Juan Williams Busted for Plagiarizing Fareed Zakaria's Method of Getting Busted for Plagiarism

As Twitchy notes, somehow it’s appropriate that a story on plagiarism has multiple layers of deja vu about it:

Would anyone mind if we just copied and pasted our post on Fareed Zakaria getting busted for plagiarism and changed the name to Juan Williams? It’s pretty much the same scenario: “real journalist” Juan Williams was busted for plagiarizing entire paragraphs for a column published by The Hill last month. Williams blames his researcher and says he feels “betrayed,” so we’re supposed to feel bad for him or something.

At Hot Air, Allahpundit adds:

I do like Ace’s idea, though, of certain columnists maybe moving from a traditional byline to a “producer” credit or something similar, like “House of X” in fashion or “School of Y” in art. Part of the value in a Juan Williams or Fareed Zakaria column is the fact that they’re widely recognized from other media ventures. As a publisher, you’re paying partly or mostly for the byline. So if they’re busy and up against a deadline, just let ‘em subcontract the space and keep the name on the page somewhere. “These Wingnuts Are At It Again, by Dorothy Zbornak, from the House of Juan Williams.” Problem solved. You’re welcome, journalism.

Heh.™ Forget JournoList-style “Marvel Team-Ups” to gang-up on the Emmanuel Goldstein of the week — this would really make liberal opinion journalism the equivalent of the comic book world. For decades in that industry it was an accepted practice to employ ghost artists, who were often uncredited for their work. A Batman comic book would simply say “BATMAN, BY BOB KANE,” even though that issue was drawn and written by revolving cast of ghost contributors. Perhaps it’s time for the pundit world to go back to the future.

Though in the interim, Stacy McCain is pondering hiring an intern or two. So to speak:

Hasn’t it been my lifelong ambition to get paid big bucks without actually doing any work? But the rock star dream didn’t happen, so I was forced to resort to journalism, which requires me to sit in front of a laptop computer and at least pretend that this is “work.” Still, I cling to the hope that someday I might be successful enough to have an assistant – preferably one with ginormous boobies — who can take care of all the drudgery like transcribing audio, fetching coffee and booking my flights to conferences where I collect a couple thousand bucks for giving a 45-minute speech about whatever.

Qualified applicants should email Stacy via the link at his blog…