Dowd, Master of Cut and Paste

Politics aside, I've always thought that Maureen Dowd is overrated. I don't find her writing (or televison appearences) the least bit insightful, humorous or interesting.

So, I'm chuckling over the Huffingtonpost.com piece on the slightly more than teapot worthy tempest over what Dowd categorizes as "inadvertently" borrowing a paragraph from Josh Marshall's blog in her New York Times column "Cheney, Master of Pain"  

Logan posted this in on TPM.com:

More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.

A paragraph in Dowd's column was virtually identical:

More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq. 

After being confronted on it, Dowd issued this unconvincing reply:

josh is right. I didn't read his blog last week, and didn't have any idea he had made that point until you informed me just now. 

i was talking to a friend of mine Friday about what I was writing who suggested I make this point, expressing it in a cogent -- and I assumed spontaneous -- way and I wanted to weave the idea into my column.

but, clearly, my friend must have read josh marshall without mentioning that to me. we're fixing it on the web, to give josh credit, and will include a note, as well as a formal correction tomorrow.

Today, The New York Times revised the offending paragraph in her column and added a "Correction" notice at the bottom:

Josh Marshall said in his blog: “More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.”

...Correction: May 18, 2009
Maureen Dowd’s column on Sunday, about torture, failed to attribute a paragraph about the timeline for prisoner abuse to Josh Marshall’s blog at Talking Points Memo. 

In the long run, I'd guess that publicity over the flap will help more than hurt Marshall.  So, I hope Dowd plagiarizes, er, I mean spontaneously expresses any of my cogent points (yes, there are some!).