Conason has a rundown on the whole Domenech mess that Greg mentioned a few posts down, for those of you who haven’t been paying close attention. And since this blog is now one of the select portals through which you can bypass the Salon ads, you can Read the Whole Thing.
I suspect that young Ben’s remaining time at the Post can be measured in hours. I’ll be extraordinarily surprised if he survives the day. Of course, the Post has shown itself to have quite the tin ear on these matters in the past, so maybe I’m wrong.
… via Atrios, here’s a classic example of the right’s refusal to ever acknowledge inconvenient facts — in this case, young Ben’s irrefutable acts of plagiarism:
And now those opposed to Ben have googled prior writings that on the surface appear suspicious, but only because permissions obtained and judgments made offline were not reflected online by an out dated and out of business campus newspaper. But that’s all the opponents want – just enough to sabotage a career, though in the process they will sabotage themselves. Facts have no meaning. Only impressions have any bearing on this. The charges of plagarism are false, meant to bring down a good and honest man. The presented facts to prove plagarism are specious — products of shoddy work. One could easily think the producers of 60 Minutes II were behind them.
Facts have never been debate winners among the haters…
That last line especially speaks for itself, though not in ways the author intended.
…more: Digby nails it:
Of course poeple don’t have to read him. But we do have to consider the obvious fact that Kurtz and the Washington Post believe that this blatantly partisan Republican blogger “balances” an allegedly “left leaning” White House critic. That they still don’t understand the difference between the conventions of overt partisan media and mainstream online criticism like Dan Froomkin’s column is painfully clear. That this particular blogger has been exposed virtually overnight as a racist and plagiarist proves that they had no idea how the right wing media works. Still.
(snip)
They are like sheltered children. They do not know when they are being played. Indeed, they don’t even seem to know the game exists.
* * *
… and the boy resigns. His whining non-apology about the Very Mean Leftists is here. (Anyone really believe he got an email suggesting his mother should have aborted him? Does that sound like something an actual liberal would say–or what a shallow young conservative writer would imagine a liberal saying?)
Note the insistence that he didn’t really plagiarize anyone. Then go over to Atrios’s place and scroll down through examples of plagiarism too numerous to list, and decide for yourself.
We’ve seen this over and over again, from conservatives over the past few years, this apparent belief that saying a thing is all that is necessary to make it true. If only it were so. As the saying goes, if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.