Has Fareed Zakaria channeled his inner Mike Barnicle?
Reading that Zakaria has been suspended indefinitely by CNN and for one month by Time for plagiarizing a recent New Yorker article (how dumb is that?) reminded me that the execrable Mike Barnicle still appears on The Morning Joe. From Wikipedia:
In 1998, Barnicle resigned from the Boston Globe amid allegations of fabrication and plagiarism. Barnicle’s October 8, 1995, column recounted the story of two sets of parents with cancer-stricken children. When one of the boys, a black child, died, the parents of the other boy, a white child who had begun to recover, sent the dead child’s parents a check for $10,000. When the Globe could not locate the people who had not been publicly identified, Barnicle insisted nonetheless that the story was true. He said he did not obtain the story from the parents but from a nurse, whom he declined to identify. Mrs. Patricia Shairs later contacted the Globe to indicate that the story Barnicle wrote was about her family, although she said some of the facts were incorrect.
The second column in question contained more than 80 lines of humorous observations dated August 2, 1998, about a third of which plagiarized observations from the 1997 book Brain Droppings by George Carlin.[5] Although Barnicle said he had never read the book, the editor of the Globe issued a temporary suspension. WCVB-TV then aired a video clip of Barnicle recommending the book to viewers for upcoming summer reading, saying it had a “yuk on every page.” Globe editor called for his resignation but this was rescinded under fire from readers, advertisers and a group of media personalities. Instead the suspension period doubled.[6]
Sorry, but to me, as a longtime professional writer and now CEO of a media company, plagiarism is a one-time offense. It’s villainous theft of intellectual property from your peers. Do it once, get caught and find another profession. (There are plenty.) Barnicle should not be appearing on The Morning Joe and I don’t want to read or another word from Fareed Zakaria ever.
And that goes for fancy-shmancy historians Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin too. Go away – all of you.
And now for The Great Lobachevsky.
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