GABRIEL MALOR: “This week we learned that blackface isn’t disqualifying for Democratic politicians, and plagiarism isn’t disqualifying for elite journalists.”
To be fair, we actually learned the latter in 2002:
The historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, under fire for inappropriately copying several passages in a book she wrote in 1987, yesterday disclosed that her borrowings were far more extensive. In all, she said that in the same book she failed to acknowledge scores of quotations or close paraphrases from other authors.
Ms. Goodwin, one of the nation’s best-known historians and a frequent television commentator, admitted last month that she borrowed some passages in her book, ”The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys,” from three previous works. She also said that in 1987 her publisher, Simon & Schuster, paid to settle a legal claim by one author under a confidentiality agreement. Yesterday Ms. Goodwin said that since those revelations, her research assistants had found passages copied from several other books as well.
At her behest, she said, Simon & Schuster is taking the extraordinary step of destroying its inventory of paperback copies of the book to publish a thoroughly corrected edition this spring.
Goodwin remains a regular, and reliably establishment leftist fixture, on MSNBC.
Additionally, we also learned a lot about non-sweeps weeks reruns as well this week. Or as Jim Treacher wrote on Thursday, It’s Time for a NEW Green New Deal.