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.

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.”

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?

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”.

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.

Kind of hard to tell the difference between satire and reality when it’s the Bush Administration.

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?