

    • The trash Uri­nal Gay-zette wouldn’t exist if it were run in the evening.
    • Call the Sen­tinel what you wish, we con­sider the source.

    You slam Tim for his beliefs, his fam­ily, his friends and I’m sure noth­ing is off lim­its
    to a bit­ter old hag as yourself.

    If I chose to read more of your blog, you would also slam his children.

    Are you on Hillary’s cam­paign? You should be. I see many similarities.

    As far as the left’s fail­ings, they can be summed up as, well, social­ist, com­mu­nist, and what­ever TEARS at the pos­i­tive social fab­ric of the fam­ily and Amer­ica. Homo­sex­u­als, inter­net porn, NAMBLA, ACLU, Antichrist, Antichurch, Ille­gal alien amnesty-votes (for democ­rats), prop­erty tax increases, tax increases.

    The mus­lims hate Amer­ica only because what the lowlife lib­er­als are export­ing here and abroad. They hate the abom­i­na­tions I men­tioned above. As far as I’m con­cerned, I would invite them in this coun­try to take care of the left, if only the mus­lims were intel­li­gent enough to iden­tify what they hate is NOT all Amer­i­cans but —Lib­eral americans.

    (P.S. Those of us who saw your arti­cle photo in the past know why your web blog pic­ture is blurred.…Thank you, Photoshop.)Damn, Nall, you’re the epit­ome of prej­u­dice and hate. You obvi­ously don’t
    believe that other points of view should be allowed by your first amendment.

  310. michaelj said on March 1st, 2008 at 10:22 am

    I’d like to ask William Wal­ters one ques­tion: Had this been han­dled pri­vately, would Mr. Goe­glein have behaved hon­or­ably in acknowl­edg­ing his dis­hon­or­able behav­ior, with the iden­ti­cal result con­cern­ing his employment?

  311. Alan said on March 1st, 2008 at 10:24 am

    Yeah! Another blog­ger made it! The Bush machine has so many chinks in its armour, the sto­ries are out there. I’m glad yours made the front page. I’m still waiting.

    Con­grat­u­la­tions and best of luck!

  312. Doc said on March 1st, 2008 at 10:25 am

    Matt Mendel­sohn Says: Only eight months ago, Mr. Goe­glein was rep­re­sent­ing the pres­i­dent of the United States as he deliv­ered a eulogy at the funeral of Jerry Fal­well. (Who knows if that eulogy was pla­gia­rized. That would be pretty low.)
    March 1st, 2008 at 9:38 am

    Espe­cially if the infringed work were Hunter S. Thompson’s obit for Nixon. Espe­cially if the hypo­thet­i­cal TG bor­rowed the part about need­ing “ser­vants to help him screw his pants on every morning.”

  313. michaelj said on March 1st, 2008 at 10:27 am

    Most likely, if you’re an infa­mous white pla­gia­rist, rather than Jayson Blair or Janet Cooke, you’ve already got an offer at Faux News to play Mike Bar­ni­cle Junior on TV.

  314. William Walters said on March 1st, 2008 at 10:30 am

    Michaelj — 

    I have absolutely no doubts that he would have hon­or­ably acknowl­edged his action, offered his imme­di­ate res­ig­na­tion and appro­pri­ate apolo­gies. No doubts whatsoever!

    I have known him per­son­ally and pro­fes­sion­ally for over 8 years.

    William Wal­ters

  315. nancy said on March 1st, 2008 at 10:36 am

    What you don’t under­stand, William, is that there is sim­ply no way this could have been “han­dled pri­vately.” Once a charge is made, it is the paper’s pol­icy — and this is pretty stan­dard across the indus­try — to han­dle their inves­ti­ga­tion pub­licly. Leo Mor­ris explains on his blog:

    When there is a charge of pla­gia­rism, there is a pro­to­col. We ver­ify if the pla­gia­rism hap­pened. If it it’s a staff mem­ber who is guilty, the staff mem­ber is fired. If it is some­one else (a letter-to-the-editor writer, for exam­ple), that per­son is banned from the page or the paper. We start exam­in­ing every­thing else the per­son has writ­ten to see if there is an iso­lated prob­lem or an exten­sive one. We apol­o­gize to readers.

    Since we can’t send every reader a note via mail, it’s done in the paper, usu­ally on the front page. Names are named, hands are washed.

    I’m not respon­si­ble for Goeglein’s chil­dren being un-provided for. Their daddy is.

  316. michaelj said on March 1st, 2008 at 10:52 am

    Here‘s a piece from the Colum­bia JR with a use­ful dis­cus­sion about some cases of pla­gia­rism, and the ethics involved with in deal­ing with this thought crime.

    Full dis­clo­sure: In third grade, I handed in a Robert Ser­vice poem with some art­ful dis­guise and claimed author­ship, because I was too lazy to write some­thing orig­i­nal. I hardly think it likely that pro­fes­sion­als cheat out of las­si­tude. It seems in some cases to be a prod­uct of self-destructive urges. The pres­sure excuse seems pretty lame. In most cases the moti­va­tion is both murky and mysterious.

  317. jcburns said on March 1st, 2008 at 10:59 am

    “Jeff,” (is your last name Gan­non, by any chance?)…the rea­son Nancy’s photo is blurred is that I’m a lousy pho­tog­ra­pher. No Pho­to­shop was involved. And it was dark.

    William Wal­ters: “If the issue of pla­gia­rism is so dear…” —I’m try­ing to fig­ure out how to make the con­nec­tion for you between his eth­i­cal lapse and the impor­tance of hav­ing eth­i­cal peo­ple in the White House…but if you want eth­i­cally lapsed peo­ple to keep their jobs in pub­lic life, we have very lit­tle com­mon ground.

  318. William Walters said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:01 am

    Nancy you wrote: “Once a charge is made.” Indeed, once a charge is made pub­licly. And you are the one who glee­fully made it public.

    Did you bring this to the White House pri­vately? Obvi­ously not. Did you bring this to Tim’s atten­tion pri­vately? Obvi­ously not. You exe­cuted him pub­licly with your own self-serving inten­tions in mind. Could you have forced his res­ig­na­tion pri­vately — indeed you could have. You are not only in part respon­si­ble for Tim’s chil­dren being “un-provided for” — the greater col­lat­eral dam­age you inten­tion­ally cre­ated is solely your respon­si­bil­ity. That’s on you and no one else. Now that names were named you want to wash your hands. As I said before — shameful.

    William Wal­ters

  319. basset said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:04 am

    and now that this has got­ten into the NYT net­work tele­vi­sion is going to decide they have to notice it… won­der if they’ll fly Madame to NY for the morn­ing shows, send a Chicago crew out and inter­view her at home, or just pick up a sound­bite from the local affiliate?

  320. Sam Huff said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:05 am

    The guy screwed up, you nailed him. Well done, but fuckin move on. You are a hyp­ocrite, you take the exact same pile on men­tal­ity lib­er­als despise con­ver­v­a­tives for. I can’t see how that makes one feel good or proud. Methinks you are sim­ply an extremely bored woman, liv­ing in a hell hole of a city who wants to be rec­og­nized because she never made the big time. Piss ant glory hound. Move on!!

  321. sue said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:06 am

    William Wal­ters: I know you must be hurt­ing for your friend right now and some of the com­ments may look like gloat­ing. And some of them are. While tak­ing imme­di­ate respon­si­bil­ity for his actions was laud­able, Mr. Goe­glein and Mr. Goe­glein alone put him­self in this posi­tion. Nancy Nall is a jour­nal­ist. She has a journalist’s ethics and she did it by the book, so to speak. Those of us who read her reg­u­larly know that when she is writ­ing on top­ics con­sid­ered more jour­nal­is­tic than, say, library per­verts (see pre­vi­ous col­umn), she knows what to do and how to do it. The fact that she is a blog­ger does not make her less of a jour­nal­ist. And jour­nal­ists do feel bad about some of the aspects of their job — Nancy’s com­ment com­mu­nity con­tains sev­eral jour­nal­ists who have shared their expe­ri­ences with us over time. Just as you have no doubt that your friend would have done the hon­or­able thing if this had been kept under wraps, I have no doubt that Nancy did, indeed, feel bad about what she, as a jour­nal­ist, had to do. I hope you are able to offer some com­fort to Mr. Goe­glein and his fam­ily. I am sure he has friends and options. Good luck to you all.

  322. Mike said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:06 am

    I think I’m with Wal­ter on this one. There is no rea­son to ques­tion the integrity of a man who pla­gia­rized 20 out of 38 arti­cles he sub­mit­ted to one paper (no doubt there is more to come). No doubt had this never been made pub­lic, he would have done the same thing he ended up doing. Good luck in you next golf game Wal­ter, but just to be sure you may want to dou­ble check the score-card.

  323. Danny said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:12 am

    Well put, jc.

    To all of you “con­ser­v­a­tive” TG apol­o­gists out there, you ought to be ashamed. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out of the GOP, you bunch of phonies.

  324. michaelj said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:15 am

    Actual crim­i­nal­ity aside, how is this sig­nif­i­cantly dif­fer­ent from the eth­i­cal trans­gres­sions of Claude Allen, the White House shoplifter? Both pale in com­par­i­son to shit­can­ning a mil­lion emails, but the smaller the fish, the faster they get caught and fry. And both seem com­pul­sively self-destructive.

  325. William Walters said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:21 am

    To jcburns:

    I am not defend­ing Tim’s pla­gia­rism. Nei­ther is Tim. Nei­ther is the White House. Tim imme­di­ately took full respon­si­bil­ity for his actions. He extended his apolo­gies. He imme­di­ately resigned his posi­tion. The White House agreed.

    I am con­demn­ing the obvi­ous “blood lust” which was brought to bear in bring­ing his about his res­ig­na­tion. It is shameful.

    William Wal­ters

  326. del said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:26 am

    Goeglin story on CNN’s Head­line News scroll at 10:08 est.

    Mr. Waters, Tim­o­thy Goe­glein bears full respon­si­bil­ity for his sad actions. He chose to advance his mas­ters’ inter­ests (and, pre­sum­ably his own) in a very pub­lic forum. The world­view advanced in his columns added very lit­tle to the font of pub­lic knowl­edge; rather, it served to advance a divi­sive and dam­ag­ing social agenda; an agenda that many in the civ­i­lized world view as crim­i­nal. Do I have any sym­pa­thy for him? Sure, some, but not very much. His $125,000 annual salary as a shill for an admin­is­tra­tion that has done so much to hurt so many is a dis­grace. Will TG do the hon­or­able thing and dis­gorge any por­tion of his ill-begotten salary? No, I think not. Did he earn health care cov­er­age for his fam­ily for life owing to his White House ser­vice? Prob­a­bly. What HAS he done? Asked us to pray for him. Again, the God-fearing vic­tim. Had NN.c cho­sen NOT to pub­licly reveal the pla­gia­rism the world would never have learned that most of his work was stolen. I agree that pla­gia­rism is employed by peo­ple of all polit­i­cal lean­ings, but the MadLi­brar­ian was on to some­thing when she sug­gested that this story is an apt metaphor for the mis­fea­sance and hypocrisy of this admin­is­tra­tion. And what’s with equat­ing telling the TRUTH to a pub­lic smear? Too many peo­ple have remained silent and restrained in their crit­i­cisms of this admin­is­tra­tion for far too long.

  327. PR said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:27 am

    Wee Willie Wal­ters you are sound­ing rather petu­lant try­ing to defend the indefensible.

  328. Joe Frank said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:29 am

    Jeff (10:11 am) says “The mus­lims hate Amer­ica only because what the lowlife lib­er­als are export­ing here and abroad. They hate the abom­i­na­tions I men­tioned above. As far as I’m con­cerned, I would invite them in this coun­try to take care of the left, if only the mus­lims were intel­li­gent enough to iden­tify what they hate is NOT all Amer­i­cans but —Lib­eral americans.”

    LOL! That makes Amer­i­can con­ser­v­a­tives like rad­i­cal Mus­lims!! What a nimwit. You never see lib­er­als call­ing for vio­lence to “take care of” peo­ple they dis­agree with. Con­ser­v­a­tives are stu­pid and dangerous.

  329. KA said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:33 am

    “Tim, a hus­band and father of two, is now jobless…Now that you have assisted in the destruc­tion of his career, are you big enough to step up and offer your sup­port to his family?”

    Patri­o­tism used to be the last refuge of a scoundrel. Today it’s parenthood.

  330. Chuck said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:36 am

    I pre­sume William Wal­ters is cur­rently boy­cotting Tar­get since it failed to han­dle Claude Allen’s tran­gres­sions privately.

  331. Tomas said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:36 am

    This isn’t pla­gia­rism, Nancy. It’s as inno­cent as a tele­vi­sion re-run, say ‘Leave It to Beaver’ or ‘Daddy Knows Best’.

  332. jcasey said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:37 am

    Dear William Walters,

    It seems you have woe­fully missed the point. At issue is the pub­lic behav­ior of a pub­lic offi­cial. Why should one han­dle that pub­lic dis­hon­esty pri­vately? If he didn’t want to risk being pub­licly accused of pla­gia­rism, he could have avoided pub­lish­ing pla­gia­rized material.

  333. William Walters said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:41 am

    To: PR

    How trite — invok­ing the invec­tive “Wee Willie” in falsely claim­ing me to be petu­lant and in falsely claim­ing that I defend the inde­fen­si­ble. You do not see me stand­ing behind the anonymity of my initials.

    William Wal­ters

  334. Brian Schmidt said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:45 am

    Tim didn’t imme­di­ately resign, he waited sev­eral hours between admit­ting respon­si­bil­ity for that one arti­cle and then resign­ing. That wait moved the tim­ing into the Fri­day after­noon media dump, where the White House puts all its mis­deeds that it’s forced to admit in some form.

    I’m also amused by the desire to save Tim’s rep­u­ta­tion — as what? As a non-plagiarist? So he can go and do it again some­where else? Oh right, he’d never do some­thing like that.

  335. Rob said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:45 am

    :Tim Goe­glein took imme­di­ate and full respon­si­bil­ity for his actions.

    No. After pla­gia­riz­ing the first time, Tim con­tin­ued to pla­gia­rize again and again … and again and again. He spent at least eight long years not tak­ing respon­si­bil­ity for his actions. And we’re to give him credit for fes­s­ing up after he was caught?

    :Nev­er­the­less, you chose to smear this man publicly.

    “Smear” is not a syn­onym for “say true stuff about.” Goe­glein debased him­self in a pub­lic forum; Nancy merely observed that he had done so.

    :The White House acted imme­di­ately as well.

    Yes, well … Their chief liai­son to reli­gious groups was caught steal­ing from the Pope, among oth­ers. But let’s wait and see before we give them too much credit. Tim could still receive the Pres­i­den­tial Medal of Free­dom, as has become cus­tom­ary in cases like this.

  336. He Plagiarized the Pope said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:47 am

    William Wal­ters –

    Tim’s mak­ing to love your wife right now. But I have no doubt if you con­front him pri­vately, he’ll imme­di­ately acknowl­edge his actions and make appro­pri­ate apologies.

    p.s. — your name is an ana­gram of Wal­ter Williams!

  337. michaelj said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:48 am

    Seri­ously exten­sive cov­er­age of l’Affaire Goeglin. (Over/under on elapsed time to “Copygate”?)

  338. Jeff Borden said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:49 am

    There is noth­ing –absolutely noth­ing– that absolves Tim­o­thy Goe­glein. He is a thief. He has stolen some­thing from oth­ers as surely as if he’d embez­zled, shoplifted or hot-wired a car. And he has done it repeat­edly. I’ll give him props for admit­ting his crime, but oth­er­wise, he reveals him­self to be a lazy, craven thief. Period.

  339. Jeff said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:50 am

    To JCBurns​.Is your last name Lib­eral? Your pho­tog­ra­phy excuse is con­ve­nient for us all, Thank You

    The pla­gia­rism issue isn’t so dear to me except for the fact that the left/ lib­er­als are hyp­ocrites. The Right pun­ishes and removes its “damned” yet the left still loves its old sex­ual harasser to the bane of the NOW gang (hyp­ocrites again).

    Don’t you have a com­ment on my mus­lim the­ory. What really needs to stop is the Rights need to send our mil­i­tary (and it is pre­dom­i­nately RIGHT) to defend the lefts filthy habits and liberalism.

  340. JoshA said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:52 am

    Nancy, you did a good thing here. Peo­ple must be account­able for their actions. Telling Goeglin in pri­vate, as Wal­ter Williams sug­gests, would have allowed some­one who had stolen the work of oth­ers for years to sim­ply walk away, wait for you to stop watch­ing, and do it again.

  341. jjcomet said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:55 am

    Wall -

    Your friend — who claims to be a pro­fes­sional writer —  made his own bed by repeat­edly and shame­lessly pla­gia­riz­ing the work of oth­ers. Aside from libel, there is no more seri­ous breach of jour­nal­is­tic ethics, yet you seem to think he deserves a pass. Why should this man keep his job if he must stoop to steal­ing the work of oth­ers? And why should admit­ting his deed after he has been caught and pub­licly outed bring him any kind of reprieve? If he was really con­cerned about keep­ing his job so that he could sup­port his fam­ily, he would have made an hon­est effort to write orig­i­nal mate­r­ial. He didn’t. He lazily copied other writ­ers — over and over again — and appears to have assumed either that he wouldn’t get caught, or that he would be excused for his pla­gia­rism if he did. His fam­ily should be furi­ous with him for cav­a­lierly jeop­ar­diz­ing his job — and their future — by his reck­less and irre­spon­si­ble behav­ior. It’s pretty pathetic of you to try to make the per­son who brought his mis­deeds to light the “bad guy.” Of course, that’s par for the course for mod­ern “conservatives” — for more out­raged that the crooks in their midst are caught than about the deeds they com­mit­ted that led to their down­fall. Here’s a hint for your friend — if he wants to keep his job, per­haps he shouldn’t engage in acts that amount to pro­fes­sional suicide.

  342. cha cha cha said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:55 am

    “I am con­demn­ing the obvi­ous “blood lust” which was brought to bear in bring­ing his about his res­ig­na­tion. It is shameful.”

    i totally agree.
    per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity is shameful.

  343. Jeff said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:00 pm

    What struck me is the hate­ful vit­riol from Nancy over the sin of pla­gia­rism. Her rant went beyond the acts. She pulled in all the inno­cent and slashed away. Tims par­ents must still be mar­ried and he must write about his per­cep­tion of an idyl­lic home life. This must knaw at Nancy with the way she hates him.
    Just like a lib­eral, don’t be hum­ble by com­ment­ing and then let go.

    I’ve learned a lot by watch­ing Lib­er­als and its time to adopt their tac­tics for the right. To hell with the other cheek — Strike out and Let God sort em out.

  344. Danny said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:00 pm

    William, as a con­ser­v­a­tive, my con­cerns are more with clean­ing my own house than sav­ing face. If you con­sider your­self one, you should feel the same. Twenty-plus arti­cles so far? I mean, come on, man.

    And Nancy is not respon­si­ble for the “blood lust.” Even the blood lust on this web site is not her fault. It’s just how things are these days, sad to say.

  345. Marlys said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:01 pm

    Mr. Wal­ters: The rev­e­la­tion of Goeglein’s thiev­ery would be a “smear” only if it were not true. Fur­ther, your con­tention that Goe­glein is some­how to be com­mended because he “took imme­di­ate and full respon­si­bil­ity for his actions” is laugh­able. He got caught *but good*, with such strong evi­dence of his guilt that there’s absolutely no chance of plau­si­ble denial.

    If Nancy had, as you sug­gest, gone qui­etly to the news­pa­per with her evi­dence, the out­come would have been pre­cisely the same: The paper’s pol­icy of trans­parency requires it to inform read­ers and apol­o­gize to them. Goeglein’s dis­hon­esty took place in pub­lic, and it’s proper for it to be revealed there as well.

    The sit­u­a­tion Tim Goe­glein cre­ated is nobody’s fault but his own.

  346. Danny said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:03 pm

    Jeff (not our Jeff), you should put a sock in it. You’re a cry­baby and a phony. Maybe go bowl­ing with some of the cry­baby lib­eral phonies that are post­ing in this thread. You have more in com­mon than you know.

  347. Andrew said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:04 pm

    Good work, Nancy.

    To those post­ing who know and like Mr Goe­glein, I’m sure he’ll be cheered by your expres­sions of sup­port. There are logs in all our eyes, and turn­ing away a friend with a mote in his own eye is not the action of a friend.

    To those of us who are bystanders, there’s a gen­uine “what was he think­ing” feel­ing. Goe­glein was mak­ing a liv­ing, in part, from his use of words — and to make that liv­ing on the back of other writ­ers, with­out attri­bu­tion, seri­ally and fla­grantly, is poor form. I applaud Nancy’s (and other posters’) work in bring­ing this mat­ter to light.

    It’s fas­ci­nat­ing that NRO has had to edit Mr Goeglein’s trib­ute to W F Buck­ley. The num­ber of cita­tions in his post lead me to sus­pect that the ini­tial trib­ute may have been, um, leaner.

  348. Jeff said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:05 pm

    To jjcomet
    Jour­nal­is­tic ethics, my God what a joke to apply that to the drive-by lib­eral print media.
    Man LOL say it again. Jour­nal­is­tic ethics, the stink­ing left DOES NOT HAVE ANY ETHICS.

  349. michaelj said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:05 pm

    Jeff,

    So, when the most egre­gious Con­sti­tu­tional Crim­i­nals in Amer­i­can His­tory leave office, you’ll be there with the clas­sic and oblig­a­tory torches and pitch­forks? Right? Yeah, right.

    Now that’s hypocrisy wor­thy of enshrine­ment in the Hypocrisy Hall of Fame at SMU.

  350. blogenfreude said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:05 pm

    I am con­demn­ing the obvi­ous “blood lust” which was brought to bear in bring­ing his about his res­ig­na­tion. It is shame­ful.
    To the extent there is any “blood lust”, can you blame us? Every per­son asso­ci­ated with this “admin­is­tra­tion” should be pun­ished, and frankly I don’t care how. Hun­dreds of thou­sands have died because the Dear Leader lied us into a war that did not need to be waged. The Con­sti­tu­tion is in shreds. You con­ser­v­a­tives, in typ­i­cal fash­ion, spend your time get­ting soci­ety to re-fight bat­tles that have been won — abor­tion, civil rights, et seq. Why should there be a debate about whether we should tor­ture? The answer is known. If you voted for Bush you are the one who should be ashamed. Any sen­tient being could have pre­dicted that a man who had failed at every­thing he had ever done would dam­age this coun­try. Secre­tive, blood­thirsty, and dis­hon­est, Bush and his admin­is­tra­tion will go down in his­tory as the worst thing ever to hap­pen to the United States. With luck, Bush has dri­ven a stake into the heart of the hideous war­mon­ger­ing Repub­li­can party. You should be ashamed for defend­ing any­one who has enabled this administration.

  351. Jeff said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:07 pm

    AHHHH DANNY BOY
    If you think I’m a lib­eral then your an idiot just like the Prfes­i­dent I put in office twice. Tell me some­thing of you beliefs if you have any guts. I can see the filth on both sides. And I call it such

  352. Grytpype Thynne said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:08 pm

    Mr. Wal­ters:

    Tim Goe­glein lied, cheated and stole his way into a job. Absent his lying, cheat­ing and steal­ing, some rep­utable jour­nal­ist with a fam­ily to sup­port, rent to pay and food to put on the table would have been gain­fully employed.

    Goe­glein stole that job from a decent per­son with kids to feed.

  353. Grytpype Thynne said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:09 pm

    “just like the Prfes­i­dent I put in office twice. ”

    Antonin Scalia???

  354. Jeff said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:13 pm

    “just like the Prfes­i­dent I put in office twice. ”
    Well cmon cow­ards have made mis­takes in your vot­ing or are you proud of the cigar sticker in chief and the wench that allowed it in her home?

  355. sue said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:15 pm

    Jeff! Our Jeff! Where are you? Get back here and shut your evil twin up!

  356. Danny said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:15 pm

    Hey, Nance. I was just think­ing of good songs by which to read and com­ment to today. I’m think­ing, Inna Gadda Da Vida. I’m just killing time until the pool opens. I hope your day is going well.

    And I hope Mary’s job inter­view went well too.

    Jeff, I’m a conservative.

    Blo­gen­freud, did you write that post while lis­ten­ing to Sur­re­al­is­tic Pillow?

  357. Danny said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:16 pm

    Jeff! Our Jeff! Where are you? Get back here and shut your evil twin up!

    Hee­heh. I was think­ing that same thing.

  358. Dale Darrell said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:16 pm

    William’s point is that if Ms. Nall went to Goe­glein or the White House pri­vately rather than pub­lish­ing her find­ings, she could have forced Goe­glein to resign pri­vately and allowed him to find other work with­out reveal­ing his mis­con­duct. As a con­se­quence, William claims, Ms. Nall is solely respon­si­ble for Goeglein’s chil­dren being unpro­vided for.

    Yet this is incon­sis­tent with William’s asser­tion that the White House acted imme­di­ately and took Goe­glein full respon­si­bil­ity. If Ms. Nall had spo­ken pri­vately with Goe­glein or the White House, would it have been respon­si­ble (or tak­ing full respon­si­bil­ity) for either to keep the mat­ter quiet, with­out acknowl­edg­ing Goeglein’s mis­con­duct to his direct vic­tims — the news­pa­per and the peo­ple from whom he stole? The news­pa­per, of course, would have an oblig­a­tion to its read­ers (and the vic­tims of Geoglein’s theft) to reveal the truth, and the peo­ple from whom Goe­glein stole would be under no oblig­a­tion to keep quiet.

    Mr. Goeglein’s chil­dren will not be unpro­vided for. They have a mother. Mr. Goe­glein can find work eas­ily — Janet Cooke now works for a depart­ment store, Stephen Glass worked as a clerk for a judge and wrote a novel. States and char­i­ties pro­vide assis­tance to those in need. Mr. Goe­glein can pro­vide for his chil­dren intel­lec­tu­ally and spir­i­tu­ally by demon­strat­ing that steal­ing is wrong and acknowl­edg­ing wrong­do­ing is the respon­si­ble thing to do.

  359. Grytpype Thynne said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:19 pm

    Jeff,
    I feel bad for good, red-blooded, sane, reality-based decent con­ser­v­a­tives like Danny who are try­ing to clear the dirt out of their party and get back to a polit­i­cal debate in which both sides, for love of their coun­try, pro­pose what they believe are the best poli­cies to make the coun­try strong, pros­per­ous, healthy and fair, because peo­ple like you are destroy­ing the con­ser­v­a­tive cause.
    For­tu­nately, decent lib­er­als like me know that loud­mouthed illit­er­ates like you don’t rep­re­sent decent con­ser­v­a­tives like Danny.
    I have pol­icy debates with adults, not with petu­lant children.

  360. king vidor said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:21 pm

    Dear Nancy,

    Thanks for your laser eye.

    I feel your torn emo­tions at this, but good work.

    How­ever, I just want to say let’s lay off Hoagy Carmichael. Guilt by asso­ci­a­tion aint right. Some songs on the Squaresville Juke­box are alright.

    Just cause George Bush likes the Bea­t­les up until they got weird (is that Rub­ber Soul? Revolver?) Doesn’t mean A Hard Day’s Night isn’t peer­less too.

  361. jjcomet said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:21 pm

    Jeff -

    Nice side­step of the issue — Danc­ing With the Stars could use those moves. The ethics I was refer­ring to were what­ever ones Goegelin pre­tended to have when he accepted a job as a pro­fes­sional writer. Appar­ently, he had none, because he showed no reluc­tance to steal the work of oth­ers. I am still at a loss to see how any­one — espe­cially one who loudly espouses “con­ser­vatism” and “con­ser­v­a­tive” virtues — can defend what Goegelin did. Con­ser­v­a­tives scream to the heav­ens about tak­ing per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity for one’s actions, and about vir­tu­ous behav­ior, yet you rush to the defense of a man who was forced to resign his job because he was caught steal­ing the work of oth­ers? No won­der you scoff at ethics — you clearly have none yourself.

  362. I. Morris said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:22 pm

    Since Mr. Wal­ters seems to be mon­i­tor­ing this site on behalf of Mr. Goe­glein — and who knows who else — I’d be curi­ous if he could share what his and his for­mer col­leagues feel­ings were when the White House’s con­cerns over Joe Wilson’s mis­sion to Niger led them to han­dle the mat­ter pub­licly, reveal­ing his wife’s iden­tity, leav­ing her job­less with two chil­dren and shut­ting down an oper­a­tion designed to pre­vent Iran­ian nuclear proflieration.

  363. Colleen said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:27 pm

    he com­mit­ted his crime in “pub­lic” via the news­pa­per, why shouldn’t he be called on the car­pet in pub­lic? And I’m STILL bog­gled at 20 arti­cles. TWENTY. This wasn’t “oh geeze, I had read so and so’s review and I must have acci­den­tally quoted the piece in my work”. This was cut and paste. It was WRONG from the get go, and come ON, he had to know that. What hubris.

    It never fails to blow my mind when some­one does some­thing CLEARLY wrong, yet some peo­ple still insist on see­ing that per­son as a vic­tim. Only of his own poor choices.

  364. ashley said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:28 pm

    Jeff: “your an idiot”

    The mar­que of intel­li­gent debate. Really.

  365. cha cha cha said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:29 pm

    con­ser­v­a­tive trolls:

    “LEAVE TIMMY ALONE!”

    [i sorta pla­gia­rized this]

  366. michaelj said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:30 pm

    Wench? What a jerk.

    Given his age at the time, shouldn’t Clin­ton really be given the ben­e­fit of the youth­ful trans­gres­sions doubt, like his chief per­se­cu­tors Dan ‘Scum­bag’ Bur­ton, St. Henry Hyde, and Newt? Seems only fair.

  367. ashley said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:34 pm

    By the way, William Wal­ters, your par­tici­ple is dan­gling, you might want to zip up.

    I’m curi­ous, when you say “a for­mer col­league and friend of Tim Goe­glein”, does that mean you are a for­mer friend and for­mer col­league, or for­mer col­league and cur­rent friend, or what?

    And please do tell, how does one pla­gia­rize at least 20 of 38 writ­ten pieces with honor? I have no doubt he is an hon­or­able pla­gia­rist, as pla­gia­rists go, but has he emailed apolo­gies to the other 19 peo­ple whose work he stole?

  368. Danny said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:35 pm

    For­tu­nately, decent lib­er­als like me know that loud­mouthed illit­er­ates like you don’t rep­re­sent decent con­ser­v­a­tives like Danny.

    Aww… Shucks. Now, I’m blushing.

    I can only hope some of the regs don’t let on what a jerk I really am.

  369. Danny said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:36 pm

    …but has he emailed apolo­gies to the other 19 peo­ple whose work he stole?

    No, I think he xeroxed them a copy.

  370. William Walters said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:39 pm

    To All:

    The fol­low­ing is a STARK con­trast to what today’s media has become. There’s a great deal to reflect upon in these enlight­ened words. Jour­nal­ists, com­men­ta­tors, blog­gers and oth­ers should take note.

    “Mrs. Eddy had been think­ing about a news­pa­per for a long time before 1907. Way back in 1883 she wrote: ‘Look­ing over the news­pa­pers of the day, one nat­u­rally reflects that it is dan­ger­ous to live, so loaded with dis­ease seems the very air. These descrip­tions carry fears to many minds, to be depicted in some future time upon the body. A peri­od­i­cal of our own will coun­ter­act to some extent this pub­lic nui­sance; for through our paper we shall be able to reach many homes with heal­ing, puri­fy­ing thought.”

  371. Danny said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:41 pm

    Man, if Nancy has her Black­berry hooked up today, she bet­ter leave it plugged into the wall. And prob­a­bly on silent mode too.

    And JC. How are things in the engine room? I have this pic­ture of you today as Mr. Scott from Star Trek. “Aye, Capt’n. She’s gonna blow anti­mat­ter con­tain­ment any time now.”

    Of course, the other famous Scotty quote that comes to mind is” “The best diplo­mat I’ve ever seen is a fully charged phaser bank.”

  372. William Walters said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:43 pm

    To Ash­ley;

    For­mer col­league and cur­rent friend.

    William Wal­ters

  373. Danny said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:45 pm

    ..for through our paper we shall be able to reach many homes with heal­ing, puri­fy­ing thought.”

    William, I think it is puri­fy­ing to “purge,” as it were. The first step to heal­ing is rec­og­niz­ing you have a problem.

    ED: And I think this could be good for your friend, Goe­glein, in the long run. Depends on how he han­dles it.

  374. LA Mary said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:45 pm

    Very late, but cyber high fives, Nancy.

  375. Danny said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:47 pm

    Mary, we missed you. Inter­view go well?

  376. michaelj said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:51 pm

    Ash­ley: Or per­haps a part­ner in crime? OK, that’s inten­tion­ally try­ing to cause trouble.

    When self-proclaimed Con­ser­v­a­tives assert that the other side engages in smears against the pure of heart, I hear Lee Atwa­ter rolling over in his grave, and it’s time to head out, crank up the kayak, and go look­ing for the first black­berry patches until these stale con­ver­sa­tional winds change.

    In 2000, ahead of the SC pri­mary, we got calls indi­cat­ing that, not only was John McCain the father of a bas­tard black child, he was gay. (And we’re reg­is­tered Democ­rats.) I’d say it was a safe bet that tis calumny was directly trace­able to Rove. Now McCain hap­pily embraces W’s sup­port. It’s encour­ag­ing that Repub­li­cans and Con­ser­v­a­tives (what­ever that means in the New Amer­i­can Cen­tury) have retreated from eat­ing their own to a siege men­tal­ity under which even the most scur­rilous must be defended. Did they kick Larry Craig out of Con­gress yet. Now there was a vic­tim of the “drive-by” lib­eral press.

    Move along folks, noth­ing to see hear.

  377. michaelj said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:55 pm

    William Wal­ters Says:
    March 1st, 2008 at 12:39 pm

    Cita­tion? (So, yeah, it’s about CSM, but who the hell said it?)

  378. Lamorial said on March 1st, 2008 at 12:59 pm

    Jux­ta­posed, isn’t the play on words “Goe­glein” and “Google” rather ironic?

  379. Beth said on March 1st, 2008 at 1:00 pm

    I’ve been read­ing this blog for a long time and have com­mented a few times. I enjoy Nancy’s writ­ing and the wry com­ments and feel as though I’ve come to know some of you through what you share. I’m glad that Nancy did what she did — it was brave. I’m sure it wasn’t pleas­ant to know that what she was about to do could result in shame for inno­cent peo­ple like Goeglein’s fam­ily. Regard­less, he has no one to blame but him­self. I’m wor­ried though, about this lit­tle blog. Until now, peo­ple have been able to dis­cuss their dif­fer­ences with­out laps­ing into nasty name-calling. I’d hate to have to stop read­ing nn​.com because it’s turned into Han­nity and Colmes. Nancy, best wishes to you — I hope life doesn’t stay too crazy.

  380. cha cha cha said on March 1st, 2008 at 1:01 pm

    on a related note, rumor has it that a.g. mukasey will “pri­vately” take care of all sub­poe­nas, start­ing with miers and bolten.

  381. William Walters said on March 1st, 2008 at 1:02 pm

    To Michaelj:

    David Cook, Wash­ing­ton Bureau Chief for the CSM, from a talk he gave sev­eral years ago refer­ing to Mrs. Mary Baker Eddy — founder of the CSM.

  382. MichaelG said on March 1st, 2008 at 1:06 pm

    Well, we’ve heard a lot of the admin­is­tra­tion schtick now.

    The lib­er­als do it all the time.

    I’m sorry for what happened.

    It’s time to move on.

    Release the news late on Fri. Although I must admit they acted promptly on this one instead of drag­ging it out day after ago­niz­ing day as hap­pened in Fredo’s case.

    Blame the con­se­quences on the pros­e­cu­tor, not the offender.

    It’s a witch hunt.

    For­get­ting, as a com­menter noted, the Plame affair, for­get­ting the unre­lent­ing hound­ing of the Clin­ton fam­ily, for­get­ting count­less other vic­tims of the slime machine.

    One of the sig­na­ture char­ac­ter­is­tics of the Bushies and the Neos is hypocrisy. If there is any gloat­ing, it’s over the rever­sal of for­tunes suf­fered by a loud mouthed, sanc­ti­mo­nious hyp­ocrite pure and sim­ple. Mr. Goe­glein posi­tioned him­self as cheerleader-in-chief of reli­gion and morals in the admin­is­tra­tion. It’s tough to square his pub­lic pos­tur­ing with his per­sonal actions. Just as it was with Larry “Wide Stance” Craig, the renowned anti-gay activist.

    Another sig­na­ture char­ac­ter­is­tic of the Bushies and the Neos is that they can dish it out but they can’t take it. What a bunch of pusey lit­tle whiners.

    Nance, I’ve always enjoyed the high qual­ity of the com­menters here. All praise to them and to you. Keep it up. I’m gonna want an auto­graphed copy of the book.

    Sorry to add to your server woes, JC.

  383. michaelj said on March 1st, 2008 at 1:14 pm

    Mr. Wal­ters. OK. I was kind of kid­ding.
    Seems this sub­ject has been done in, and ratio­nal dis­cus­sion is tee­ter­ing on the precipice of invec­tive (if it didn’t go over the edge some time ago). I’m never the voice of rea­son, but this is start­ing to resem­ble the Great Boston Molasses Dis­as­ter of 1919.

  384. William Walters said on March 1st, 2008 at 1:17 pm

    I’ve had enough of “mob jus­tice” for one day — reminds me too much of the French Rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies and their enlight­ened approach to jus­tice. Angry drunken mobs enter­tain­ing them­selves with wan­ton slaugh­ter and shouts of “off with their heads.”

    Con­grat­u­la­tions Nancy!

  385. William Walters said on March 1st, 2008 at 1:19 pm

    Michaelj,

    Thank you. I agree com­pletely and applaud you for your acknowl­edg­ment. These are indeed dif­fi­cult and dan­ger­ous times.

  386. MonkeyBoy said on March 1st, 2008 at 1:27 pm

    William Wal­ters said:

    March 1st, 2008 at 11:41 am
    …
    You do not see me stand­ing behind the anonymity of my initials.

    So are you William Edward Wal­ters of Alexan­dria Va, a large con­trib­u­tor to Repub­li­cans, CEO of ALTHA (Acute Long Term Hos­pi­tal Asso­ci­a­tion), and mem­ber of the 2001 Bush-Cheney tran­si­tion team? That WEW grad­u­ated from the Indi­ana Uni­ver­sity School of Law in 1991.

  387. Gary S. said on March 1st, 2008 at 1:34 pm

    Hmm, I’d be more recep­tive to William Wal­ters’ appeals “to han­dle eth­i­cal trans­gres­sions pri­vately”, oh say, 10 years ago, when L’Affaire Lewin­sky gave the con­ser­v­a­tives a chance to exhibit their pen­chant for com­pas­sion, mercy and spar­ing one of pub­lic humil­i­a­tion. Methinks that after the Clin­ton impeach­ment saga, the con­ser­v­a­tives have lost their right to com­plain about Schaden­freude, ‘blood lust’, witch hunts, or pol­i­tics of per­sonal destruc­tion — for at least the next 100 years. Sorry, Mr. Wal­ters, you reap what you sow.

    As to Mr. Goeblein’s abil­ity to pro­vide for his chil­dren, don’t fret: AFAIK, Faux News, Wash. Times and the Swift­boaters for Truth are still around, so Mr. Goeblein’s assured of gain­ful employ­ment as a “writer”.

    And should he decide to take a break from his prodi­gious cut and paste, there are plenty of other lucra­tive oppor­tu­ni­ties in Wingnut­tia. One could always run pre­scrip­tion drugs for Rush Lim­baugh, rub falafels on the breasts of Bill O’Reilly’s assis­tants, apply hair prod­uct to Sean Hannity’s, umm… head, or inject estro­gen to Ann Coulter.

  388. pseudonymous in nc said on March 1st, 2008 at 1:37 pm

    Would this be the William Wal­ters post­ing here, perchance?

  389. MichaelG said on March 1st, 2008 at 1:38 pm

    Another sig­na­ture char­ac­ter­is­tic of the Bushies and the Neos, as exem­pli­fied by Mr. Wal­ters, is that what they are accus­ing oth­ers of per­pe­trat­ing is pre­cisely what them­selves are prac­tic­ing. By all means, Mr. Wal­ters, you are wel­come to take your ball and go home if that is what you wish. Heaven for­bid that any­one should see things dif­fer­ently from you.

  390. Scott P. said on March 1st, 2008 at 1:38 pm

    I have absolutely no doubts that he would have hon­or­ably acknowl­edged his action, offered his imme­di­ate res­ig­na­tion and appro­pri­ate apolo­gies. No doubts whatsoever!

    “Hon­or­able when forced to be.” Is that the new Repub­li­can motto?

  391. Two-Fisted Freelancing Tales » Blog Archive » Bone-Headed Plagiarism said on March 1st, 2008 at 1:39 pm

    […] Well, unfor­tu­nately for Goe­glein, Nancy Nall Der­ringer did. All it took was a quick Googling of one mem­o­rable ref­er­ence, and a long his­tory of lit­er­ary pil­fer­ing was uncov­ered. Within 24 hours, Goe­glein had lost his news­pa­per col­umn and his six-figure job at the White House. Swift jus­tice, that. […]

  392. Wally Wilson said on March 1st, 2008 at 1:47 pm

    The only “smear” that has hap­pened here would have been on Goeglein’s own com­puter screen as he copied-and-pasted the words of oth­ers into his own writ­ings. If Nancy Nall is to be held to a stan­dard of con­tact­ing the White House _first_, then should we not also expect _all_ writ­ers and reporters to clear every­thing through the White House as well? How much trans­parency would that net?

    The jus­tice ver­bur­glars receive is meted by their own pal­ter­ing of the pub­lic trust. They earn their own scar­let let­ter, and it right­fully sticks with them for the rest of their lives. The big­ger the act, the brighter the letter.

    Goe­glein chose to do what he did. No one made that choice for him. His shame is his own. The smear­ing of his ink is by his own hand. Do not pre­tend to shift the respon­si­bil­ity for mak­ing bad deci­sions to Nancy Nall, because she did not guide his pen…she merely capped it in the pub­lic interest.

  393. Rusty Shackleford said on March 1st, 2008 at 1:49 pm

    William Wal­ters — the job your dear hon­est moral friend lost is a job the lying steal­ing cheat should have never had. The pla­gia­rist should feel lucky he doesn’t have to return every cent he earned while pre­tend­ing to be some­thing he’s not.

    I fear for his chil­dren. To be raised by a thief can’t be a good thing.

  394. doral chenoweth said on March 1st, 2008 at 1:53 pm

    Damn…you are good.….

    …this a.m. sent your story to Luke Feck, now sum­ming in Florida…and a pro bono con­sul­tant with my newest food ven­ture…
    Doral, the Elder…Grump to thee.….

  395. Alan said on March 1st, 2008 at 2:00 pm

    That 4:42 am com­ment by “Tim Goe­glein” is a wee bit creepy. How can Nancy tell if it’s from the real Tim?

    As for William Wal­ters of the LTAC Hos­pi­tal Asso­ci­a­tion show­ing up, what for­tu­nate tim­ing! Maybe he can tell me why Fran Townsend omit­ted any men­tion of Life­Care Hos­pi­tals and their 24 patient deaths post Kat­rina in her White House Lessons Learned report? Just two weeks before land­fall, Life­Care was acquired by none other than The Car­lyle Group, an infa­mous pri­vate equity under­writer with a Penn­syl­va­nia Avenue address. So far no one responded to my ques­tions and Fran retired not long ago, cit­ing fear of sub­poe­nas as a rea­son for leav­ing “pub­lic service”.

    The good news is the FBI is inves­ti­gat­ing Roger Clemens for tes­ti­mony given one month ago. Yet, I can’t get them to look into a deba­cle nearly two years old:

    http://​sta​te​ofthe​di​vi​sion​.blogspot​.com/​2​0​0​8​/​0​2​/​f​b​i​-​i​n​v​e​s​t​i​g​a​t​i​o​n​s​-​c​l​e​m​e​n​s​-​v​s​-​l​i​f​e​c​a​r​e.html

    Maybe, William will step up to the plate and be account­able on behalf of his indus­try brethren. One can have the audac­ity to hope…

  396. Lesley said on March 1st, 2008 at 2:01 pm

    I’m sure it wasn’t pleas­ant to know that what [Nancy Nall] was about to do could result in shame for inno­cent peo­ple like Goeglein’s family.

    “Shoot the mes­sen­ger” com­men­tary slays me when it comes to crim­i­nals and hyp­ocrites. If Goeglein’s fam­ily is embar­rassed and ashamed, whose respon­si­bil­ity is that but his?

    Btw, Lind­say Bey­er­stein has more on this not so benign ass­hole. Seems he’s done this many times before. Sur­prise surprise.

  397. Gary S. said on March 1st, 2008 at 2:07 pm

    Wow! If this is indeed that William Wal­ters, then Sir, may I ask what the hell are you doing here, wast­ing per­fectly good bill­able hours defend­ing your friend on the net, when you should be hard at work draft­ing a book deal for Mr. Goeblein ?

    You must know that this guy, clearly a bone fide Repub­li­can hero who was cru­ci­fied by the vicious, “crazy left” blo­gos­phere, has a story to tell that the con­ser­v­a­tive “read­ers” will eat up.

    Hey, you could even par­ley it into a movie, prefer­ably in Ara­maic with Mel Gib­son helm­ing. And I even have the per­fect title: “Nailed (to the Cross) by Nancy Nall”. (Dunno yet who should be cast as Mr. Goe­blein, but Nancy Nall should def­i­nitely be played by Daily Kos — the per­fect villain.)

    P.S. I’m enjoy­ing this too much… I should stop. Not!

  398. Beth said on March 1st, 2008 at 2:09 pm

    Sorry — didn’t mean to imply that Nancy was bring­ing shame on Goeglein’s fam­ily. I agree — the respon­si­bil­ity lies solely with him.

  399. r€nato said on March 1st, 2008 at 2:15 pm

    This may be dif­fi­cult for a flying-monkey right-winger like your­self to under­stand, Mr. Wal­ters, but the vic­tim here is not Mr. Goeglien, the vic­tims are the peo­ple whom he plagiarized.

    By the way, how long until you begin inves­ti­gat­ing what kind of coun­ter­tops Nancy Nall has?

  400. r€nato said on March 1st, 2008 at 2:20 pm

    William Wal­ters Says:
    I’ve had enough of “mob jus­tice” for one day

    I can sym­pa­thize. Most of us had enough of it 10 years ago but that didn’t stop your kind from try­ing to use a Con­sti­tu­tional coup to over­turn the results of two elec­tions whose out­come you didn’t like.

  401. A smarter Jeff said on March 1st, 2008 at 2:33 pm

    Jeff wrote — “The mus­lims hate Amer­ica only because what the lowlife lib­er­als are export­ing here and abroad. They hate the abom­i­na­tions I men­tioned above. As far as I’m con­cerned, I would invite them in this coun­try to take care of the left, if only the mus­lims were intel­li­gent enough to iden­tify what they hate is NOT all Amer­i­cans but —Lib­eral americans.”

    Jeff’s main point in this paragraph;

    I hate lib­er­als for what they’ve done. Mus­lims hate Amer­ica for what the left has done. If Mus­lims were smart, they’d know that it’s all the left’s fault. If Mus­lims were smarter, they’d be Republicans.

    Well, at least now we know that Jeff here is root­ing for the ter­ror­ists, huh?

  402. A smarter Jeff said on March 1st, 2008 at 2:36 pm

    “Did you bring this to the White House pri­vately? Obvi­ously not. Did you bring this to Tim’s atten­tion pri­vately? Obvi­ously not. You exe­cuted him pub­licly with your own self-serving inten­tions in mind. Could you have forced his res­ig­na­tion pri­vately — indeed you could have. You are not only in part respon­si­ble for Tim’s chil­dren being “un-provided for” — the greater col­lat­eral dam­age you inten­tion­ally cre­ated is solely your respon­si­bil­ity. That’s on you and no one else. Now that names were named you want to wash your hands. As I said before — shameful.

    William Wal­ters”

    Yeah, I killed that guy. But if YOU hadn’t told peo­ple about it, my life wouldn’t be ruined. It’s YOUR fault.

  403. A smarter Jeff said on March 1st, 2008 at 2:41 pm

    “And please do tell, how does one pla­gia­rize at least 20 of 38 writ­ten pieces with honor? I have no doubt he is an hon­or­able pla­gia­rist, as pla­gia­rists go, but has he emailed apolo­gies to the other 19 peo­ple whose work he stole?”

    Yes, Ash­ley, I’m sure he has. But he prob­a­bly just cut-and-pasted it 19 times.

  404. The Other McCain said on March 1st, 2008 at 2:55 pm

    Adios, Tim Goeglein…

    Pla­gia­rism is unac­cept­able in any con­text, but it’s sim­ply inex­plic­a­ble that any­one would pla­gia­rize for a col­umn. Almost by def­i­n­i­tion, the colum­nist is express­ing his idio­syn­cratic per­spec­tive, or else — in the case of a news-oriented colum­nist lik…

  405. carole said on March 1st, 2008 at 2:59 pm

    Are you try­ing to get left-wing street cred, Nancy? Don’t you have some­thing bet­ter to do than to obsess with Goe­glein. You seem to have some scary extreme hatred for him.

    Agree…it’s not good behav­ior on his part but I can’t imag­ine that this doesn’t go on more than you think.

    Tat­tle tales never get ahead in the end. Remem­ber Linda Tripp?

    Take care, sweetie.

    XXX,

    Car­ole

  406. g said on March 1st, 2008 at 3:16 pm

    Great blog, Con­grats Nancy, and what an inter­est­ing conversation.

    I am curi­ous about some­thing William Wal­ters said: “Did you bring this to the White House pri­vately? Obvi­ously not. ”

    It seems wildly inap­pro­pri­ate to expect that a dis­cov­ery of pla­gia­rism in a new­pa­per should be pri­vately brought to the atten­tion of the pla­gia­rists cur­rent employer (not a news­pa­per) and kept pri­vate from the actual news­pa­per where the pla­gia­rism actu­ally occured.

    Is this how Mr. Wal­ters thinks crimes should be handled?

    If I dis­cover a sec­re­tary shoplift­ing at Macy’s, I should qui­etly go to her boss at the office instead of alert­ing Macy’s?

    Pecu­liar sense of ethics, Mr. Walters.

    On edit — A Smarter Jeff puts it much more con­cisely than I. I salute you, sir!

  407. Jim said on March 1st, 2008 at 3:24 pm

    Mr. Wal­ters, to those of us who have known of Tim Goe­glein more than eight years, this was a well-deserved come­up­pance. This is not an iso­lated inci­dent. I cel­e­brate this because it is proof that, in the end, jus­tice prevails!

  408. Rheinhard said on March 1st, 2008 at 3:33 pm

    I am astounded at the unbe­liev­able naivete (or is it shame­less men­dac­ity) of William Wal­ters when he sug­gests that this could and indeed should have been han­dled “pri­vately” by Ms. Nall going to the White House and qui­etly inform­ing them of Goeglein’s actions. And he expects us to believe that if this hadn’t been made pub­lic that Goe­glein would still have resigned a lucra­tive and well-connected post, and that the Rove/Cheney White House wouldn’t have taken any reprisal action to hush up the matter?

    Ridicu­lous.

    We have seen exam­ple after exam­ple to prove that in this Admin­is­tra­tion, the result of approach­ing them “pri­vately” in this mat­ter would have led to only one result: a direc­tive to the United States Attor­neys for Michi­gan and Indi­ana to inves­ti­gate Nancy Nall and put her away on any pre­text for as long a time as pos­si­ble. This Admin­is­tra­tion is not led by hon­or­able men, it is led by men who do not for­give and do not for­get. Bring­ing this mat­ter to the atten­tion of the pub­lic is prob­a­bly the only way Nancy could pro­tect her own per­sonal safety and freedom.

  409. jimmiraybob said on March 1st, 2008 at 3:43 pm

    Nancy,

    Thanks for expos­ing the lying fraud. As the con­ser­v­a­tives are quick to point out, and on this one I agree, it was Tim Goeglein’s choice to cheat and it was a very poor choice and a long-term pat­tern of irre­spon­si­ble and dis­hon­est behav­ior. Now he’s being held account­able. He has only him­self and his enablers to blame. If shame befalls him, his business/political asso­ciates, his friends, and his fam­ily then Mr. Goe­glein and those clos­est to him will have to suck it up and make the most of it and, hope­fully, he and his fam­ily will come out of this stronger. Maybe Mr. Goe­glein will show bet­ter judg­ment in the future and not put so much and so many in jeopardy.

    You have helped to pre­serve an even play­ing field for all who play fair and hon­or­ably. From the fly­over Amer­i­can heart­land that every­body loves so much, a hearty thanks for focus­ing the sun­shine where it needed to shine most.

  410. Dexter said on March 1st, 2008 at 3:46 pm

    I do know a LOT of folks read Time Mag­a­zine, and…

  411. skippy said on March 1st, 2008 at 3:47 pm

    good work, nancy! blog­topia and yes, i coined that phrase, should do every­thing we can col­lec­tively to make sure you get the credit for this.

  412. Paul T. McCain said on March 1st, 2008 at 4:03 pm

    What hap­pened was wrong, to be sure. Of that, there is no question.

    But as I read through these com­ments, and the glee­ful tone of the orig­i­nal blog post, I can’t help but make the obser­va­tion that tak­ing such plea­sure in the fail­ing of another bespeaks a small­ness of char­ac­ter, and an empti­ness of heart and soul.

  413. jimmiraybob said on March 1st, 2008 at 4:05 pm

    William Wal­ters Says:
    March 1st, 2008 at 11:21 am

    Tim imme­di­ately took full respon­si­bil­ity for his actions.

    One more com­ment, had he taken full respon­si­bil­ity for his actions he wouldn’t be in the pickle he’s in. He is now being forced to accept account­abil­ity. They aren’t the same.

  414. iMissMollyIvins said on March 1st, 2008 at 4:06 pm

    Thank you Nancy, for expos­ing the lies & crim­i­nal­ity of The Naked Emperor and his min­ions. Amer­ica needs more peo­ple like you.

  415. Apprentice to Darth Holden said on March 1st, 2008 at 4:07 pm

    William Wal­ters is what we over at Escha­ton rou­tinely refer to as a wanker.

    Nancy, superb work, btw. You deserve every last bit of atten­tion you’re get­ting for this.

  416. jcburns said on March 1st, 2008 at 4:12 pm

    Car­ole: That’s the moral les­son you get out of the Tripp Lewin­sky thing!? That tat­tle­tales never pros­per!? That it goes on all the time any­way, so, like, whatever!?

    Where, oh where, is my giant rhetor­i­cal polo mal­let of com­mon sense?

    Know­ing what’s hap­pen­ing: good. Know­ing what’s hap­pen­ing in the processes of mass media: bet­ter. Know­ing what’s hap­pen­ing behind the scenes in gov­ern­ment: essen­tial to freedom.

  417. rhombus5 said on March 1st, 2008 at 4:16 pm

    Goe­glein looks young enough to join the Army or USMC.

    They need men for com­bat arms units. Pla­gia­rism is not a dis­qual­i­fy­ing condition.

  418. Elissa said on March 1st, 2008 at 4:19 pm

    Con­grats on the nation­wide expo­sure! I read the arti­cle on one of the many news type sites I fre­quent and was MORE than a lit­tle sur­prised to see your name men­tioned as the blog­ger who busted him! Keep up the amaz­ing work.

  419. Harl Delos said on March 1st, 2008 at 4:22 pm

    Renato said: “This may be dif­fi­cult for a flying-monkey right-winger like your­self to under­stand, Mr. Wal­ters, but the vic­tim here is not Mr. Goeglien, the vic­tims are the peo­ple whom he plagiarized.”

    You’ve got that a lit­tle side­ways, Renato. Copy­right infringe­ment is theft from the peo­ple whose work is used with­out per­mis­sion, while pla­gia­rism is a fraud upon the readers.

    And Tim was surely already cast­ing about for another job. There aren’t very many peo­ple who stick it out until inau­gu­ra­tion day.

    Con­grats, Nancy, from some­one who’s been a fan, admir­ing your snarky pen even when I dis­agreed with you, since the 1980s.

  420. del said on March 1st, 2008 at 4:22 pm

    Car­ole, Nancy’s reg­u­lar read­ers know that she’s not pan­der­ing to gain street cred with the left. A Smarter Jeff and Danny ably defend true con­ser­v­a­tives on this site all the time to keep it rel­a­tively apo­lit­i­cal. Nancy’s ini­tial beef with Goe­glein, I think, was that the stuff he was putting out, pla­gia­rized or not, was “drippy and awful.”

  421. del said on March 1st, 2008 at 4:30 pm

    Paul T. McCain your infer­ences of “a small­ness of char­ac­ter and an empti­ness of heart and soul” are, alas, very, very misdirected.

  422. del said on March 1st, 2008 at 4:46 pm

    You wouldn’t hap­pen to be this Paul T. McCain; Lutheran min­is­ter and chief of Con­cor­dia Pub­lish­ing House?
    http://​www​.blog​ger​.com/​p​r​o​f​i​l​e​/​0​4​8​4​6​4​6​8​2​6​7​1​9​6​335350
    (Per­haps Alex will return to the thread?) Maybe you’ve a place for Mr. Goe­glein at your company?

  423. michaelj said on March 1st, 2008 at 4:48 pm

    Rhein­hard Says:
    March 1st, 2008 at 3:33 pm

    I under­stand how Nancy might not just cut this short. She actedac­cord­ingto pro­fes­sional ethics, for all the good that’s ever going to do when the peo­ple that own the world are entirely uneth­i­cal. But couldn’t some­body just open another thread more felic­i­tous and salu­bri­ous? This is tak­ing on a seri­ously pale and foetid cast.

    Look aholes, she was right. The nut of the offense is his embed­ment with the holier than thou and the Rov­ian seat of power. But how in the world do the Repub­li­cans get to be the Holier than thou? Look at their heroes and their heroes’ lame excuses. I think these things play out reg­u­larly in fringe and main­stream churches in the inter­est of the Repub­li­can Party every Sunday.

    Fact is, Shock and Awe wasn’t ever autho­rized. If you think it was, please read the Autho­riza­tion. These peo­ple were lied to at the top. They required a return with evi­dence. True, right? Who approved any­thing at all? Con­gress told the seedy lit­tle ass­hole he’d bet­ter come back with proof.

    But what does this all mean? This a revot­ing devel­op­ment. Nobody ever actu­ally approved the inva­sion. Obama sure as shit didn’t object in pub­lic. One thing, nobody ever approved the inva­sion with­out it going through el Baradei, and the moron press, and the idiots that serve as gate­keep­ers. Read what that shit said.

    Now I fig­ure Bar­rack is entirely aware of this. So is he lying his ass off? Fact is, for a fact, claim­ing Con­gress approved the inva­sion is ridicu­lous. Bar­rack didn’t have a vote. Had he, he would have been absent.

    Well any­way, this forum needs a sharp slap. nn.c isn’t polit­i­cal place, although she’s a fine writer and no mat­ter what she’s talk­ing about an intel­li­gent reader gets an idea. I guess if you favor Bob Seger you must be un-American.

    For a Detroit kid, there’s Hide­out Bob, and SRC and MC5 (and Third Power and any num­ber of other good bands.). Some­where at some man­sion long torn down I think on Gra­tiot, there was a house.

  424. Jeff said on March 1st, 2008 at 4:48 pm

    “To a smarter jeff?“
    Your a Lib and I doubt your intel­li­gence. Churchill labeled Libs cor­rectly.
    “If you’re not a lib­eral at twenty you have no heart, if you’re not a con­ser­v­a­tive at forty you have no brain.” “WC”

    As far as your inter­pre­ta­tion of my mus­lim guesses– let it be, let it hap­pen as you doubt and criticize.

  425. Jeff said on March 1st, 2008 at 4:50 pm

    Um, [koff] uh, this is, um … (Mom, can i change my name?), this is Jeff, the pastor/mediator/archaeologist Jeff in east cen­tral Ohio. Y’all other Jeffs are … would any of you care to class up and use the spelling G-e-o-ff? Geoff looks so dis­tin­guished on the page, don’t you think?

    Ah, go preach at a mis­sion con­fer­ence for a day and come back to find the party barn jumpin’, that’s for sure.

    I won’t say i’ve read thor­oughly through the large and under­stand­ably diverse set of responses Nancy’s got­ten here, other than to flinch each time i see a post headed “Jeff,” which tells me i should get one of those cool blog names.

    Mr. Wal­ters, my full name and iden­tity can be found by click­ing through and hunt­ing no fur­ther than the mast­head of my blogs, which is stan­dard because this isn’t where any­one spends a bunch of time prov­ing their bona-fides. I fully believe that a friend of Mr. Goeglein’s could feel defen­sive for a friend whom they still per­son­ally trust, but the bulk of rea­soned com­ment here has had a point (and folks often on the inter­net know how to men­tally sort for lunacy, like the way you and i both sort the day’s mail stand­ing over the recy­cle bin).

    The bother for those of us who make out daily liv­ing in whole or in part with words is that this is a form of theft all too often excused or even expected in pro­fes­sional life, and then there is the stray pub­lic act of pla­gia­rism that becomes a mas­sive det­o­na­tion where folks get tossed all over the map. I think pla­gia­rism should be treated like the theft it is, but cer­tainly not as a cap­i­tal offense.

    On the other hand, going rates for columns if you can find a venue to pay (which was the case for the sources of most of Mr. Goeglein’s thefts) times a min­i­mum of 20 major appro­pri­a­tions means we’re talk­ing about the act of steal­ing any­where from $500 to $20,000, which in Ohio is felony ter­ri­tory. That hasn’t come up much, but there it is.

    I work as a free-lancer, doing news­pa­per, mag­a­zine, agency newslet­ter, edu­ca­tional writ­ing, and grant appli­ca­tions. Every­one wants your skill when you can put words together coher­ently, and few want to pay for it. When peo­ple are happy to work for free, edi­tors and exec­u­tives are less will­ing to pay, or will hold out to pay less.

    So two points — Tim Goe­glein stole money from me, and Nancy, and any­one else who wants to put their skills out on the mar­ket and get fair rec­om­pense. He’s not the only pla­gia­rist out there low­er­ing the rates on us, but he’s a pretty darn pub­lic one.

    And there should be an under­stand­ing even among Mr. Goeglein’s friends — this was the most des­per­ate, fla­grant, and exten­sive case of pla­gia­rism i’ve seen, and i’ve caught a few in print and in teach­ing col­lege under­grads … and that’s given that when you find one, you often find more, plus a ten­dency to adjust the truth to ease your way in other forms and appli­ca­tions. Ask any col­lege offi­cial or professor.

    Tim Goe­glein did this as an offi­cial of the White House — look at the credit line on each col­umn, which wasn’t “Tim Goe­glein is from Fort Wayne and works on the east­ern seaboard.” If this didn’t get aggres­sively han­dled and pub­licly repu­di­ated, you under­mine col­lege and high school teach­ers who across the county are report­ing that this kind of pla­gia­rism, which is * eas­ier * to catch today than it has been in the 20+ years i’ve taught col­lege classes on and off (includ­ing sem­i­nary M.Div. stu­dents). This is a major prob­lem, and if this was brushed off or min­i­mized, you set that strug­gle back as well.

    I hope Mr. Goeglein’s friends help him fig­ure out why he did this, for so long, in so many venues, in an almost reck­less “catch me if you can man­ner.” This is not a small man­ner, and i trust your con­cern will extend towards help­ing him deal with what­ever demons pushed him to this tragic brink.

    Nancy Nall didn’t lead him there, and she hasn’t pushed him over it. She pointed out the edge (los­ing a White House job is not going over the edge, los­ing your soul is). Don’t yell at her for scar­ing peo­ple with crazy talk about precipices — lead some­one near you back to safer ground.

  426. Apprentice to Darth Holden said on March 1st, 2008 at 4:56 pm

    The instant the war in Europe was over, the Brits had the tremen­dous good sense to kick Churchill to the curb.

  427. michaelj said on March 1st, 2008 at 4:59 pm

    Nancy: If it’s worth a turd. Back when I was the smartest print guy in jrl 101, at the Henry Grady School. I was the edi­tor of a one-off paper, a class project. In 1970, I think. We ran a clearly fab­ri­cated inter­view that was clearly true and got sued. Now, if you want to be from Detroit and include music, SRC is inestimable.

    So I was the

  428. Jeff said on March 1st, 2008 at 5:00 pm

    Nancy I remem­ber you on wowo many years ago which much of the pub­lic called the “Nall and Void Show”. Do you remem­ber? I cant remem­ber your lib­eral lawyer partner’s name. started with a G.

    This started with Nall’s vit­riol in kick­ing some­one, on and on and on while the mans down. Only if he’s con­ser­v­a­tive, thats unbi­ased lib­eral eth­i­cal jour­nal­ism. RIGHT

  429. William Walters said on March 1st, 2008 at 5:02 pm

    To Appren­tice to Darth Holden:

    Your facts are a bit skewed. The fol­low­ing from Wikipedia explains the end of Career career.

    After los­ing the 1945 elec­tion, Churchill became the leader of the oppo­si­tion. In 1951, Churchill again became Prime Min­is­ter before finally retir­ing in 1955. Upon his death the Queen granted him the hon­our of a state funeral, which saw one of the largest assem­blies of states­men in the world.

  430. Jeff said on March 1st, 2008 at 5:02 pm

    Oh, noth­ing per­sonal, but i’m not “A Smarter Jeff,” either!

  431. Andrew Jarosh said on March 1st, 2008 at 5:04 pm

    Here’s my 3 cents:
    After writ­ing and edit­ing daily news sto­ries for 29 years, I am con­sis­tently more leery of stuff writ­ten by older, eru­dite writ­ers, the kind of writ­ing that is almost “too good to be true.” The less edit­ing it requires, the more it smells like a rot­ting pinata to me.
    Guess I will take a green reporter’s report­ing — flaws and prob­lems and awk­ward syn­tax — because those draw­backs also have an air of hon­esty to them. I trust a reporter more than I do a colum­nist or “senior reporter.“
    It’s their pol­ish that often hides the dis­hon­esty in their writing.

  432. Apprentice to Darth Holden said on March 1st, 2008 at 5:05 pm

    In 1945, Churchill was kicked to the curb.

    You’re still a wanker, Walters.

  433. Faye Kane said on March 1st, 2008 at 5:09 pm

    Uhh, I feel like I’m tip­toe­ing because I’m not a reg­u­lar here and some of the other “guests” have proved them­selves as rude ass­holes. But I thought y’all would want to know that not only is Nancy in the Wash­ing­ton Post, but two of your reg­u­lars are too: Kenosha Kid and Gryt­pype Thynne. Gryt­pype is men­tioned twice. (The post cred­its them with being the first to dis­cover the lying repub­li­can bastard’s other pla­garies). There are links directly to their posts on this blog com­ments section.

    http://​www​.wash​ing​ton​post​.com/​w​p​-​d​y​n​/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​/​b​l​o​g​/​2​0​0​8​/​0​2​/​2​9​/​B​L​2​0​0​8​0​2​2​9​0​2​0​5​4.html

    Oh, and I can’t WAIT for Nancy’s descrip­tion of this expe­ri­ence! You even got evil repub­li­cans call­ing you names. You are SO lucky, Nancy!!

    – jeal­ous fel­low blog­ger faye kane, home­less brain — doomed to die in ignominy

  434. William Walters said on March 1st, 2008 at 5:12 pm

    Appren­tice,

    Why do you feel it nec­es­sary to engage in name call­ing? I have not and will not smear you with unflat­ter­ing labels. Are you unable to engage in a dis­course with some­one with whom you dis­agree with­out unnec­es­sary name calling?

    You con­tinue to “con­ve­niently” end Churchill’s career at the point in time that suits your beliefs with­out tak­ing into con­sid­er­a­tion his re-election — why?

  435. EvanGahr said on March 1st, 2008 at 5:21 pm

    Pla­gairism is the least of Goeglein’s sins. At the behest of Karl Rove, he made phone calls which got me fired by one of the con­ser­v­a­tive groups, the Hud­son Insti­tute, for whom he was White House lia­son. Rove was wor­ried about the polit­i­cal fall­out of my denun­ci­a­tion of his Chris­t­ian Right ally for mak­ing anti-Semitic remarks. Lots of doc­u­men­ta­tion at my website.

  436. The Brothers Mulvey (Mostly the Elder) said on March 1st, 2008 at 5:21 pm

    Madre Mul­vey just caught us up on your activ­i­ties, and Pat and I both think its great. As young Patrick puts it, “I LOVE MY FAMILY!” You have your­self a proud god­son and a jeal­ous godson’s brother. As a fel­low Amer­i­can, I thank you for putting a dent in the White House’s layer of pla­gia­rist scum.

  437. Apprentice to Darth Holden said on March 1st, 2008 at 5:22 pm

    Wal­ters: Because you have demon­strated, through your posts here, that you are a wanker.

    Did I ever say that Churchill’s career was ended by being kicked to the curb in 1945?

    See, you’ve fur­ther demon­strated that you are, indeed, a wanker.

  438. michaelj said on March 1st, 2008 at 5:23 pm

    Appren­tice to Darth Holden Says:
    March 1st, 2008 at 4:56 pm

    Are you com­par­ing W to Churchill? Odi­ous. Intel­lec­tu­ally stul­ti­fy­ing. W is a pre-junvenile that was told he could pre­empt con­gres­sional restraints on what­ever he did about Iraq. He chose the infan­tile Shock and Awe. If you read the alleged enabling leg­is­la­tion, he basi­cally blew the binders on his actions out. It’s fine to say Con­gress approved his actions. Could some­body assess the Con­gres­sional require­ments he was suposed to meet?

    This is no shit.

    But let me get back. When I was a kid, I fell in with a very beau­ti­ful kid, and we’d been sep­a­rated by cir­cum­stance. Her name was Shirley, and this was in the Bahamas. Intel­li­gence. I’m not jok­ing about read­ing the so-called enabing leg­is­la­tion. Nobody enabled shit.

  439. Harl Delos said on March 1st, 2008 at 5:23 pm

    Jeff couldn’t be both­ered to google Win­ston Churchill, and ended up mis­quot­ing him.

    Actu­ally, what Win­ston Churchill said was

    Any man who is under 30, and is not a lib­eral, has not heart; and any man who is over 30, and is not a con­ser­v­a­tive, has no brains.

    The fun­da­men­tal idea behind con­ser­vatism is save that which is great, and pre­serve it. That’s why the great con­ser­v­a­tives of the past, such as Teddy Roo­sevelt, were also great conservationists.

    You obvi­ously have no respect for the past, Jeff; you’re too lazy to bother look­ing up the quote. You obvi­ously have no respect for those who read your words. Dis­hon­esty and nig­gard­li­ness are the marks of a “neo-con”, not a conservative.

    It makes no dif­fer­ence how old a neo-con is. He has no heart, he has no brains, and he has no integrity.

    I will thank you to stop defam­ing your bet­ters by label­ing your­self as a conservative.

  440. Gary S. said on March 1st, 2008 at 5:27 pm

    Paul T. McCain Says:
    I can’t help but make the obser­va­tion that tak­ing such plea­sure in the fail­ing of another bespeaks a small­ness of char­ac­ter, and an empti­ness of heart and soul.

    Oh yeah? Well, tell it to all your con­ser­v­a­tive Dit­to­heads, who have spent the last 17 years(!) glee­fully inhal­ing, ingest­ing, imbib­ing, heck — absorb­ing through osmo­sis, every bit of juicy dirt on the Clin­tons, rel­ish­ing with lip-smacking jubi­la­tion and near-orgasmic grat­i­fi­ca­tion every Clin­tons’ mis­step, slip of the tong, minor faux pas or plain human misfortune.

    Noth­ing was beyond the pale or out of bounds, whether Bill’s south­ern twang, ado­les­cent Chelsea’s looks, Hillary’s hair, dress or ankles, or insin­u­a­tions of rape, mur­der, drug trade, father­ing of ille­git­i­mate (col­ored!) chil­dren, etc.

    No one was spared: Clin­tons’ friends, fam­ily, polit­i­cal allies, busi­ness asso­ciates, casual acquain­tances — all were legit­i­mate tar­gets. Many were dam­aged or slan­dered — pro­fes­sion­ally, polit­i­cally, eco­nom­i­cally, per­son­ally. For many in the GOP this was, and still is a sport, and way way bet­ter than sex.

    Even now, Hillary’s recent cam­paign woes are met with an incred­i­bly pas­sion­ate, logic-defying hatred and Schaden­freude, even though the con­sen­sus is that McCain would fare bet­ter run­ning against Hillary.

    So, don’t you just love it when mem­bers of Repub­li­can­is­che Partei (and by ‘mem­bers’ I really mean: tools) dare to men­tion words like ‘char­ac­ter’, ‘heart’ and ‘soul’ — all in the same sen­tence ? These days, the only word I bestow on the GOP when read­ing pleas like Mr. McCain’s above screed is ‘Smallness’.

    I’ll be open to recon­sider in, say, another 40 years. This seems to be the nat­ural cycle of things for the GOP. They work really hard to gain absolute power, then f*ck every­thing up so f*cking roy­ally that the next thing for them is 40 years of aim­less wan­der­ing in the polit­i­cal desert. Almost bib­li­cal, wouldn’t you say ?

  441. michaelj said on March 1st, 2008 at 5:27 pm

    William Wal­ters Says:
    March 1st, 2008 at 5:12 pm

    You mean ‘Grasshoppa’, right? When you set out on the big lie, the big lie starts to turn on you and eat you alive.

  442. greensmile said on March 1st, 2008 at 5:30 pm

    Just a thank you from a ran­dom blog reader and nonen­tity of a blog writer…you have just done the most com­pelling demon­stra­tion of the power of the media+web…and the weak­ness of the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion. I will remem­ber both a good long while.

  443. Jeff said on March 1st, 2008 at 5:30 pm

    Hey Narley– I did google it– and pasted it– so stuff it you “wanka”

    The con­cept and appli­ca­tion of the quoted idea stands. So wank on

  444. Apprentice to Darth Holden said on March 1st, 2008 at 5:31 pm

    michaelj:

    I’d never com­pare the desert­ing cow­ard to Churchill. Only his drool­ing fan­bois do that, and by doing so insult Churchill, who, despite his con­ser­vatism, was indeed a wit and an able leader in wartime.

    In fact, I don’t com­pare the desert­ing cow­ard to Hitler, because it’s a poor comparison.

    Hitler was a dec­o­rated com­bat veteran.

  445. William Walters said on March 1st, 2008 at 5:36 pm

    Such vit­riol from left and right — amaz­ing! There’s lit­tle civil dis­course in this thread friends.

    Appren­tice, he may have been kicked to the curb, the salient point is — that they rec­og­nized the mis­take and brought him back and even­tu­ally buried him with high­est hon­ors. Is there any­thing wrong with acknowl­edg­ing that?

  446. Apprentice to Darth Holden said on March 1st, 2008 at 5:41 pm

    One does not engage in civil dis­course with fas­cists, Wal­ters. Churchill knew this. Your attacks on Nancy in defense of a thief demon­strate where you stand.

    The whin­ing of “con­ser­v­a­tives” when they’re given the Karl Rove treat­ment never sur­prises me. They’re cry­ba­bies. They can dish it out, but they can­not take it.

    The Brits brought Churchill back when it was thought his style of lead­er­ship, and the poli­cies he espoused, were felt nec­es­sary, and his lead­er­ship in WWII would have been rec­og­nized even if he never made a come­back, and jus­ti­fi­ably so.

    To reit­er­ate a point: this com­ment edit­ing fea­ture is nearly as good as sex.

  447. MonkeyBoy said on March 1st, 2008 at 5:50 pm

    Nancy: — can you check your IP logs? I think the reap­pear­ance of William Wal­ters is a fake — a troll who wants to dilute the dis­cus­sion here to off-topic rants about Churchill.

    Every­body else:, please stay on topic. Right wing trolls want to dis­rupt this blog so please don’t respond to them unless it is on-topic.

    It is ok for Nancy to let some idiot posts remain just to show the ‘ratio­nal oppo­si­tion’ to her post.

  448. greensmile said on March 1st, 2008 at 5:51 pm

    Har­los, in the foot­note to this post is a link to the Churchill Cen­tre which plainly claims Churchill never said any such thing.

  449. Jeff said on March 1st, 2008 at 5:52 pm

    Nall has quite a col­lec­tion of kiss­ing up idiots. I shall con­cede momen­tar­ily the fact that said ear­lier men­tion of “bet­ters” were indeed “bet­ter fools”. I stand cor­rected and bruised but NOT shamed. This exer­cise has been a waste of an after­noon. I am cer­tain you “bet­ter fools” shall con­tinue in futil­ity. I also sus­pect that not a sin­gle one of my bet­ters has cre­ated a sin­gle Amer­i­can job in this coun­try. Use­less words and NO ACTION.

  450. William Walters said on March 1st, 2008 at 5:53 pm

    Appren­tice, I am hardly a fascist.

    The fact is you know noth­ing about me. Yet, you are more than will­ing to engage in name-calling and slan­der to sup­port your posi­tion. I call for civil dis­course and you, in turn, resort to untrue labels. Nor am I whin­ing. How­ever, you have resorted, by your own admis­sion, to the Karl Rove “treat­ment.” Some­thing, which I dis­agree with as well. As for Churchill — thank you for acknowl­edg­ing that the British pub­lic brought him back pre­cisely for his style of lead­er­ship when needed. They elected him their leader in both wartime and peacetime.

  451. Alan said on March 1st, 2008 at 5:56 pm

    William Wal­ters never said whether he worked for the LTAC hos­pi­tal trade group. But he does lament the vit­riol on this thread. What do you do Mr. Wal­ters when you ask ques­tions and they never get answered? Do you ever get frus­trated or angry?

    I took Mr. Walter’s advice two years ago, con­tact­ing the White House directly with my con­cerns about the grossly inad­e­quate Kat­rina Lessons Learned report. No response. I wrote my elected rep­re­sen­ta­tives who sent form let­ters on the government’s actions dur­ing Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina. None would address the grossly inad­e­quate Bush Lessons Learned tome.

    I hoped William could help out, but I got the same thing from him as I did from Fran Townsend, silence. When it involves acutely ill patients per­ish­ing in dead hos­pi­tals, it feels much like vitriol…

  452. nancy said on March 1st, 2008 at 5:58 pm

    Guys, for the sake of our server, either take it to the e-mails or agree to dis­agree. I don’t mind a lit­tle wan­der­ing, but out-and-out thread hijacks tend to ruin the dis­cus­sion for everyone.

  453. William Walters said on March 1st, 2008 at 5:58 pm

    Alan, I am not the William Wal­ters to whom you refer. Sorry.

  454. Alan said on March 1st, 2008 at 6:05 pm

    My apol­ogy.

  455. Gena said on March 1st, 2008 at 6:12 pm

    http://​stu​dents​.yaf​.org/​g​a​l​l​e​r​y​/​i​n​d​e​x​.​p​h​p​?​l​e​v​e​l​=​a​l​b​u​m​&​a​m​p​;​i​d​=​4​5​&​a​m​p​;​page=5

  456. William Walters said on March 1st, 2008 at 6:13 pm

    Not needed Alan, but accepted with grace.

  457. ashley said on March 1st, 2008 at 6:14 pm

    Jeff: “Your a Lib and I doubt your intelligence”.

    Wow. Just, wow.

  458. ashley said on March 1st, 2008 at 6:16 pm

    Mr Wal­ters,

    You stated that Mr Goe­glein was hon­or­able. Could you tell me if he has indeed apol­o­gized to the 19 other authors from whom he bla­tantly stole his mate­r­ial? Once again, I don’t doubt his honor, I’m just try­ing to cat­e­go­rize it.

  459. tensor said on March 1st, 2008 at 6:18 pm

    Hello, I’m one of the first-time read­ers, referred by Atrios. Thank you, Nancy Nall, for expos­ing yet another crim­i­nal fraud, employed by an Admin­is­tra­tion which seems to employ no other type of person.

    Thanks also, in a most back­handed man­ner, to Mr. William Wal­ter, for his up-thread com­ments, defend­ing the ‘honor’ of a thief, and for whin­ing how the criminal’s chil­dren will now suf­fer. Sir, they suf­fer already; the head of their house­hold is a lying, steal­ing fraud, utterly unfit to instruct them in the val­ues all Amer­i­cans should have. Too bad such con­sid­er­a­tions of moral­ity count for absolutely noth­ing with you, or with any of your ilk. Moral­ity and val­ues are mere words, with which you blud­geon the rest of us; they have no appli­ca­tion of any kind what­so­ever in your own conduct.

    No mat­ter how many crim­i­nal acts the mem­bers of our polit­i­cal right com­mit, they con­tinue to suf­fer from the delu­sion they can lec­ture the rest of us on morals. Mr. Wal­ter, do you recall then-Gov. Bush’s sneer­ing cam­paign promise, to “restore char­ac­ter and integrity to the Oval Office”? You now see how he did it: by hir­ing a crim­i­nal, a thief so obvi­ous it took inter­ested par­ties mere min­utes to dis­cover his crimes. What back­ground checks did the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion per­form on OUR pub­lic ser­vant, before hand­ing him large amounts of OUR money, to keep THEIR polit­i­cal sup­port­ers in line behind THEIR poli­cies? Absolutely none, appar­ently. His job was to ensure sup­port for their poli­cies, not act in an hon­est or eth­i­cal man­ner. (Indeed, given the poli­cies involved, it would seem obvi­ous that hon­esty and ethics can­not be used to sup­port them.)

    To answer your own ques­tion, Mr. Wal­ter, I sug­gest you estab­lish a “Lying Bush Appa­ratchik Char­ity Fund”, and endow it gen­er­ously with your own money, as a starter. Given the parade of crim­i­nals flow­ing from this White House, your Fund will need huge, con­stant dona­tions. Per­haps The Her­itage Foun­da­tion, or Richard Mel­lon Scaife, will assist you.

  460. Ba'al said on March 1st, 2008 at 6:27 pm

    “You exe­cuted him pub­licly with your own self-serving inten­tions in mind.”

    He deserved to be exe­cuted very pub­licly, I only regret that there was no way to make it even more pub­lic. It makes the Baby Jesus cry. But don’t worry, he will be on the Wingnut Wel­fare gravy train before you have time to say Ben Domenich. After all, any crime is excus­able if you’re a Bushie, espe­cially one of the faith-based corps.

  461. ashley said on March 1st, 2008 at 6:28 pm

    My apolo­gies. Due to Mr Goe­glein steal­ing from mul­ti­ple authors mul­ti­ple times, there are only 18 other known vic­tims of his theft, not 19 as I stated ear­lier. They are: James Stern­gold, George Mel­loan, Tracy Lee Sim­mons, Ben Stein (yes, *the* Ben Stein), Roger Kim­ball, George Weigel, Roger Cohen, Michiko Kaku­tani, Michael Dirda, Jerry Wein­berger, Robert P. George, William Booth, Jonathan Yard­ley, Steven F. Hay­ward, Bruce Ben­nett, Robert R. Reilly, Eric Ormsby, and Tim Page.

    Has Mr Goe­glein apol­o­gized to each of them, or has his legal coun­cil advised against it?

  462. William Walters said on March 1st, 2008 at 6:42 pm

    Ash­ley,

    When I was asked if Tim Goe­glein would have resigned had he been con­fronted pri­vately, I said:

    “I have absolutely no doubts that he would have hon­or­ably acknowl­edged his action, offered his imme­di­ate res­ig­na­tion and appro­pri­ate apolo­gies. No doubts whatsoever!

    I have known him per­son­ally and pro­fes­sion­ally for over 8 years.”

    The fol­low­ing excerpt is from the NY Times:
    “It is true,” Mr. Goe­glein wrote in an e-mail mes­sage to another Fort Wayne news­pa­per, The Journal-Gazette. “I am entirely at fault. It was wrong of me. There are no excuses.”

    He said he had apol­o­gized to the author of The Dart­mouth Review article.”

    An excerpt from CNN fol­lows:
    “Goe­glein said he has reached out to the author, Jef­fery Hart, whose 1998 writ­ings in the Dart­mouth Review he copied nearly ver­ba­tim. “I have writ­ten to Jeff to apol­o­gize, and do so cat­e­gor­i­cally and with­out excep­tion,” he says.”

    “Hart, an author and for­mer pro­fes­sor at Colum­bia and Dart­mouth, said he received Goeglein’s e-mail apol­ogy Thurs­day. “I told him I was flat­tered he’d used it. It doesn’t dam­age him in my esti­ma­tion at all. I’m glad he spread the word.”

    “But Hart said he wasn’t con­don­ing pla­gia­rism. “If it came in an aca­d­e­mic con­text, it’d have to be dealt with,” he said, but he feels this sit­u­a­tion is dif­fer­ent. “I think stuff flies around on the Web, in jour­nal­ism and so on.”

    Ash­ley, I do not know if Tim has apol­o­gized to the other 19 authors, but know­ing him as I do, I would bet the ranch he is work­ing dili­gently toward that goal.

    I don’t know how one cat­e­go­rizes honor Ash­ley. Tim has, no doubt, expe­ri­enced the worst day of his life and has demon­strated to me — true remorse.

    Kick­ing this man while he is down serves no noble purpose.

  463. trick said on March 1st, 2008 at 6:42 pm

    Whew! Just fin­ished read­ing all 462 (and count­ing, count­ing, count­ing) responses to Nancy’s thor­oughly pro­fes­sional blog­post (Remem­ber that, folks? Wayyy back yes­ter­day?), and I have to sec­ond Greensmile’s com­pli­ment about show­ing us all “the power of the media+web” … Nancy, you and your cyber­col­leagues are to be con­grat­u­lated and, I hope, emulated …

    I’ll only add that I’m one of the almost four dozen staffers who took a “buy­out” (trans­la­tion: Bet­ter leave before we lay you off) late last year from the news­pa­per that Jack Kel­ley hood­winked a few years ago with his own form of in-print mis­deeds — mak­ing up sto­ries, quotes, sources, occur­rences, etc., not to men­tion recruit­ing peo­ple to help him lie about it. (http://​www​.usato​day​.com/​n​e​w​s/2004 – 03-18 – 2004-03-18_kelleymain_x.htm)

    In recent years, months, weeks, many in the dead-tree media have bemoaned the rise of blogs as a poor sub­sti­tute for putting actual reporters and edi­tors on the job day after day. But many of us also have missed (and mis­un­der­stood) the blogosphere’s instan­ta­neous way of spread­ing the word AND dig­ging deeper (props to your faith­ful read­ers and col­lab­o­ra­tors, Nance) with real inves­tiga­tive report­ing abil­ity, while host­ing the most amaz­ing run­ning com­men­tary and con­ver­sa­tion about it all.

    I came to NN.c a cou­ple of years ago at the sug­ges­tion of my sis­ter, a fel­low jour­nal­ist and very big fan. It has become a daily part of our lives for all sorts of rea­sons. And this week, it has shown the value of thor­ough, detailed and pro­fes­sional just-plain-reporting.

    So as the off-topic rants and par­ti­san screed con­tinue to fly, let’s not for­get what this was way back at 7:38 a.m. on Fri­day: A news story worth report­ing.
    Nancy, keep show­ing the rest of us ink-stained (and carpal tun­neled) wretches the way …

  464. Jeff (one of the other ones) said on March 1st, 2008 at 6:51 pm

    William Wal­ters –

    A (too) long com­ment of mine got bogged down a bit in the ether and has popped back in the queue when i threw it in; my sense of why there really isn’t any “kick­ing this man while he is down” is stated there.

    If this blogfest goes on through next week obsess­ing on whether or not Mr. Goe­glein can get a job as assis­tant for PR at a Good­will or United Way some­day, then you might have a point. But i hope you’ll review what i observed back a bit on this thread.

  465. g said on March 1st, 2008 at 7:01 pm

    “I have absolutely no doubts that he would have hon­or­ably acknowl­edged his action, offered his imme­di­ate res­ig­na­tion and appro­pri­ate apologies.”

    Mr. Wal­ters, had Nancy Nall done as you sug­gested, and bring Goeglein’s pla­gia­rism pri­vately to the atten­tion of the White House, he may well have done as you sug­gest here. How­ever, he would have had the lux­ury of doing so with­out any­one else know­ing about it — in short, his wrong-doing would have been hushed up and he could have gone on with his lib­erty to write news­pa­per columns — and plagiarize — intact.

  466. William Walters said on March 1st, 2008 at 7:10 pm

    g.

    There has been no lux­ury any­where in this story. It is a tragedy with­out appar­ent end. Too many here are will­ing to throw stones even after a res­ig­na­tion has been ten­dered and apolo­gies made. A pri­vate solu­tion would have robed the stone throw­ers of their chance to pile on but, that does not mean jus­tice would not have pre­vailed. Remem­ber G — Jus­tice and Mercy go hand in hand — one with­out the other yields unde­sir­able results.

  467. Faye Kane said on March 1st, 2008 at 7:12 pm

    Ten­sor:

    Wooo-eee! Tell him! Tell him, god dammit!

    Your reply to William Wal­ters
    http://​nan​cy​nall​.com/​2​0​0​8​/​0​2​/​2​9​/​c​o​p​y​c​a​t​/​#​c​o​m​m​e​n​t​-​164633
    was SO elo­quent that I posted as today’s item on my own blog with the title:
    I LOVE IT WHEN LITERATE INTELLIGENT PEOPLE GET MAD!

    Wish­ing I had half your tal­ent in phrase-turning,

    –faye kane, home­less brain

  468. Matt Mendelsohn said on March 1st, 2008 at 7:14 pm

    »»I am cer­tain you “bet­ter fools” shall con­tinue in futil­ity. I also sus­pect that not a sin­gle one of my bet­ters has cre­ated a sin­gle Amer­i­can job in this country.««

    I’ve read almost every one of these com­ments, agree­ing with many and lament­ing the crude­ness and vit­riol con­tained in oth­ers. That’s par for the course in inter­net threads like this. But this com­ment gave me more pause than most. What kind of absurd stan­dard is implied here? Is this poster sug­gest­ing that one can­not expose a fraud in the upper lev­els of our gov­ern­ment with­out hav­ing first cre­ated an Amer­i­can job?

    That’s a pretty mighty dis­con­nect. I never heard the name Nancy Nall before yes­ter­day and don’t really have a dog in this fight, other than hav­ing worked in jour­nal­ism for 22 years.

    (And, sadly, I got to wit­ness the work of a ser­ial fab­ri­ca­tor first-hand. I wrote about it back in Sep­tem­ber here: http://​www​.mattmendel​sohn​.net/​2​0​0​7​/​0​9​/​s​a​y​-​i​t​-​a​i​n​t​-​s​o​-​j​o​e.html)

    But I think it’s a stretch to think that one has no moral cred­i­bil­ity or author­ity to expose a pla­gia­rist like Mr. Goe­glein with­out hav­ing first proven his or her “worth” to our country’s gross national prod­uct. That’s just down­right silly.

  469. Linda said on March 1st, 2008 at 7:19 pm

    I hate to sound as cyn­i­cal as I will now, but when peo­ple talk about mis­takes and tragedy and mercy, you can bet a white, well-to-do per­son made a seri­ous cock-up. I’m sorry, but most peo­ple do not speak that way when some ghetto schnook gets caught with a cou­ple rocks of crack, even when they are for per­sonal con­sump­tion, and nobody will be hurt by them but him. And pretty much nobody on the con­ser­v­a­tive end of the polit­i­cal spec­trum will give such a per­son any mercy at all.

  470. Undercover Black Man said on March 1st, 2008 at 7:23 pm

    “Now that you have assisted in the destruc­tion of his career, are you big enough to step up and offer your sup­port to his fam­ily? I do not fault you for hold­ing any pub­lic servant’s feet to the fire, but your man­ner of exe­cu­tion is shameful.”

    William Wal­ters, shame on you for try­ing to put shame on Nancy.

    To pass off other people’s words and ideas as one’s own is the second-most dis­hon­or­able thing a writer can do. It is a trick played upon the pub­lic. And a pla­gia­rist ought to be exposed and con­demned publicly.

    Mr. Goeglein’s actions alone led to his job­less­ness, and caused his fam­ily this dis­tress. His actions alone have brought dis­grace upon him.

  471. William Walters said on March 1st, 2008 at 7:27 pm

    “There is no mercy among fools nor jus­tice among the vin­dic­tive. Be not vin­dic­tive fools lest one risk the consequences.”

    Good night all.

  472. Rheinhard said on March 1st, 2008 at 7:35 pm

    Mr. Wal­ters — I would very much like you to answer two ques­tions for me.

    1) How exactly do you pro­pose that Nancy could have “qui­etly” brought the mat­ter to the atten­tion of the White House. Maybe you have Karl Rove’s pri­vate num­ber or some­thing, but for most of the rest of us pro­les, the con­ver­sa­tion would go some­thing like this:

    *RING* “Hello White House phone office”

    “Yes , I’m a mid­west­ern blog­ger you’ve never heard of and I’d like to make a charge of pla­gia­rism against the spe­cial assis­tant to the Pres­i­dent. Could you patch me through to the ethics ombuds­man or the Chief of Staff please?”

    “ummmm, yeah sure we’ll get right on that”

    *Click* Wacky left­ist bloggers!

    Seri­ously I’d very much like to know how you think a ran­dom cit­i­zen with no con­tacts inside the GOP machine con­tacts the white house “pri­vately”. I have been a cit­i­zen of this coun­try all my life, attended an Ivy League uni­ver­sity, and con­sider myself pretty well informed. And I have no idea what­so­ever how to lodge a pla­gia­rism com­plaint against a top aide to the pres­i­dent “privately”.

    2) Con­sid­er­ing the ample evi­dence of this Admistration’s abuse of var­i­ous branches of gov­ern­ment and the media to pun­ish crit­ics or staff it con­sid­ers insuf­fi­ciently loyal (e.g., the Attor­neys purged for not pros­e­cut­ing enough democ­rats, the out­ing of CIA covert agent work­ing on WMDs because her hus­band was crit­i­cal of fan­tas­tic claims in the runup to the war, the coor­di­nated attacks against for­mer high offi­cials like Richard Clarke and Anthony Zinni who have traded on their for­eign pol­icy and mil­i­tary exper­tise to crit­i­cize White House pol­icy, and on and on…) how do you sug­gest that Nancy could have pro­tected her­self when, after approach­ing the White House “qui­etly” with this evi­dence that no one else yet knew about, they directed politi­cized US attor­neys to harass her, lodged defam­a­tory arti­cles against her in a com­pli­ant media, and sent lap dogs like Michelle Malkin to sniff through her per­sonal affairs (as she did in the case of 12 year old Graeme Frost, who spoke out about the President’s oppo­si­tion to Children’s Health Care)? Unlike you, many of us do not believe this Admin. to be com­prised of hon­or­able men, and would fear for our per­sonal and pro­fes­sional safety if we were to run afoul of men like Karl Rove, who is known to have said of a polit­i­cal oppo­nent “We will f**k him like he has never been f**ked before!”?

  473. Faye Kane said on March 1st, 2008 at 7:36 pm

    William Wal­ters said:
    “There has been no lux­ury any­where in this story. It is a tragedy with­out appar­ent end. ”

    Spare me your croc­o­dile tears, Wal­ters! Where was your Chris­t­ian Char­ity when Clin­ton was being impeached for lying, once, about some­thing which couldn’t POSSIBLY be more incon­se­quen­tial? You didn’t just crit­i­cize him, you IMPEACHED him — tried to remove him from office!

    Then you have the AUDACITY to say “Jus­tice and Mercy go hand in hand”?

    The only “tragedy with­out appar­ent end” is what the evil, EVIL Repub­li­can party is doing to our country.

    – faye kane, home­less brain

  474. Tand in NC said on March 1st, 2008 at 7:38 pm

    Nancy — BBC News web­site excerpt: “The pla­gia­rism was brought to light by a blog­ger, Nancy Nall, who posted a com­par­i­son of a Goe­glein col­umn with a Dart­mouth Col­lege essay by Prof Jef­frey Hart on the goal of education.”

  475. voxy said on March 1st, 2008 at 7:44 pm

    wow, I couldn’t be PROUDER of you if you were my own sis­ter.
    Oh, in fact YOU ARE.

    GOOD JOB !!!!
    (and nice to meet you via lind­say bey­er­stein majikthise)

  476. Mia K. said on March 1st, 2008 at 8:01 pm

    Nice catch. And the breadth and vol­ume of it is hard to believe.

    Goe­glein lands him­self a cushy job on the neo-con gravy train and the guy is too damned lazy to punch in and write his own rants?

    And really, how hard can it be to write wing-nut rants? Make stuff up, toss in some tragic anec­dotes and blame lib­er­als for any­thing. End of column.

    At least he didn’t deny real­ity after being caught dead to rights with irrefutable evi­dence. That’s what you call wing-nut “honor.”

    If he hadn’t been pub­licly exposed, Goe­glein undoubt­edly would have qui­etly resigned in the dead of night in order to “spend more time with his fam­ily,” only to show up some­where else in the wing-nut wel­fare sys­tem, proudly trum­pet­ing his past White­house employment.

    Now he can apply for a job at Xerox.

  477. Kevin Knuth said on March 1st, 2008 at 8:03 pm

    William Wal­ters:

    Your wrote: “I have absolutely no doubts that he would have hon­or­ably acknowl­edged his action, offered his imme­di­ate res­ig­na­tion and appro­pri­ate apolo­gies. No doubts whatsoever!

    I have known him per­son­ally and pro­fes­sion­ally for over 8 years.”

    You first sen­tence should read “I have absolutely no doubts that AFTER HE WAS CAUGHT.…”

    See, he is NOT honorable.…if he was, he wouldn’t be in such a pickle.

    You con­ser­v­a­tives crack me up. You sim­ply can­not admit HE DID WRONG!!!!!!

  478. corporal waldo said on March 1st, 2008 at 8:49 pm

    Sin­cere con­grat­u­la­tions Nancy, this has been an extremely educa­tive thread. The power of the Inter­nets is once again con­firmed, the cor­rup­tion of all aspects of the bush admin once again exposed, the will­ing­ness of con­ser­v­a­tives to attempt to jus­tify and ame­lio­rate their own crim­i­nal behav­iour once again on dis­pay. A cou­ple of questions:

    Over what period did these inci­dents of pla­gia­rism take place?
    Given the defendant’s Gov­ern­ment posi­tion, do crim­i­nal charges apply?

    As for ‘William Wal­ters’ and his ilk, you may be sat­is­fied with an apol­ogy but I think that in this case, as in the case of so many of crim­i­nal bush appa­ratchiks, sorry doesn’t cut it.
    Most crim­i­nals say sorry when they’re caught; it’s the Ted Hag­gard tech­nique. Lie, thieve, shove your hypocrisy down people’s throats, use your posi­tion to pro­mote a polit­i­cal agenda and to take naive people’s money while all the time being a snide, val­ue­less per­vert. Then when you’re exposed, “Oh, I’m sorry, the devil made me do it, pray for me”.
    Tim Goe­glein is just the lat­est bush facil­i­ta­tor in a long line of bush poltroons to be exposed as hyp­ocrites, liars, pla­gia­rists, pro­pa­gan­dists, faux reli­gious scam artists, pae­dophiles and trai­tors to the true spirit of Amer­ica.
    He should join his com­pa­tri­ots at http://​cit​i​zens​fore​thics​.org/​e​x​e​c​c​o​r​r​uption

  479. del said on March 1st, 2008 at 8:53 pm

  480. Jean said on March 1st, 2008 at 9:20 pm

    oy veh, I step away for a cou­ple of days and all hell breaks loose.

    Let us now return to our reg­u­lar pro­gram­ming, in which we reg­u­lar read­ers trust Nancy to keep an eye out for His Horndogness…

    (And, Nancy? as a writer and edi­tor, I agree with the “high fives” assess­ment. Screw all the polit­i­cal to-and-fro, this is about the basics: steal­ing and lying.)

  481. Suzi said on March 1st, 2008 at 9:23 pm

    thanks a lot, now this ass­hole will prob­a­bly come back to fort wayne and get under­foot. prob­a­bly team up with matt kelty, (another self-annointed cham­pion for jesus) who also seems to think the rules are for every­body else.

    nice work, nancy!

  482. michaelj said on March 1st, 2008 at 9:31 pm

    Nancy. If you decamp because this is insuf­fer­able. Well. I’m fig­ur­ing you do some­thing like I do and rered Count Zero. No but what the hell. I’d like to wake to some­thing more salu­bri­ous. Or more interesting:

    Palate Cleanser:This is fas­ci­nat­ing, I think, and very well-written. To me, Wikipedia
    is sort of a guilty plea­sure and the lazy way out if you’re try­ing to find out about some­thing. But it’s a hoot, and I fig­ure I’m well-informed enough to take some of it with a grain of salt. On the other hand, some ves­tige of some sort of intelligence.

    This is a long national night­mare. You can’t be more igno­rant than Bush. Sorry, You can’t be more igno­rant. It’s actu­ally impossible.

  483. db said on March 1st, 2008 at 9:39 pm

    Mr. Wal­ters: The dirty deed — pla­gia­rism — was done in pub­lic. It did not deserve a pri­vate dis­clo­sure. Pla­gia­rism is a pub­lic act; it can­not be cleansed in secret. It is an offense against not only the pub­lisher, but the publisher’s read­ers. Pub­lic account­abil­ity is cru­cial. Han­dled pri­vately, the paper may have con­cluded that there was no rea­son to tell its read­ers about this fraud. It’s hap­pened that way before.

    Fur­ther, Nancy Nall did not get this guy fired from his unre­lated job. I would have thought that the Bushies, tol­er­ant as they are of felo­nious law­less­ness, would have slapped the poor boy’s patty for this rel­a­tively less seri­ous offense. They, not Nancy, pulled the trigger.

    Blame the White House for his fir­ing. Blame the writer for his mis­de­meanors. But Nancy Nall did exactly the right thing.

  484. michaelj said on March 1st, 2008 at 9:43 pm

    Is Fort Worth sup­posed to be Ground Zero. These ass­holes have trashed the Con­sti­tu­tion of the United States. Nobody in the heart­land seems to under­stand. Look. if y’all are will­ing to put up with sign­ing state­ments, y’all are ass­holes and idiots.

  485. ashley said on March 1st, 2008 at 9:50 pm

    FWIW, there is no Wikipedia entry on Mr. Goeglein.

    Hint hint.

  486. g said on March 1st, 2008 at 10:09 pm

    “Han­dled pri­vately, the paper may have con­cluded that there was no rea­son to tell its read­ers about this fraud. ”

    db, Mr. Wal­ters did not rec­om­mend that Nancy go to the paper in pri­vate about the pla­gia­rism. He rec­om­mended that she go to Goeglein’s employer — the White House — in pri­vate. In other words, he rec­om­mended that she should not have alerted the paper about the pla­gia­rism that was pub­lished in its own pages.

    mic­a­helj — it’s Fort Wayne, not Fort Worth. Dif­fer­ent state, dif­fer­ent city.

  487. John Brown said on March 1st, 2008 at 10:32 pm

    Nancy,

    I think that he was a guy who wanted to be taken seri­ously for his writ­ing but he lacked the abil­ity or patience required to real­ize his dream. So, he took the lazy way out. Any­body who has taken even one jour­nal­ism class or ever writ­ten a term paper under­stands cred­it­ing sources.

    There is NO part of this that any­body should con­sider your fault. I tried to read all of the pre­vi­ous posts and I think this story is sim­ple. He cheated. He got caught. End of story.

  488. WhiteBeard said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:08 pm

    I hate you! Shame on you for expos­ing a thief and com­pelling me to quit my retired rit­ual of play­ing card games, watch­ing a DVD movie or read­ing the news wires online.
    Instead, I became obsessed with read­ing all of the com­ments on your won­der­ful expose and then div­ing into your pre­vi­ous obser­va­tions on the media where I have toiled for the past half cen­tury and enjoyed the news­room pol­i­tics.
    I was aghast at the inclu­sion of com­ments in news­pa­per sto­ries online (I agree that the elec­tronic pre­sen­ta­tion is much eas­ier to deci­pher than crayon scrib­bles on paper tow­els).
    But it is a new world we live in with “Inter­nets” and blogs quickly shed­ding and shred­ding the emperors’s new clothes and unmask­ing the thieves and scoundrels who lift oth­ers’ thoughts.
    When I first started in the radio news end I was handed an “incred­i­ble” short story and asked as a writer what I thought about it. My reply was I liked it bet­ter the first time and was told that was a hor­ri­ble accu­sa­tion and I should prove it.
    It took me 20 min­utes in the local library to find the orig­i­nal in a sci­ence fic­tion anthol­ogy; it was not an exact copy, the name of the lead char­ac­ter was changed in the retyp­ing and that was the only change (even the typos were included).
    No, really, I don’t hate you, just the oppo­site, and I plan to use your caffeine-free blog to start my day from now on.
    Keep up the great work.

  489. A smarter Jeff said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:09 pm

    “Oh, noth­ing per­sonal, but i’m not “A Smarter Jeff,” either!”

    That was never in doubt.

    It’s just too easy.…

  490. Brian Schmidt said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:18 pm

    My favorite William Wal­ters line so far (although I’ll con­fess I haven’t read them all):

    “Now that you have assisted in the destruc­tion of his career, are you big enough to step up and offer your sup­port to his family?”

    Gen­er­ally the left part of the polit­i­cal spec­trum has sup­ported a stronger social safety net than the right has. We do have AFDC, WIC, and welfare-to-work pro­grams to some extent still, despite what Bush has done to them. If Mr. Wal­ters con­sid­ers them inad­e­quate for his friend and col­league, he might con­sider sup­port­ing their expansion.

  491. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:35 pm

    Indeed it is.

  492. David Simon said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:53 pm

    Atta­girl.

    Another mon­ey­changer dragged from the Tem­ple. Still crowded in there, but you do what you can.

    Good work, Ms. Nall.

  493. tensor said on March 1st, 2008 at 11:56 pm

    “I don’t know how one cat­e­go­rizes honor Ashley.”

    But, you’re will­ing to lec­ture the rest of us on our sup­posed lack of honor! I’ll give you this, Mr. Wal­ter: you’re the first apol­o­gist for a lying, right-wing hack to admit he has no idea what the word ‘honor’ means. A pity your self-admitted igno­rance of all things hon­or­able did not pre­vent your lec­tur­ing us non-criminals on that sub­ject. Alone amongst mor­al­iz­ing right-wingers, you almost earned some pity from decent folk. Almost.

  494. white_n_az said on March 2nd, 2008 at 12:02 am

    William Wal­ters says…Did you bring this to the White House pri­vately? Obvi­ously not. Did you bring this to Tim’s atten­tion pri­vately? Obvi­ously not. You exe­cuted him pub­licly with your own self-serving inten­tions in mind. Could you have forced his res­ig­na­tion pri­vately — indeed you could have.

    Tim Goe­glein is a ser­ial plagarist

    There is lit­tle doubt as to why it had to be public.

  495. Nix said on March 2nd, 2008 at 1:59 am

    Dear William Wal­ters,
    I think this is a case of you reap what you sow. The Right likes to talk about per­sonal respon­si­bil­ity, yet you have blamed Nancy for not tak­ing this to the White House directly. I would like to know how that would have played out? Would Nancy find her­self in an I.C.E. deten­tion cen­ter to keep her and this story quite? How far are you will­ing to trust this Administration?

  496. john said on March 2nd, 2008 at 2:10 am

    Let me sum this up for all of you that lean too far left or right to see things clearly.

    Tim was a writer. Tim was caught pla­gariz­ing. Tim lost his job. The end.

    Per­haps if you aren’t a writer you might not under­stand the grav­ity of the crime. But pla­garism means game over. It is lying, cheat­ing and steal­ing all at the same time.

    Tim knew that. And suf­fered the consequences.

    Nancy is not to blame. Tim is.

    Yes, Nancy did bring this to our attention.

    For that she deserves to be congratulated.

    Con­ser­v­a­tive or lib­eral you can under­stand that look­ing the other way is not the Amer­i­can way.

    And for those of you con­cerned with Tim’s sud­den loss of income, {you don’t often hear that cry about peo­ple guilty of uneth­i­cal behav­ior} you can rest assured that there is no short­age of need for bad writers.

    Per­haps some romance nov­els Tim. I’d love to hear more about those opera fellas.

    jh

  497. michaelj said on March 2nd, 2008 at 2:13 am

    Please stop. There’s no way in the world the right wing apologist’s can take the high road. They invented the low road, and Lee Atwa­ter admit­ted it on his deathbed. They ran with Swift­boat, when Kerry was an unadul­ter­ated war hero and W guarded the bar at the OClub and actu­ally remem­bers part of it.

    Con­ser­v­a­tives, if there are any, are tin­horn turds that couldn’t fight their way out of an Iraqi paper bag, and they’ve been sub­sumed by New Amer­i­can Cen­tu­ri­ons. The Short­boat smear of John Kerry exposed the immor­tal stu­pid­ity of Amer­i­can vot­ers. But, so what. Now that the ass­holes elected the worst Pret­zeldent ever, have they learned a les­son? Prob­a­bly not.

    Democ­racy is the the­ory that the com­mon peo­ple know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard. Either I made that up or HL Mencken did. But these recrim­i­na­tions have got to stop. It’s not Nancy Nall’s fault some Rove acolyte chose to pla­gia­rize his ass off. You can’t divide it any way but one. It’s like Cheney and Hal­libur­ton. Crooks.

    All that aside, this guy has some seri­ous psy­cho­log­i­cal prob­lems. Made it really easy to get caught. And as for the holier than thou Conservatives:

    Democ­racy is the the­ory that the com­mon peo­ple know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.. HL Mencken said that, and sadly, these lem­mings prove his point every day.

    Honor? Run­ning with the Swift­boat aholes, when you didn’t just dodge the draft, you skipped on the National Guard, that defines the oppo­site of honor. Pretty much defines the New Amer­i­can Cen­tu­ri­ons, whose idea of honor is fill­ing mer­ce­nary cof­fers an tor­tur­ing retarded guys like Jose Padilla.

    Mean­time, and at the risk of sound­ing like a YouTube whack, just leave Nancy alone. Let her get a good night’s sleep and write some­thing in the morn­ing about Kwame Kil­patrick that won’t get everybody’s under­oos in a bunch.

    One thing broached ear­lier that I’d like to see pur­sued: In your con­cern for Keep on Goeglein’s career and his fam­ily, do you still sup­port the con­spir­acy in the heart of the admin­is­tra­tion to expose the covert CIA agent Valerie Plame. Sim­ple ques­tion. Only sim­ple answer required.

  498. nwgal said on March 2nd, 2008 at 2:22 am

    Nancy — a well-deserved con­grat­u­la­tions to you.
    Ten­sor — I enjoyed a lot of the com­ments here; but none more than yours. Thanks for con­tribut­ing.
    William Wal­ters — the fact that you demon­strate more dis­dain for the per­son who brought your friends many (many, many) mis­deeds to light than for your friend’s behav­ior tells me that it’s futile to try to talk basic moral­ity with you, as your moral com­pass doesn’t seem to be func­tion­ing very well.

  499. commie atheist said on March 2nd, 2008 at 2:29 am

    “The pres­i­dent was dis­ap­pointed to learn of the mat­ter and he was sad­dened for Tim and his fam­ily,” White House press sec­re­tary Dana Perino said in a state­ment.
    She said Goe­glein had accepted respon­si­bil­ity and “has apol­o­gized for not uphold­ing the stan­dards expected by the president.”

    …

    The News-Sentinel said an inter­nal inves­ti­ga­tion found that 20 of 38 of Goeglein’s columns pub­lished in the past eight years con­tained por­tions copied from other sources with­out attribution.

    …

    Goe­glein has worked at the White House since 2001. He is a spe­cial assis­tant to Bush and deputy direc­tor of the Office of Pub­lic Liai­son, serv­ing as the administration’s liai­son with influ­en­tial con­ser­v­a­tives. He was a right-hand man for for­mer strate­gist Karl Rove when he over­saw the pub­lic liai­son office.
    Accept­ing his res­ig­na­tion, the White House gave Goe­glein a warm send­off.
    Perino said Bush “has long appre­ci­ated Tim’s ser­vice and he knows him to be a good per­son who is com­mit­ted to his coun­try.“
    She said Goe­glein helped estab­lish Bush’s Faith-Based and Com­mu­nity Ini­tia­tive,     his pro­gram for AIDS relief in Africa, and also played an impor­tant role in the con­fir­ma­tion of Supreme Court Jus­tices John Roberts and Samuel Alito.

    The jokes just write themselves.

  500. commie atheist said on March 2nd, 2008 at 2:43 am

    #500…

    The award-winning Josh Mar­shall weighs in…

    http://​tpm​muck​raker​.talk​ing​pointsmemo​.com/​2​0​0​8​/​0​3​/​w​h​i​t​e​_​h​o​u​s​e​_​a​i​d​e​_​p​l​a​g​i​a​r​i​z​e​d​_2.php

  501. michaelj said on March 2nd, 2008 at 3:22 am

    At this point, this dis­cus­sion is run­ning in quick­sand. I guess Ms. Nall is fairly trau­ma­tized and undoubt­edly exhausted. Could try the Beatles:

    Good night Sleep tight
    Dream sweet dreams for me
    Dream sweet dreams for you.

    Close your eyes and I’ll close mine
    Good night Sleep tight
    Now the sun turns out his light
    Good night Sleep tight
    Dream sweet dreams for me
    Dream sweet dreams for you.

    Good night Good night Every­body
    Every­body every­where
    Good night.

    But you really need the music.

    Or, you could try the Bea­t­les: Tomor­row Never Knows, though I’d rec­om­mend clos­ing your eyes and lis­ten­ing, instead of the video. The main chord in this song is just a per­fectly tuned gui­tar with no left hand. Or, you know, there’s All Things Must Pass.

    At the end of the incred­i­bly quo­tid­ian day, this thiev­ing jack­ass will show up on Faux News to get paid for telling Amer­ica why the Clin­tons and Oba­mas are despi­ca­ble.
    How they do.

  502. michaelj said on March 2nd, 2008 at 3:33 am

    And this is who this dick­head really is, before any­body feels sorry for him. Kom­mis­sar Karl’s right nut.

  503. tensor said on March 2nd, 2008 at 6:59 am

    “Wooo-eee! Tell him! Tell him, god dammit!”

    “Ten­sor — I enjoyed a lot of the com­ments here; but none more than yours. Thanks for contributing.”

    You’re very wel­come. While I’d like to take credit for great rhetor­i­cal skills, all I did was throw their pompous, arro­gant words back into their pasty, sag­ging jowls. Like a bel­low­ing radio ‘host’ lec­tur­ing on the evils of drug use and divorce, they had it com­ing. In spades. All I did was flip the switch.

    Now, will our (for­mer) White House Aide on Moral­ity And Faith be pros­e­cuted for steal­ing the Pope’s words, or will a par­tic­u­larly exclu­sion­ist strain of Protes­tantism sud­denly arise to save him? Inquir­ing minds want to know.

  504. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 2nd, 2008 at 8:01 am

    Hello, “Jeff,” and par­don me? I sus­pect from your per­spec­tive, i haven’t cre­ated an Amer­i­can job. So what’s my excuse for hav­ing an opin­ion on pub­lic pol­icy? Over the last two weeks — taught Amer­i­can Cub Scouts how to tie knots and chip flint arrow­heads (well, sim­ple ver­sions so far, it takes years to really learn); helped run a tran­si­tional hous­ing pro­gram that houses 75 to 90 Amer­i­can home­less peo­ple a night, half of whom or more are Amer­i­can chil­dren; coun­seled back from tru­ancy into reg­u­lar school atten­dance five or six Amer­i­can high school stu­dents and their Amer­i­can par­ents employed by an Amer­i­can county juve­nile court; preached four ser­mons at two Amer­i­can churches to their con­gre­ga­tions on mis­sion and out­reach; worked on a grant project to improve how we teach thou­sands of vis­i­tors a year about a world-class Amer­i­can Indian archae­o­log­i­cal site; taught two work­shops for Amer­i­cans who will direct and coun­sel at church camp this sum­mer how to deal with child abuse issues when they come to light and to ensure such does not hap­pen on our watch in Amer­ica; served one evening as i do each month on our Amer­i­can community’s Board of Zon­ing and Build­ing Appeals; made two com­mu­nity group pre­sen­ta­tions about a remark­able Amer­i­can who helped set­tle this area who was a vet­eran and chap­lain in the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War; and wrote two columns for two Amer­i­can newspapers.

    Yet i still think you have a right to express * your * opin­ion. Thanks for help­ing main­tain the impres­sion of the one-dimensional Repub­li­can. Idiot. (Lord, on this Sun­day morn­ing i repent of my frus­tra­tion and head off to preach an uplift­ing, encour­ag­ing word out of your eter­nal hope to a bunch of every­day Amer­i­cans. Amen.)

  505. William Walters said on March 2nd, 2008 at 8:53 am

    To: NWgal — who ever you are.

    Nancy has had a lot of “mean spir­ited fun” at Tim’s Goeglein’s expense over the last few months. But, her prob­lem, she admits, is one of “per­sonal taste.” She doesn’t like his “apple-cheeked Hoosier drip­pi­ness.” That being the case I think she shouldn’t have obsessed with his mes­sage but rather tuned him out. Most lib­er­als would.

    As for her up-front and pointed admis­sion of engag­ing in “mean spir­ited fun” and sup­pos­edly “feel­ing bad about what she was going to do here” I don’t buy in.

    Cats are doused with lighter fluid and set ablaze by “mean spir­ited” juve­niles engag­ing in “mean spir­ited fun.”

    I find her tac­tics shame­ful and repug­nant. I invite a mem­ber of any main stream clergy to weigh in on this issue and bring enlight­en­ment to this entire affair.

  506. William Walters said on March 2nd, 2008 at 9:07 am

    To: TENSOR,

    Nice try Ten­sor, but not quite. I told Ash­ley (“I don’t know how one cat­e­go­rizes honor Ash­ley.”) and you twist that to (“you’re the first apol­o­gist for a lying, right-wing hack to admit he has no idea what the word ‘honor’ means.”) You’ve gone from A to Z in attempt­ing to val­i­date your posi­tion. Congrats

  507. YellowDogJen said on March 2nd, 2008 at 9:23 am

    Hey, thanks, William. The schaden­freude alone would’ve been enough for me (watch­ing your oh so Chris­t­ian friend implode has been a hoot) but your attempted defense of the lying cheat­ing thief has been the icing on the cake!

    BTW, was that him upthread mak­ing the threats, or did some enter­pris­ing wag steal his name?

    Mebbe Mr. Goe­glein could fone Scooter Libby or Tim’s good friend Rove for advice on how to get away with crim­i­nal behav­ior. Or he could call up ol’ Jay Rock­e­feller and get him some retroac­tive immunity.

    For all of us who have known the truth these 8 long years about the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, who have watched in hor­ror as this night­mare unfolded, damn straight we laugh and cheer when­ever any of these crim­i­nals goes down.

    Suck it up, dood. Your clown of a friend is a crook. I think he may have bro­ken a cou­ple of the com­mand­ments he’d no doubt like to see hang­ing in every cour­t­house and school.

  508. john c said on March 2nd, 2008 at 9:29 am

    To William Walters:

    I’m not a mem­ber of the clergy but I am about to drive my kids to Sun­day school. For what it’s worth I stud­ied the­ol­ogy under some of the finest pro­fes­sors in the world at Boston Col­lege.
    This is what I do know.

    When a per­son is found to be lying and steal­ing, it is appro­pri­ate to point this out. It is espe­cially appro­pri­ate when that per­son is, a) a pub­lic offi­cial and, b) a per­son who holds him­self up as a paragon of moral virtue.

  509. michaelj said on March 2nd, 2008 at 9:33 am

    Cats are doused with lighter fluid and set ablaze by sociopaths, because they can, and by psy­chopaths, because they must. Oscar Wilde and Ambrose Bierce and Den­nis Leary are ‘mean-spirited’. Jef­frey Dah­mer and Bill Frist tor­tured animals.

    Nice leap of illogic. Where do you place Ann ‘Rode Hard and Put Up Wet’ Coul­ter (not to be mean-spirited about it) on your compressed-to-the-point-of-unintelligibility scale of human behav­ior? How about George W’s mock­ing por­trayal of Karla Faye Tucker?

    Finally, do you really think your bud Goe­glein is Can­dide buf­feted by a cruel world? Let the jack­ass defend him­self if he can. He’s a grown man. He knew he was doing some­thing despi­ca­ble and appar­ently didn’t care. I’m not a psy­chi­a­trist, but I think that’s a pretty good work­ing descrip­tion of a sociopath. Which explains a lot about his polit­i­cal associations.

  510. William Walters said on March 2nd, 2008 at 9:53 am

    To: John,

    Thank you John. Your points are true and I agree. How­ever, this thread is rid­dled with per­verse ele­ments of “mob justice” — that is trou­ble­some. As a soci­etal phe­nom­e­non, “mob jus­tice” bears rot­ten fruit. Whether incited from the Left, as did Stalin, or the Right, as did Hitler, lead­ing the masses in calls for jus­tice is a dan­ger­ous game prac­ticed by the unscrupu­lous for self-serving gain.

  511. William Walters said on March 2nd, 2008 at 9:59 am

    Michael J said”

    “I’m not a psychiatrist” — on that note Michael I will view your com­ments accordingly.

  512. michaelj said on March 2nd, 2008 at 10:23 am

    Gee whiz, Wally. I’m not a baker or a mechanic or a hack writer rep­re­sent­ing the most cor­rupt bunch of Con­sti­tu­tional arbatageurs ever seen in North Amer­ica, either. You can take that com­ment accord­ingly, but if his pla­gia­rism wasn’t socio­pathic, your pal prob­a­bly needs help to steer him away from self-destructive behavior.

    Then again, maybe he’s just a True Believer in the New Amer­i­can Cen­tury and the philo­soph­i­cal motto of the Cen­turi­ans: Rapio ergo sum.

  513. Matt Mendelsohn said on March 2nd, 2008 at 10:23 am

    Mr. Wal­ters:

    You wrote, “Cats are doused with lighter fluid and set ablaze by “mean spir­ited” juve­niles engag­ing in “mean spir­ited fun.”

    While I dis­agree with your anal­ogy (harm­ing an ani­mal in the man­ner you describe is ille­gal and immoral; expos­ing a gov­ern­ment fraud is laud­able and impor­tant), it’s a use­ful phrase nonethe­less. As we all know, many stud­ies have demon­strated that peo­ple who com­mit cer­tain vio­lent crimes started out com­mit­ting acts of ani­mal abuse as youngsters.

    Obvi­ously (and since we’re on an inter­net mes­sage board I will repeat myself: OBVIOUSLY) no one is accus­ing Mr. Goe­glein of hav­ing com­mit­ted any­thing of the sort. But I find it hard to believe that his pla­gia­rism began the moment he started writ­ing columns for the Ft. Wayne News-Sentinel. In fact, I’ll bet ten dol­lars that his col­lege work con­tains instances of pla­gia­rism too. Like the exam­ple you cite, this kind of intel­lec­tual duplic­ity doesn’t just hap­pen one day at the age of 40.

    I under­stand that you feel defen­sive for your friend and that is com­mend­able. But as Mr. Goe­glein told Salon​.com (as reported in a story on medi​a​trans​parency​.org), “If any Amer­i­can has bro­ken the law and that Amer­i­can is run­ning for the high­est office in the land, that would cer­tainly be an issue.” In that same story he is quoted as hav­ing told Cit­i­zen­Link, “The pres­i­dent wants to make sure that the nom­i­nees he sends to the Sen­ate are men and women of impec­ca­ble pro­fes­sional integrity who have a judi­cial phi­los­o­phy rooted in a principle.”

    Mr Goe­glein was not sim­ply a pri­vate per­son in a pri­vate busi­ness. He was an aide and advi­sor to the pres­i­dent of the United States, mak­ing very pub­lic state­ments, like those above, about integrity and trust, and even rep­re­sent­ing the White House at events such as the funeral of Jerry Fal­well. Nancy Nall did not place him in awk­ward posi­tion rel­a­tive to his pub­lic posi­tions and pro­nounce­ments. It’s clear that he did that to himself.

    You closed your post by writing,“I find her tac­tics shame­ful and repug­nant. I invite a mem­ber of any main stream clergy to weigh in on this issue and bring enlight­en­ment to this entire affair.” That might sum this whole debate up in a nut­shell and illus­trates the great divide here per­fectly. I say this not flip­pantly and with due respect: I would be much more inter­ested in invit­ing a mem­ber of the Har­vard or Prince­ton fac­ulty to weigh in on this issue and bring enlight­en­ment to this entire affair. Mr. Goeglein’s deeds con­sti­tute years and years of intel­lec­tual fraud­u­lence; I’m not sure how a mem­ber of the clergy can help here.

    Mr. Goeglein’s

  514. del said on March 2nd, 2008 at 10:25 am

    William Wal­ters, I’ve fol­lowed Nancy’s cri­tiques of Mr. Goe­glein and oth­ers for some time. She’s also fre­quently crit­i­cized Detroit’s best known colum­nist, best sell­ing author and pan­elist on a national cable show, won­der­ing, in her own unique style, for exam­ple, whether any­body is allowed to edit his copy. That author also hosts a polit­i­cally ori­ented talk show on Detroit’s biggest radio sta­tion and con­sis­tently advances a lib­eral Demo­c­ra­tic agenda. (And, inci­den­tally, became mired in a pla­gia­rism scan­dal some years ago.)
    When Nancy pref­aced her post on Goe­glein by acknowl­edg­ing hav­ing engaged in some “mean spir­ited fun” at his expense, she was exag­ger­at­ing, because, for her, any­time one pub­licly crit­i­cizes another’s writ­ing it’s some­how snarky, and can be mean if done for improper motives. Nancy’s an equal oppor­tu­nity critic, reveal­ing dif­fi­cult truths in an engag­ing and amus­ing man­ner. She’s a writer.
    To liken her to a teenager who tor­tures ani­mals is, as you must know, unfair.

  515. Rick said on March 2nd, 2008 at 10:25 am

    Hi Nancy,

    Just wanted to con­grat­u­late you on a great job here.

  516. Matt Mendelsohn said on March 2nd, 2008 at 10:28 am

    Mr. Wal­ters:

    You wrote, “Cats are doused with lighter fluid and set ablaze by “mean spir­ited” juve­niles engag­ing in “mean spir­ited fun.”

    While I dis­agree with your anal­ogy (harm­ing an ani­mal in the man­ner you describe is ille­gal and immoral; expos­ing a gov­ern­ment fraud is laud­able and impor­tant), it’s a use­ful phrase nonethe­less. As we all know, many stud­ies have demon­strated that peo­ple who com­mit cer­tain vio­lent crimes started out com­mit­ting acts of ani­mal abuse as youngsters.

    Obvi­ously (and since we’re on an inter­net mes­sage board I will repeat myself: OBVIOUSLY) no one is accus­ing Mr. Goe­glein of hav­ing com­mit­ted any­thing of the sort. But I find it hard to believe that his pla­gia­rism began the moment he started writ­ing columns for the Ft. Wayne News-Sentinel. In fact, I’ll bet ten dol­lars that his col­lege work con­tains instances of pla­gia­rism too. Like the exam­ple you cite, this kind of intel­lec­tual duplic­ity doesn’t just hap­pen one day at the age of 40.

    I under­stand that you feel defen­sive for your friend and that is com­mend­able. But as Mr. Goe­glein told Salon​.com (as reported in a story on medi​a​trans​parency​.org), “If any Amer­i­can has bro­ken the law and that Amer­i­can is run­ning for the high­est office in the land, that would cer­tainly be an issue.” In that same story he is quoted as hav­ing told Cit­i­zen­Link, “The pres­i­dent wants to make sure that the nom­i­nees he sends to the Sen­ate are men and women of impec­ca­ble pro­fes­sional integrity who have a judi­cial phi­los­o­phy rooted in a principle.”

    Mr Goe­glein was not sim­ply a pri­vate per­son in a pri­vate busi­ness. He was an aide and advi­sor to the pres­i­dent of the United States, mak­ing very pub­lic state­ments, like those above, about integrity and trust, and even rep­re­sent­ing the White House at events such as the funeral of Jerry Fal­well. Nancy Nall did not place him in awk­ward posi­tion rel­a­tive to his pub­lic posi­tions and pro­nounce­ments. It’s clear that he did that to himself.

    You closed your post by writing,“I find her tac­tics shame­ful and repug­nant. I invite a mem­ber of any main stream clergy to weigh in on this issue and bring enlight­en­ment to this entire affair.” That might sum this whole debate up in a nut­shell and illus­trates the great divide here per­fectly. I say this not flip­pantly and with due respect: I would be much more inter­ested in invit­ing a mem­ber of the Har­vard or Prince­ton fac­ulty to weigh in on this issue and bring enlight­en­ment to this entire affair. Mr. Goeglein’s deeds con­sti­tute years and years of intel­lec­tual fraud­u­lence; I’m not sure how a mem­ber of the clergy can help here.

  517. de_tokeville said on March 2nd, 2008 at 10:32 am

    Mr. Wal­ters, I’m not a psy­chi­a­trist but I am in fact a vet­eran analysand. And I see by your per­sis­tence here that you are evi­dently as much in denial as your fallen comrade.

    It’s no doubt fright­en­ing to real­ize that some­one close to you could become so quickly unrav­eled due to his own self-sabotage; that his whole life has been pred­i­cated on a house of cards every bit as shaky (if not dis­hon­est) as the world views he espouses. It’s prob­a­bly mak­ing you doubt whether your own nose is clean, is it not? Why so defen­sive? Why so per­sis­tent in your defensiveness?

    Not that I expect you to admit it, at least not until you’ve put in about a decade of intro­spec­tion and come to terms with your worst demons.

    Get some help. Then you and Tim can have the lives together you’ve always secretly yearned for. No more furtive rustling of the sleep­ing bags. And you’ll be doing a good turn for your respec­tive spouses, who may still be young enough to find and appre­ci­ate real love. In turn, you’ll expe­ri­ence the true mean­ing of agape love.

    I’m typ­ing this from my chaise longue, so don’t call me an arm­chair psy­chol­o­gist. Call me a Sun­day morn­ing quarterback.

  518. William Walters said on March 2nd, 2008 at 10:55 am

    Thank you Matt and Del,

    If you read my posts, you will see that I have never con­doned pla­gia­rism by Tim, nor any­one else. Nor, am I defend­ing it. What is inter­est­ing about this mat­ter is that Tim him­self is not defend­ing or mak­ing excuses for his trans­gres­sion. He made that per­fectly clear. The White House made it per­fectly clear as well that it would not con­done the action either.

    As for Nancy being a writer, that fact offers no excuse for engag­ing in “mean spir­ited” fun at any­one else’s “expense.” It is akin to low-road com­edy at best. “Equal oppor­tu­nity critic” aside, Nancy set her­self up as a bully by fram­ing her actions in the name of “mean spir­ited fun.” “Reveal­ing dif­fi­cult truths in engag­ing and amus­ing man­ner” does not require that it be done at the delib­er­ate expense of oth­ers. Cheep laughs derived from deep hurt are not my cup of tea. Thank you.

  519. firsttimereader said on March 2nd, 2008 at 10:56 am

    The Repub­li­can modus operandi these days seems to be to accuse oth­ers of the sins they are guilty of. W Wal­ters likens Nancy’s expo­sure of Goeglin to tor­tur­ing an ani­mal to death. Haven’t I heard of sto­ries of young George Bush shov­ing lit fire­crack­ers into frogs and Huck­abee fils tor­tur­ing a dog to death? O well, I guess it’s OK if you are a Republican.

  520. white_n_az said on March 2nd, 2008 at 12:44 pm

    William Walters…you have proven to be a good friend to Tim and I’m sure that he will thank you for this.

    On the other hand, your con­tin­ued post­ing here does lit­tle to douse the flames…in fact, it’s clear that it is counter pro­duc­tive to your intentions.

    The fact is that Nancy did what she felt that she had to do and only she could make that call. That she used to work for the News-Sentinel made her more than a dis­in­ter­ested party. It meant that she had a con­nec­tion to the notions of pro­pri­ety and integrity of the News-Sentinel. Once the pla­garism was dis­cov­ered, the News-Sentinel was oblig­ated to look at all of Tim Goeglin’s sub­mis­sions and the 20+ sub­mis­sions con­tain­ing pur­loined writ­ings meant that the out­come could not have been any different.

    To now assert that some­how Nancy’s char­ac­ter is noth­ing more than an attempt to shoot the messenger…clearly the prob­lem was your friend…why not go over to his house and com­fort him instead?

  521. nwgal said on March 2nd, 2008 at 12:48 pm

    Mr. Wal­ters has been fas­ci­nat­ing to read, as he pro­vides a some­what close-up look at the con­ser­v­a­tive intel­lec­tual stereo­type. He has pro­vided gen­er­ous evi­dence of his own skewed moral code (see my prior post for a dis­cus­sion of that) and sev­eral other posters have help­fully pointed out the enor­mous flaws in his tor­tured logic. And yet he per­se­veres, appar­ently stead­fast in his con­vic­tion that his morals are supe­rior and his friend is the vic­tim here.
    Argu­ing with the man is futile, as he has demon­strated that in this mat­ter he is com­pletely unprepared/unwilling to attempt to see beyond his per­sonal real­ity and his fan­tas­ti­cal (self)righteous indig­na­tion.
    Wow.

  522. blogenfreude said on March 2nd, 2008 at 12:50 pm

    Haven’t I heard of sto­ries of young George Bush shov­ing lit fire­crack­ers into frogs and Huck­abee fils tor­tur­ing a dog to death?
    And they grad­u­ate to destroy­ing entire soci­eties. Cf. Iraq. Face it — if you voted for Bush the first time, you are merely stu­pid. If you did it twice, you have blood on your hands.

  523. deb said on March 2nd, 2008 at 1:00 pm

    mild-mannered jeff, i just caught up to your last post, and i must say: dude. you rock.

  524. Wally Wilson said on March 2nd, 2008 at 1:02 pm

    MichaelJ,

    “Gee whiz, Wally.”

    My name is Wal­ter (Wally) Wilson.

    The per­son par­ty­ing on the Nile is William Wal­ters (not “Wally”).

    This has been a paid announce­ment by the “Wally is not William” self-preservation soci­ety. :-P

  525. Jeff Boatright said on March 2nd, 2008 at 1:14 pm

    I’ve been Senior Edi­tor or Edi­tor in Chief for a sci­en­tific jour­nal for sev­eral years. We have to pay atten­tion to issues such as pla­gia­rism, double-publishing, data fal­si­fi­ca­tion, etc. I have some expe­ri­ence mak­ing deci­sions on what to do when trans­gres­sions are discovered.

    I have to admit that I don’t under­stand William Walter’s point(s) on Goeglein’s guilt, though I do agree that there is a range of options when it comes to how to pun­ish the guilty.

    Goe­glein (so far) is get­ting off easy. As far as I know, he’s only resigned from his job and been made fun of by var­i­ous peo­ple who will prob­a­bly have lit­tle impact on his future prospects. Who knows what the copy­right hold­ers and/or orig­i­nal writ­ers are plan­ning, though.

    But back to Wal­ters. Can we agree that pla­gia­rism is theft? It may be theft of some­thing you per­son­ally don’t value, but it is still theft.

    Can we agree that com­mit­ting theft 20 times sug­gests ser­ial behav­ior? With no com­punc­tion for those being stolen from?

    Pos­si­bly we can have a bet­ter meet­ing of minds if we use an anal­ogy of theft of items that pos­si­bly you do value: If some­one steals 20 cars, should I weep that he was caught? Should I weep that he will no longer be able to sup­port his fam­ily and priv­i­leged lifestyle by com­mit­ting another 20 thefts? Should I assume that he would have NOT gone on to num­ber 21 if he hadn’t been caught?

    I hon­estly do not under­stand the point you’re try­ing to make unless your point is that ser­ial thieves have fam­i­lies, too, and that it is embar­rass­ing to get caught thiev­ing. Yes, they do, and yes, it is, but that doesn’t alter the fact that they’re ser­ial thieves.

    And again, so far, he’s got­ten off very lightly for a ser­ial thief.

    So far.

  526. g said on March 2nd, 2008 at 1:20 pm

    Mr. Wal­ters, I am mys­ti­fied by some of your state­ments. You say:But, her prob­lem, she admits, is one of “per­sonal taste.” She doesn’t like his “apple-cheeked Hoosier drip­pi­ness.” That being the case I think she shouldn’t have obsessed with his mes­sage but rather tuned him out.

    So the prob­lem here is that Nancy read and paid atten­tion to Tim’s columns? And that it is some­how unseemly of her to con­tinue to read and ana­lyze them once she real­ized that she didn’t like them? That it would only be appro­pri­ate or eth­i­cal if the per­son who dis­cov­ered Tim’s pla­gia­rism was a fan of his work?

    How curi­ous. Is this “live and let live” approach com­monly adopted by crit­ics of pop­u­lar cul­ture on the right?

    Con­sid­er­ing how empow­ered Con­ser­v­a­tives feel to denounce the words, images, and pub­lic actions of those they dis­agree with — from Whoopi Goldberg’s jokes to Janet Jackson’s nipple-slip, from Dixie Chick songs to Gay Pride parades — I find it amus­ing that you think its some­how unseemly for Nancy to mock the fatu­ous writ­ings of your friend.

    As some­one upthread says, I think your sor­row about your friend’s fallen state has resulted in some kind of denial in your mind. You sim­ply haven’t come to terms with what’s been revealed about his char­ac­ter, so you ratio­nal­ize to blame oth­ers for it.

  527. del said on March 2nd, 2008 at 2:02 pm

    William Wal­ters, I don’t think Nancy got any cheap laughs out of Mr. Goeglein’s sit­u­a­tion, I know I didn’t. (At most there may have been some groan­ing chuck­les at some of his (or another’s) over­wrought prose some time back.) And though I think you went over the top in one of your posts, gen­er­ally you’ve been thought­ful and restrained … so keep the good ones com­ing. And as for “mob jus­tice,” I don’t think we’re there yet — a lit­tle closer to “The Wis­dom of Crowds.” But you are wise to fore­see a poten­tial tip­ping point …

  528. tensor said on March 2nd, 2008 at 2:14 pm

    “Nice try Ten­sor, but not quite.”

    Sir, I stand cor­rected. Thank you for delin­eat­ing my mis­take; mine was a grave one indeed. In your tena­cious (and ongo­ing!) defense of your friend, our tax-paid men­da­cious mor­al­izer, you made your­self into a pub­lic defender of pub­lic theft– when com­mit­ted by a pub­lic offi­cial, no less. You have amply demon­strated your utter incom­pre­hen­sion of the con­cept of honor, but you have not admit­ted to it; I should not have given you such unearned credit. (There’s been enough of that already! Please do not now insist you defend the man, not his actions. Actions make the man, sir.)

    Our lit­er­ate host­ess told the truth; you called it a smear. (Did you really intend to make such a damn­ing point about a denizen of the Bush White House?) She forced the res­ig­na­tion of a liar and thief from our pay­roll; you’ve equated her hon­esty with wan­ton cru­elty towards ani­mals(!). You even dragged that most rot­ted of cliches, puta­tive con­cern for the wel­fare of chil­dren, into ser­vice for your ad hominem attacks. (Hence my orig­i­nal mis­sive, show­ing how badly mis­placed your con­cern for them really was.) Every accu­sa­tion made my a mod­ern right-winger is a con­fes­sion in dis­guise, and your tena­cious attacks upon Ms. Nall’s char­ac­ter, in defense of a com­rade who has none, demon­strates this point nicely.

    I thank nwgal for her excel­lent point, and will take the lib­erty of expand­ing upon it. This entire affair has exposed the enor­mous sense of enti­tle­ment enjoyed by our worth­less, self-described guardians of moral­ity, and their cor­re­spond­ingly tawdry prac­tice of ethics. A can­di­date who insult­ingly promised to “return char­ac­ter and integrity” to our pub­lic office has, instead, given our money to a cheat. These crimes were not detected by war­rant­less wire­tap­ping, or via water­board­ing, or through inflic­tion of pain equiv­a­lent to organ fail­ure — mea­sures done in our name, but with­out our con­sent, for a sup­pos­edly noble pur­pose. No, sim­ple read­ing com­pre­hen­sion, and a minute of curi­ous research, served to catch this crook. Either our mighty (self-proclaimed) guardians of moral­ity lack these traits, or they knew of his thefts, and did not care. Given their own record of lying about far larger mat­ters, I doubt we’ll ever really know.

  529. William Walters said on March 2nd, 2008 at 2:24 pm

    Thank you Del,

    I’m not so cer­tain we are closer to “the wis­dom of crowds” vs. “mob jus­tice” but, either way there is a poten­tial tip­ping point. I’ve had my say and agree to dis­agree with a good many posts in this forum. I’ll do so in a dig­ni­fied man­ner with­out name-calling or invective.

    There is a great divide in this coun­try, nearly evenly split. Com­mon­al­ity of basic prin­ci­pals built this coun­try; let’s hope this divided House can con­tinue to stand.

  530. deb said on March 2nd, 2008 at 2:36 pm

    yes, will­liam, com­man­l­ity of basic prin­ci­ples did build this coun­try. so why don’t you get it — that your friend tim vio­lated a whole laun­dry list of those prin­ci­ples by steal­ing the work of oth­ers, pass­ing it off as his own, and cop­ping to it not out of a sense of decency but sim­ply because he got caught?

  531. brian stouder said on March 2nd, 2008 at 2:39 pm

    There is a great divide in this coun­try, nearly evenly split. Com­mon­al­ity of basic prin­ci­pals built this coun­try; let’s hope this divided House can con­tinue to stand.

    Oh, for Heaven’s sake!

  532. tensor said on March 2nd, 2008 at 2:48 pm

    “I’ll do so in a dig­ni­fied man­ner with­out name-calling or invective.”

    In real­ity, you’ve exe­cuted many ad hominem attacks upon our host­ess, for her great ‘crime’ of expos­ing your friend as the liar and thief he made of him­self. Your very first sen­tence accuses her of “gloat­ing”, your sec­ond sen­tence implies she’s vain, and your third engages in ground­less spec­u­la­tion about her thoughts. You even implied she has a mean spirit toward chil­dren! Then you pat your­self on the back for not engag­ing in “invec­tive”. Who is the van­ity case here, sir?

    Since you seem not to know it, I’ll here quote the first def­i­n­i­tion of the noun “invec­tive”, taken directly from the on-line Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary. “A vio­lent attack in words; a denun­ci­a­tory or rail­ing speech, writ­ing, or expres­sion.” Your repeated per­sonal attacks upon our host­ess fit this def­i­n­i­tion very well, sir.

  533. William Walters said on March 2nd, 2008 at 2:54 pm

    Deb,

    Jus­tice requires Mercy. Either becomes worth­less with­out the other –worse than worth­less in fact.

    “Mercy with­out jus­tice is the mother of dis­so­lu­tion” “Jus­tice with­out mercy is cruelty.”

    They are code­pen­dent. Calamity results if one is applied with­out the other.

  534. tensor said on March 2nd, 2008 at 3:29 pm

    “Jus­tice requires Mercy.”

    He stole, he was caught, he was fired. He was not allowed to slink away from his tax-paid job with­out admit­ting his crimes, which is what you clearly advo­cated. That would not have been mercy, it would have been cod­dling a crim­i­nal. Under your ver­sion of ‘mercy’ he could still have gone about in pub­lic, yam­mer­ing about moral­ity and decency and respon­si­bil­ity and pub­lic trust, with­out receiv­ing the crit­i­cism such whop­ping hypocrisy should earn. Far more impor­tantly, he could also have con­tin­ued to steal if he so chose. Our host­ess has ensured he will never again com­mit the crimes which cost him his cushy job. If you’re really wor­ried about your friend’s future, be glad he won’t have to rely on his (clearly defec­tive) judge­ment any more — at least not in this matter.

    Bear in mind that we’re not yet fin­ished with jus­tice. We have laws against theft of intel­lec­tual prop­erty, and codes of con­duct for our government’s offi­cials. As our Admin­is­tra­tion does not like to see the crim­i­nals within it tried, let alone pun­ished, your friend may well not expe­ri­ence what­ever pun­ish­ments our com­mon val­ues might visit upon him. Again, that’s not mercy, it’s cod­dling a criminal.

  535. Harl Delos said on March 2nd, 2008 at 3:37 pm

    Greens­mile said:

    Har­los, in the foot­note to this post is a link to the Churchill Cen­tre which plainly claims Churchill never said any such thing.

    Churchill Cen­tre is hardly omni­scient, and as Churchill pre­dated YouTube, that’d be hard for them to prove. Yes, it’s con­trary to his own life expe­ri­ence, but I say things that obvi­ously aren’t true for satiric effect, and Churchill fre­quently did the same thing.

    Churchill was appar­ently mis­trans­lat­ing Aris­tide Briand at the time, who report­edly said,

    The man who is not a social­ist at twenty has no heart, but if he is still a social­ist at forty he has no head

    Briand, the prime min­is­ter of France, was appar­ently inspired by another French states­man, Fran­cois Guizot who said the French equiv­a­lent of

    Not to be a Repub­li­can at twenty is proof of want of heart; to be one at thirty is proof of want of head.

    I’d bet that Sam Clemens said it, too, although he would also have munged it to his own tastes, as the above did. If we look hard enough, or wait long enough, Stephen Col­bert will come up with some ver­sion of it as well.

    Please note that Repub­li­can meant some­thing dif­fer­ent to Guizot in France in the 1700s. In the days of Lin­coln, it meant rad­i­cal reform, in the days of Bob Taft, it meant con­ser­v­a­tive good gov­ern­ment, and appar­ently folks like Jeff think it should be the party of nig­gardly theo­cratic hate-mongers.

    Nice quib­ble, though, Greensmile.

  536. Jeff (the mild-mannered one) said on March 2nd, 2008 at 3:49 pm

    “I invite a mem­ber of any main stream clergy to weigh in on this issue and bring enlight­en­ment to this entire affair.”

    William –

    I am, and i did; not­ing again from com­ments i made above (the good Lord knows where, now!), if there’s still a peck­ing at the car­cass a week from now (this all hap­pened from Fri­day mid-morning, he reeled), then it should stop, and if Tim Goe­glein gets a job in Wash­ing­ton or Fort Wayne in the next year that involves com­mu­ni­ca­tions of any sort, there will obvi­ously be another flurry — but the more out­ra­geous state­ments (how­ever you define them) can’t be held at Nancy Nall’s door. That’s like blam­ing the mail car­rier for the fact that we have to sort our daily deliv­ery over the recy­cle bin. Folks accus­tomed to the inter­net are used to hav­ing to men­tally cull the com­ments; it ain’t pretty, but nei­ther is weed­ing. And some of us pull more than oth­ers, but the fact is weeding’s gotta be done.

    Nancy has done no gloat­ing, did remark­ably lit­tle to pro­voke fur­ther action than let her old paper know and post here — the legs this story had were due to the egre­gious nature of the offense, that snow­balled through the day as the inter­linked nature of the web unveiled the breadth and com­pre­hen­sive­ness of the acts.

    And both as pas­tor and free­lancer myself (said more ways back, scroll up), i think the basics of the story show sim­ple jus­tice since this eas­ily could be framed as felony level theft with­out too much strain. Since he asked nor received no pay, there won’t be charges, but it’s goons like this who make it darn near impos­si­ble to make much income as a free­lancer. Add in the national epi­demic in high school and col­lege of pla­gia­rism of exactly this sort (again, see my too long com­ment above), and the response between the paper, Mr. Goe­glein, and the White House seems exactly right.

    Could this yet be made too much of? Maybe, but i haven’t seen it yet. I have seen — in churches, espe­cially — plenty of casual dis­miss­ing of pla­gia­rism, not Obama level bor­row­ing of stro­phes but whole­sale story appro­pri­a­tion down to pro­nouns, and this is dam­ag­ing and per­ni­cious on so many levels.

    I will repeat from ear­lier right here — if you’re his friend, work with him to fig­ure out what’s up, because this kind of unnec­es­sary, expan­sive use of the words of oth­ers as your own almost always includes a) other per­sonal prob­lems that help to jus­tify this expe­di­ent, and b) resumes prov­ing the offender does, occa­sion­ally, have a tal­ent for cre­ative writing.

    Then the prob­lems really snow­ball. I wish him well, have prayed for him already (and doubt­less will again), and hope he finds work where he can sort out why he did this. But it is much, much big­ger than say­ing you caught a big­ger fish than you did, or say­ing you grad­u­ated from some­where you just attended.

  537. firsttimereader said on March 2nd, 2008 at 3:51 pm

    “Jus­tice requires Mercy.”

    Inter­est­ing. Do these noble sen­ti­ments apply to us all or only to old chums of yours? If they did apply to us com­mon folk, your state­ment pre­sum­ably means that you oppose manda­tory min­i­mum sen­tenc­ing laws, three strikes and you’re out laws, and zero tol­er­ance policies.

  538. Wally Wilson said on March 2nd, 2008 at 4:00 pm

    William Wal­ters,

    You would do bet­ter jus­tice to your­self, your cause, and your friend if you attended to address­ing the points made above by Jeff Boa­tright. You can use the [F3] key, or [Ctrl] + [f] to find his post if you some­how missed it.

    No one here under­stands where you are com­ing from, and I have to tell you that “com­mu­ni­ca­tion” is “what you get back” from peo­ple, not what you think you are say­ing. Right now, you are pon­tif­i­cat­ing and ad hominem­bling, but you are not engag­ing in actual dis­cus­sion about the things you’ve made points about.

    I fear, that if you con­tinue in this vein, you will remain mis­un­der­stood and mis­un­der­es­ti­mated. Mr. Boa­tright is address­ing the issue of your views ver­sus the views of actual writ­ers (and righters, and left­ers). That being, what is moral to you, what is a crime to you, and where/how do you draw your lines? You haven’t made any of that clear thus far.

    Addi­tion­ally, some­thing that you give every indi­ca­tion of not under­stand­ing is the fact that pla­gia­rists like Mr. Goe­glein cast a shadow over work­ing writ­ers every­where. The actions of Mr. Goe­glein reflect on writ­ers every­where (we all feel it). He is a mon­u­men­tally shame­ful embar­rass­ment to the trust that writ­ers work so dili­gently to main­tain in this country.

    Please, I urge you, Mr. Wal­ters, attend to the com­ments of Mr. Boa­tright forthwith…

  539. Ex-White House Jesus-Freak-In-Charge Caught Plagiarizing The Pope | Cynics' Party said on March 2nd, 2008 at 4:02 pm

    […] Nancy Nall outs this guy for pla­gia­riz­ing a cou­ple of columns. Then her com­menters find out he’s done it in more than […]

  540. Mia K. said on March 2nd, 2008 at 4:21 pm

    Steal­ing some­body else’s work and pass­ing it off as your own makes the baby Jesus cry.

  541. William Walters said on March 2nd, 2008 at 4:23 pm

    Mr. Wil­son, I used [contl] + [f] to find Mr. Boa­tright to no avail. Is he using some other name? Assum­ing that I can find his com­ments I will attempt to address his points, but I can­not guar­an­tee you that I will bee able to acom­plish that today. Thank you.

  542. Wally Wilson said on March 2nd, 2008 at 4:33 pm

    William, his com­ments are here:

    http://​nan​cy​nall​.com/​2​0​0​8​/​0​2​/​2​9​/​c​o​p​y​c​a​t​/​#​c​o​m​m​e​n​t​-​164802

  543. William Walters said on March 2nd, 2008 at 4:36 pm

    Thank you Mr. Wilson.

  544. William Walters said on March 2nd, 2008 at 6:01 pm

    To Wally Wil­son and Mr. Jeff Boatright:

    Dear Mr. Boatright,

    Thank you for your com­ments. I felt I had reached the end of my say in this forum until I was brought back by the plead­ings of Mr. Wil­son. I appre­ci­ate and acknowl­edge the impor­tance of your role as an Edi­tor in pay­ing atten­tion to such issues as pla­gia­rism, double-publishing, data fal­si­fi­ca­tion, etc. Each of these revolves around the essen­tial impor­tance of truth.

    If you read all of my posts you will see not only have I said that; I do not fault Nancy for hold­ing a pub­lic ser­vants feet to the fire you will, also, see that I do not con­done or defend pla­gia­rism. Quite the con­trary. Pla­gia­rism is a form of theft, debat­ing the degrees of which only draws us down a path of rel­a­tivism upon which every­one here will have dif­fer­ent opinions.

    There are some facts that have been left unsaid in this forum. No one, includ­ing myself, dis­putes that pla­gia­rism is a trans­gres­sion. It is par­tic­u­larly egre­gious in the aca­d­e­mic com­mu­nity. It is the use of the ideas and words of another, with­out their per­mis­sion, as if they were ones own. It is only nat­ural that acad­e­mia would be most sen­si­tive to this problem.

    Pla­gia­rism, to be best of my knowl­edge, is not a crim­i­nal act. I have run searches of the US Code and the Codes of Vir­ginia, Cal­i­for­nia, Mass­a­chu­setts and Mary­land. I don’t have time to do all fifty states, but given what is described here as a uni­ver­sally rec­og­nized “crime” by most of the blog­gers, I would assume that if pla­gia­rism had been crim­i­nally cod­i­fied then at least one of these juris­dic­tions would have done so. They have not. I am not belit­tling the trans­gres­sion — sim­ply point­ing out that to the best of my knowl­edge in the United States pla­gia­rism is not a crim­i­nal offense. There is, of course, the issue of copy­right infringe­ment, but I believe this is a civil mat­ter and is appro­pri­ately dealt with at both the state and fed­eral level. Sadly, for the sake of this forum none here claims to be the vic­tim of copy­right infringement.

    It is your asser­tion Mr. Boa­tright, that Mr. Goe­glein “is get­ting off easy.” You vent your frus­tra­tion within the con­text of being an Edi­tor in Chief at a sci­en­tific jour­nal. I would assume that in the prac­tice of polic­ing pla­gia­rism within your orga­ni­za­tion that ter­mi­na­tion of employ­ment would be auto­matic, and rightly so. What do you do to pun­ish ser­ial pla­gia­rists? Fire them more than once? Do you black­list them? What is the pre­scribed pun­ish­ment for pla­gia­rism? Has a pun­ish­ment been cod­i­fied for a trans­gres­sion, which has not? If so, please direct me to the source. Is there any pre­scribed uni­for­mity in the action of pun­ish­ment for this trans­gres­sion? Or, is it sim­ply a case-by-case, fly by the seat of one’s pants sit­u­a­tion when deter­min­ing the “appro­pri­ate” pun­ish­ment. In the absence of estab­lished norms for pun­ish­ment, how can you, or any­one else, say that a per­son has “got­ten off lightly?”

    What you have totally missed in my posts (I will take respon­si­bil­ity for not being “the great com­mu­ni­ca­tor”) is that this forum is act­ing as judge, jury and pros­e­cu­tor. The rail­ings for “greater jus­tice” are not called for here.

    Mr. Goe­glein has taken respon­si­bil­ity for his actions. The White House has ter­mi­nated his employ­ment and, yet, at least one of those directly affected, Mr. Hart from Dart­mouth, had this to say; “I told him [Mr. Goe­glein] I was flat­tered he’d used it. It doesn’t dam­age him in my esti­ma­tion at all. I’m glad he spread the word.” I think Mr. Hart has dis­played gen­er­ous mag­na­nim­ity — some­thing totally lack­ing by the crit­ics of Mr. Goe­glein in this forum. Those directly affected have served jus­tice and mercy to Mr. Goe­glein. I can­not see why this mob can­not find it within itself to fol­low suit. Rather it rails over plagerism of mate­r­ial which Nancy finds offen­sive because Tim “chooses to write awful, turgid essays on the won­ders of Hoagy Carmichael, deceased oper­atic com­posers and his par­ents’ marriage.”

    Lastly, I would sug­gest to Nancy and any­one else who wishes to be enforcer of pub­lic mis­deeds, do so with­out engag­ing in “mean spir­ited fun” but qui­etly, con­fi­dently, and hon­estly. Do so for the sake of jus­tice and mercy, the pub­lic inter­est and never as a means of vin­dic­tive­ness, self-serving inter­ests, or a moment in the lime­light. Do so for the good of the nation and do so in a self-sacrificing manner.

    On this note friends, I’m tuck­ered out. Good-bye!

  545. Mia K. said on March 2nd, 2008 at 6:42 pm

    William Wal­ters wrote:
    Lastly, I would sug­gest to Nancy and any­one else who wishes to be enforcer of pub­lic mis­deeds, do so with­out engag­ing in “mean spir­ited fun” but qui­etly, con­fi­dently, and honestly.

    A twist “wor­thy” of “Karl” “Rove” “him­self,” Mr. Walters.

    You appear to be just as intel­lec­tu­ally bank­rupt as your dear­est friend Tim Goe­glein. Good luck feed­ing his chil­dren and whatnot.

  546. del said on March 2nd, 2008 at 7:31 pm

    William Wal­ters,
    That was a great com­ment. I think that many of Nancy’s read­ers are jour­nal­ists, edi­tors and aca­d­e­mics for whom pla­gia­rism strikes a raw nerve. Mr. Goeglein’s suf­fered enough and I’m sure Nancy and oth­ers wish him well.
    You note that pla­gia­rism is a par­tic­u­larly egre­gious offense in the aca­d­e­mic com­mu­nity. To that I would add that Mr. Goeglein’s pla­gia­rism is on an order expo­nen­tially worse than that. Unlike aca­d­e­mics who may pla­gia­rize for per­sonal gain and whose works appeal to eso­teric aca­d­e­mic audi­ences, Mr. Goeglein’s works appealed to a whole swath of the pub­lic cit­i­zenry. The admin­is­tra­tion for which he worked was seek­ing to cloak its poli­cies with an aura of respectabil­ity to which they are not enti­tled. See these two posts:
    http://​www​.usnews​.com/​u​s​n​e​w​s​/​n​e​w​s​/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​s​/​0​6​0​8​2​0​/​2​8​p​r​e​s​i​d​e​n​cy.htm
    http://​www​.medi​a​trans​parency​.org/​s​t​o​r​y​.​p​h​p​?​s​t​o​r​yID=57
    More­over, his mis­deeds epit­o­mize strangely unde­mo­c­ra­tic attempts to influ­ence pub­lic debate by usurp­ing the role of an inde­pen­dent media. First, inde­pen­dent media out­lets are attacked as part of the lib­eral press. That claim is repeated through­out a net­work of right-wing pun­dits. The term echo-chamber has come to sig­nify this strat­egy by the right wing. Then there’s FOX News. Res ipsa loquitor. Then there’s Clear Chan­nel. And by the way, Bain Cap­i­tal (Mitt Romney’s firm) was involved in a $10B bid for the over 1000 media out­lets of Clear Chan­nel about 2 years ago. Then there was the attempt to change the pol­i­tics of Pub­lic Tele­vi­sion by nam­ing a Repub­li­can direc­tor and threats to its bud­get. Then there was Colin Powell’s son Michael’s attempts as pres­i­dent of the FCC to allow media mar­ket con­sol­i­da­tion so that Rupert Mur­doch and oth­ers could con­trol the pub­lic air­waves. And of course, Murdoch’s News Corp. just pur­chased the Wall Street Jour­nal.
    So yes, what Tim­o­thy Goe­glein did was pro­foundly wrong. But he was prob­a­bly just an unwit­ting fool who was duped into believ­ing the admin­is­tra­tion and ambi­tious or arro­gant enough to con­tinue tak­ing from the cookie jar.

  547. Jeff Boatright said on March 2nd, 2008 at 8:21 pm

    Wal­ters, Thanks for the thought­ful reply, but I still do not under­stand your point.

    It should be abun­dantly clear that Goe­glein com­mit­ted theft over and over and over. He did not take respon­si­bil­ity for his actions, he has merely admit­ted that he got caught for one trans­gres­sion. It’s not like he vol­un­teered infor­ma­tion about the other 19, as far as I know.

    As to your other words, I have not sug­gested crim­i­nal activ­ity by Goe­glein. I assume that it goes with­out say­ing, but I guess it was a poor assump­tion on my part, that civil action could result from his malfeasance.

    Really, this is pretty straight­for­ward. He stole, he got caught. And I repeat from the pre­vi­ous post, noth­ing all that awful has hap­pened to your friend yet, and may never. He got caught steal­ing. Appar­ently 20 times. He’s pay­ing for it pro­fes­sion­ally, as he should. He’s also being ridiculed for his hypocrisy. I’d say that’s unavoid­able, and with 20+ hits under his belt, also deserved. But that’s just my opinion.

    What is your point in all this? That he shouldn’t suf­fer the con­se­quences of his theft? Because, again as pre­vi­ously posted, so far this has been pretty light fare.

  548. William Walters said on March 2nd, 2008 at 8:23 pm

    Thank you Del.

    I think every­one has suf­fered enough and since the rest of the world, includ­ing main street media, rec­og­nizes the need to move on to other issues — I will wisely fol­low suit.

  549. William Walters said on March 2nd, 2008 at 8:27 pm

    Mr. Boa­tright, I’ve answered your ques­tions once. Please don’t ask me to answer them again.

  550. Suzi said on March 2nd, 2008 at 9:23 pm

    Yeah, Jeff, swift­boa­tright­ing is mean spirited.

    “We have met the enemy and he is us.” (No pla­gia­rism here, that’s Walt Kelly speak­ing through var­i­ous denizens of the Oke­feno­kee Swamp!)

  551. Willem van Oranje said on March 2nd, 2008 at 11:04 pm

    Writ­ing from the Nether­lands (yes, the story is now by def­i­n­i­tion international!)

    Did he write his arti­cles at home? Or at his work? When he was writ­ing his arti­cles from work, then I think he could be in legal trou­ble as well, wast­ing tax­pay­ers money by steal­ing other people’s work and pre­sent­ing them as it’s own.

  552. Tulse said on March 2nd, 2008 at 11:07 pm

    Pla­gia­rism, to be best of my knowl­edge, is not a crim­i­nal act.

    If he were paid and mis­rep­re­sented some­one else’s work as his own, that would be fraud.

    I find it hugely enlight­en­ing, albeit depress­ing, to see how Mr. Wal­ters defends malfea­sance on the Right.

  553. Wally Wilson said on March 2nd, 2008 at 11:26 pm

    Thank you, William Wal­ters. I now have a much bet­ter idea of where you are in approach­ing the var­i­ous aspects of this inci­dent and the issues it involves. There isn’t any need for us to agree on it all and in every detail, and there is room for other dis­cus­sions on other days.

    Thank you, Jeff Boa­tright, for con­dens­ing the issues down to the very meat on the bones of the foun­da­tional issues. Deftly presented.

  554. Not Fooled said on March 3rd, 2008 at 12:04 am

    I am intrigued by Andrew’s com­men­tary regard­ing dis­hon­esty. It is unfor­tu­nate that Mr. J has never learned to apply his high moral and eth­i­cal stan­dards he holds so dear for jour­nal­ism to the sacred covenant of mar­riage and the uphold­ing of respect and dig­nity for wom­ankind. He has a few (more than a few) rot­ting pinata’s of his own. Come now Andrew, you’re famil­iar with the ol’ trite, stereo­typed expres­sion, “He who lives in a glass house, should never begin throw­ing stones.” What’s in your pinata?

  555. Liz Craker said on March 3rd, 2008 at 12:17 am

    So much for the small-town boy mak­ing good in the big city. I am so disappointed.…and even more so as I find that he lifted entire passges!

  556. tensor said on March 3rd, 2008 at 12:34 am

    “What is your point in all this? That he shouldn’t suf­fer the con­se­quences of his theft?”

    Bingo. If he’s not get­ting paid by some right-wing damage-control team, he bloody well should be. His mas­tery of Rov­ian tac­tics is impressive:

    First, attack the whistle­blower. His first post begins with sev­eral ad hominem attacks against our host­ess, and in later posts, he moves on to claim­ing that she shouldn’t have been check­ing on Mr. G. at all. He makes dark insin­u­a­tions about her motives, and claims that she has acted out of mal­ice. He actu­ally uses the word “smear” to describe the hon­est and eth­i­cal actions of a per­son who had dis­cov­ered wrong­do­ing. This is a flat-out lie, and also (Any­one? Any­one? Bueller? Bueller?) a smear itself. (This also includes two other tac­tics: lie all you want your­self, and accuse your oppo­nents of doing exactly what you are doing.)

    Sec­ond, argue in the most nar­row and legal­is­tic of man­ners. Mr. Wal­ters spends many words on won­der­ing (not answer­ing; his pur­pose is to cre­ate doubt and to sow con­fu­sion where none exist) about a really sim­ple mat­ter. The over­all rea­son this tale has me shak­ing my head is the famil­iar one, of a right-wing moral­ist caught act­ing in a bla­tantly immoral man­ner. Mr. Wal­ters did not address this con­cern, even though it per­me­ates this com­ment thread. An entire gen­er­a­tion of right-wing polit­i­cal oper­a­tives, SUCH AS THE THIEF HIMSELF, using broad sweeps of moral con­dem­na­tion for polit­i­cal gain, is com­pletely ignored.

    Third, con­tra­dict your­self if nec­es­sary. This helps in sow­ing chaos, but arises from throw­ing stuff around to see what sticks. Hence, his claim that a pri­vate appeal to the White House would have resulted in the thief los­ing his job, BUT also that Ms. Nall is at fault for this loss of employ­ment. Mr. Wal­ters insists that he wants a pub­lic servant’s feet held to the fire, but then sys­tem­at­i­cally declares off-limits every prac­ti­cal (and eth­i­cal) way to do this.

    Fourth, attack all other crit­ics. We’re just a like a drunken, blood­thirsty mob, we read, hav­ing appro­pri­ated pros­e­cu­to­r­ial pow­ers we do not deserve. Except, of course, that we’re not drink­ing, aren’t assem­bled into a group, are not esca­lat­ing each other’s claims for harm, have not pro­posed any cruel or unusual pun­ish­ments, and have no actual power to hurt the thief in any way. Mag­i­cally, our requests for jus­tice and resti­tu­tion have become the moral equiv­a­lent of bear-baiting, and we should be ashamed for ourselves.

    Finally, while not directly Rov­ian, the repeated appeals to our bet­ter nature were truly insult­ing, espe­cially when mixed with claims that we lack such exalted traits. What “jus­tice” and “mercy” did you show in your ad hominem attacks upon our host­ess, and upon us, Mr. Wal­ters? Guess what? Our typ­ing about how much of a liar and a hyp­ocrite your friend of eight years has been FOR THE ENTIRE LENGTH OF YOUR FRIENDSHIP doesn’t really do any­thing, except hurt your ten­der eyes. Too bad. Respon­si­bil­ity and account­abil­ity still count for some­thing, and some of us will not stop demand­ing them from our pub­lic offi­cials. Even if it means pub­licly expos­ing pub­lic wrong­do­ing by pub­lic offi­cials you hap­pen to know and like.

    Have fun feed­ing your friend’s fam­ily, sir, and don’t for­get to count your sil­ver­ware before and after their visits.

  557. M. Thomas Eisenstadt’s Blog » Blog Archive » In Defense of Plagiarism: Why Tim Goeglin Got Thrown Under the Bus said on March 3rd, 2008 at 3:11 am

    […] for some­one to search his mus­ings on Google, sure enough, for­mer Fort Wayne News-Sentinel colum­nist Nancy Nall took 60 sec­onds to fig­ure out that Goeglin had copped a decade-old piece in the Dart­mouth Review […]

  558. Eli Perle said on March 3rd, 2008 at 3:18 am

    Nancy — great report­ing, but I wanted to alert you to my boss, M. Thomas Eisenstadt’s new blog post “In Defense of Pla­gia­rism: Why Tim Goeglin Got Thrown Under the Bus.” Thomas may not agree with every­thing you’ve said, but I think you’ll find it inter­est­ing that the orig­i­nal piece you say Goeglin pla­gia­rized from, may in fact be an act of pla­gia­rism itself.

  559. Jeff Boatright said on March 3rd, 2008 at 6:17 am

    Suzi,

    I do not under­stand your com­ment. It has me scratch­ing my head. Are you equat­ing my com­men­tary with the actions of the swift­boaters? I don’t think that I’ve lied about any of Goeglein’s actions, nor have I impugned him with innuendo.

    Pos­si­bly you (and pos­si­bly Wal­ters) think I want to “pile on” Goe­glein. I don’t. I don’t wish him ill. I am not advo­cat­ing that any­thing be done to him to fur­ther pun­ish him. I hope he gets help.

    As for Wal­ters’ argu­ments, I still can’t get my head around them. Pos­si­bly tensor’s inter­pre­ta­tion is instruc­tive (hadn’t really thought about them from such a dark per­spec­tive), but surely not every­thing is political?

  560. Brian Schmidt said on March 3rd, 2008 at 9:29 am

    Eli– your boss doesn’t appear to under­stand what pla­gia­rism is. Either that or the piece is a satire, espe­cially the last sentence.

    Kind of hard to tell the dif­fer­ence between satire and real­ity when it’s the Bush Administration.

  561. Mia K. said on March 3rd, 2008 at 10:04 am

    Re: M. Thomas Eisenstadt’s Blog In Defense of Pla­gia­rism: Why Tim Goeglin Got Thrown Under the Bus

    Brian Schmidt Says:
    Eli– your boss doesn’t appear to under­stand what pla­gia­rism is. Either that or the piece is a satire, espe­cially the last sentence.

    Truly.

    And though Mr. Eisen­stadt has had sev­eral days now to get famil­iar with the fre­quency and sheer vol­ume of Tim Goeglin’s ser­ial pla­gia­rism, he men­tions only the one inci­dent as though it were some sort of iso­lated ‘youth­ful indiscretion.’

    In “defense of pla­gia­rism,” Mr. Eisen­stadt chooses to com­pletely dis­re­gard the other 19 times Tim Goeglin has pil­fered oth­ers’ work, which were dis­cov­ered almost imme­di­ately after the first theft was brought to light. Today, March 3rd, how is it pos­si­ble that Mr. Eisen­stadt can be so ill informed of the scope and mag­ni­tude of Tim Goeglin’s habit­ual, repeated pla­gia­rism which he’s attempt­ing to defend and dis­miss? Talk about mak­ing a mole­hill out of a mountain!

    In con­sid­er­ing all of the “defense of pla­gia­rism” and/or pla­gia­rists that’s been shov­eled around lately, I sup­pose I should be thank­ful that Tim Goeglin hasn’t ‘doused any cats with lighter fluid and set them ablaze,’ though I’m mor­bidly curi­ous to see how a defense of that sort of thing might be under­taken, if it became necessary.

  562. Suzi said on March 3rd, 2008 at 10:19 am

    Jeff, sorry for the con­fu­sion, I was just being sar­cas­tic. I agree with your respose to Mr. Wal­ters. Swift­boat­ing is/was mean spir­ited, but your crit­i­cism wasn’t.

  563. Harl Delos said on March 3rd, 2008 at 10:44 am

    Eli Perle said:

    Nancy — great report­ing, but I wanted to alert you to my boss, M. Thomas Eisenstadt’s new blog post “In Defense of Pla­gia­rism: Why Tim Goeglin Got Thrown Under the Bus.”

    I think it’s inter­est­ing to read that blog post. In part, he says,

    No, true to his con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian roots, Tim attended the salt-of-the-earth Indi­ana University.

    True to his neo-con roots, Thomas Eisen­stadt has no idea that Indi­ana Uni­ver­sity is rather lib­eral. Has he never heard of the Kin­sey Report, that con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian doc­u­ment that told us that cheat­ing and gay sex were extremely com­mon? Does he not know that IU’s Amer­i­can Democ­racy Project is spon­sored by the New York Times? Where was he dur­ing the anti-Vietnam protests?

    Even if Tim pla­gia­rized from another pla­gia­rist, it’s still pla­gia­rism. And I don’t think Ben Stein and the Pope are plagiarists.

    But Eisen­stadt fol­lows the neo-con creed, that “Igno­rance Is Bliss”.

  564. Matt said on March 3rd, 2008 at 1:08 pm

    »>Thomas Eisen­stadt has no idea that Indi­ana Uni­ver­sity is rather liberal. ««

    And given that he hails from D.C. and South­ern Cal, I’m sur­prised he knew that the News-Sentinel was the lesser of two papers in the area. I was in the news biz for 21 years and I didn’t know that fact offhand.

    Eisen­stadt: Once a month, he got his name in the second-rate news­pa­per in a two-paper small town…

    Nan­cy­Nall, in her orig­i­nal post: Why he chooses to do so for the fail­ing paper in a two-newspaper town, one with a cir­cu­la­tion that prob­a­bly barely nudges 30,000 these days, remains a mystery.

    Then again, any col­umn titled “In Defense of Pla­gia­rism,” doesn’t deserve a heck of a lot of scrutiny. Espe­cially when the PhD author notes that “Tim cribbed a lit­tle on his columns.” Where do you start?

  565. Scott Hille said on March 3rd, 2008 at 1:40 pm

    I grew up in Ft. Wayne and Tim Goe­glein and I went to Con­cor­dia Lutheran High School together. He was pretty much a non-entity to me as I was more involved in the the­ater and sci­ences cliques, and he was off in his own clique which was the one com­posed of the wealth­ier families.

    We were never friends or hung out or…anything.

    But the Goeglein’s were pretty much a pre-meme meme back then. Their fam­ily was/is heav­ily involved in church activ­i­ties and dona­tions (Ft. Wayne IS the City Of Churches as well as heav­ily Lutheran), and you don’t get any­where polit­i­cally or finan­cially in that town unless you attend the chats after services.

    The fam­ily gave/gives gen­er­ous funds to Con­cor­dia as well, and that school isn’t a cheap one to attend.

    Most every Lutheran church wed­ding recep­tion, class reunion, after-prom in the whole city took/takes place at Goeglein’s (a cater­ing venue), and their ser­vices are expanding.

    That’s cash money com­bined with major local reli­gious and polit­i­cal influ­ence since before 1951… a very smart fam­ily power grab, and one which many insti­tu­tions in town are most likely con­sid­er­ing one worth forwarding.

    Now if a polit­i­cal power needed to gen­tly fan the reli­gious, moral, and finan­cial flames of a spe­cific type of vot­ers in a par­tic­u­lar region in order to for­ward their cause they would obvi­ously grav­i­tate towards some­one who fell into that cat­e­gory and suc­cor them in order to use them as an influ­ence propagator.

    Whether or not he truly believed in his con­vic­tions or saw it as more of a way to for­ward the small fam­ily empire I can­not com­ment on, but look­ing at how that small fam­ily empire seems to be a tiny mir­ror of how our cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion does it’s weaselly busi­ness… it’s a thing that makes me go “Hmmmm.”

  566. Score One For Bloggers | Fort Wayne Politics said on March 3rd, 2008 at 1:57 pm

    […] late to this story but I wanted to give a mas­sive shout-out to Nancy Nall for her effort in expos­ing Fort Wayne’s very own serial-plagiarist. I espe­cially enjoyed this quote from the News-Sentinel’s edi­to­r­ial page edi­tor Leo Morris: […]

  567. david c roach said on March 3rd, 2008 at 2:18 pm

    thus the joy and won­der of the inter­net, and blogs.
    to deflate the wind bags, to prick the pompous, to expose the truly stu­pid. and to break news that the main­stream media wont break. — until the blo­gos­phere ignites into a rag­ing BUSH-fire (gig­gle.), and the MSM fol­lows up– which is what the so-called 4th estate/5th col­umn is sup­posed to have been doing all along.
    Per­son­ally– I am amazed at my grow­ing plea­sure of “schaden­freud”, as I grow older.
    a ger­man immi­grant hoosier josef schreyer– 1880 some­thing said it best “theres 2 par­ties– democ­rats, and aris­to­crats”.
    google “aris­to­crats” and “dirty jokes” wait for it.…..GIGGLE!

  568. Harl Delos said on March 3rd, 2008 at 2:35 pm

    Matt said:

    And given that he hails from D.C. and South­ern Cal, I’m sur­prised he knew that the News-Sentinel was the lesser of two papers in the area. I was in the news biz for 21 years and I didn’t know that fact offhand.

    Actu­ally, it *wasn’t* the lesser of the two papers, 21 years ago. When I was edit­ing the Waynedale News in the late 1980s, the NS cir­cu­la­tion was about 70,000 and the Journal-Gazette (other than Sun­days) was about 60,000 — but Allen County was the only county in which the NS beat the JG in circulation.

    Farm­ers in adjoin­ing coun­ties could get the Tues­day JG in Tues­day afternoon’s mail, but if they sub­scribed to an after­noon news­pa­per, the Mon­day after­noon news­pa­per arrived in Tues­day afternoon’s mail. The TV list­ings weren’t much good at that point.

    My ties to the NS go way back. I had an aunt and uncle who met while both were reporters at the NS — back when Ernie was a reporter, too.

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  570. Innovation in College Media » Blog Archive » Nancy Nall Derringer: MPI keynote said on September 19th, 2008 at 10:01 pm

    […] tells the story of her dis­cov­ery of pla­gia­rism by Tim Goe­glein, a White House aide under Pres­i­dent George W. Bush. Google was the weapon of choice […]

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