Hanging up on Ann Coulter

As my own personal act of revulsion of Ms. Coulter, I have been turning her book face down or covering it with other books at various outlets.

 

For the longest time, I've been concerned that debates such as this lack civility. Apparently you feel they're too civil. Right?

 

You are a homophobe.

There are very few worse things a human can be.

Serial killer is one.

Child molestor is another.

My list is getting thin.

 

Neither can I, Bobblehead.

Neither can I.

 

"So it's selective rights, depending on what your liberal refuse wants to consider under state's rights and what is considered the trusty job of the re-judicialize courts?"

Ah, in my opinion, you are mischaracterizing the argument.
It is not "selective rights" for a state to legalize gay marriage under its constitution, which Massachusetts has done, and is continuing the process of doing. The "full faith and credit" clause of the US Constitution ought to recognize these marriages, but it doesn't, because Bill Clinton, that dolt, signed the Defense of Marriage Act, which means there is a federal law in the way.
I did not know that the courts had be un-judicialized. I believe you are in error there, IMHO.

 

THE DMA is not the reason the the Full Faith and Credit Clause doesn't apply to gay marriages recognized in one. A Federal law can't preempt the Constitution.

 

If the DOMA specifically exempts these marriages from FF&C, which I believe it does, and if DOMA is upheld in the courts on that point, which I believe it has been, it can, no?

 

It hurts the argument you copy-and-pasted that "leftist blogs" and "the New York Post" were used as sources. It might come as a shock to you, but the Post is one of the most conservative newspapers in the country. But you already didn't know that.

 

And, of course, in some places, the bar was not set quite so low.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/local/bal-md.mystery04jan04,1,848658.story?coll=bal-local-headlines&ctrack=1&cset=true

 

That's one short step from being not only your own personal act of revulsion but your own personal act of censorship. Is book-burning next on your agenda?

 

Longtime columnist Olesker resigns

Decision comes amid questions over attribution

By Nick Madigan
Sun Reporter

January 4, 2006

Michael Olesker, a columnist for 27 years at The Sun, resigned yesterday amid allegations that he had used sentences and paragraphs from other newspapers in some of his columns without attribution.

"I made mistakes," said Olesker, clearly dejected, as he began cleaning out his desk in The Sun's newsroom. "I would never take somebody else's work and call it my own. I have always tried to serve my readers as honorably as possible. In the current climate, with so many political eyes staring at me and this newspaper, I feel it's in everyone's best interest for me to resign."

His departure came two weeks shy of his 30th anniversary as a columnist in Baltimore, a city he chronicled in two books, Michael Olesker's Baltimore and Journeys to the Heart of Baltimore.

The most recent allegations against Olesker came in an e-mail to The Sun yesterday morning from Gadi Dechter, a media reporter at the Baltimore City Paper, an alternative weekly. Dechter and a research assistant, Anne Howard, had pored over Olesker's work published during the past two years or so and discovered several instances in which he had apparently appropriated the work of fellow journalists not only at The Sun but at The New York Times and The Washington Post.

"Clearly, this is a practice that's unacceptable, and we acted quickly to meet with Mike and try to resolve it," said Sun Editor Timothy A. Franklin. "It's been excruciatingly painful. Mike has been a prominent voice for the newspaper for many, many years and has contributed much to the public debate, so this has been a very difficult day and a very difficult process."

During the past year, Olesker, 60, has been a lightning rod for attacks over his columns criticizing the administration of Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. The governor's press office had issued an order in November 2004 banning state executive branch employees from talking to Olesker and Sun reporter David Nitkin, prompting the paper to file a First Amendment lawsuit. The paper lost the first round in federal court, and a decision on an appeal is pending.

Dechter's quest had been prompted by a 146-word correction in The Sun on Dec. 24 in which the paper acknowledged that a three-sentence paragraph from a Dec. 12 column by Olesker about former U.S. Sen. Max Cleland was almost identical to several lines in a 2003 profile of the senator by Peter Carlson of The Post. The correction explained that Olesker had made notes from Carlson's piece as part of his research for an interview with Cleland, but that he did not look at the notes again for 20 months. When he did, he mistook the notes for his own work, the correction said.

Franklin said he then asked the paper's public editor, Paul Moore, to conduct a thorough review of Olesker's work in recent years to determine whether any other such instances cropped up. But Moore was on vacation over the Christmas holidays and did not begin the task until this past weekend.

"It's important for the readers to have a full accounting of whether there are other instances in which Mike's words were not his own and were not attributed to other news organizations," Franklin said. Combined with the earlier correction, the latest allegations "represent a pattern that is troubling, and we can't and don't condone taking work from other news organizations without attribution."

In addition, City Editor Howard Libit was asked to begin his own review of Olesker's work, but Dechter, at the City Paper, was further along.

"In a cursory review of Olesker's recent columns, we found several more instances of unusual similarity between his language and that of previously published news stories," Dechter wrote in his e-mail to Libit yesterday.

(MORE)

 

(CONT)

He gave some examples. In one, Dechter pointed to Olesker's March 1 column, in which he wrote: "The state has been sued at least six times since Ehrlich took office by workers who alleged they were fired for their political affiliation. That is against the law."

Less than two weeks earlier, on Feb. 19, Washington Post reporters Matthew Mosk and Lena Sun had written: "The state has been sued at least six times since Ehrlich took office by workers who alleged they were fired for no reason other than their political affiliation, which is illegal."

On Aug. 27, 2004, David Leonhardt wrote in The Times: "But the disparity in incomes between the rich and poor grew after having fallen in 2002. Pay did not keep pace with inflation in the South, already the nation's poorest region, in cities, or among immigrants. And the wage gap between men and women widened for the first time in four years."

Almost two months later, Olesker wrote: "The disparity in incomes widened between the rich and the poor. Pay did not keep pace with inflation in the cities, among immigrants, or in the South, already the nation's poorest region. And the wage gap between men and women widened."

Referring to the passages, Managing Editor Robert Blau said, "Our credibility as seekers of fact can't be compromised. That's a mission and an identity that we hold dear."

Olesker's credibility was questioned more than a year ago by members of the governor's staff. They complained about a Nov. 16, 2004, column in which Olesker wrote that Ehrlich's communications director, Paul E. Schurick, was "struggling mightily to keep a straight face" when he said political gain was not a consideration in the governor's appearances in commercials promoting state tourism. Olesker acknowledged that he did not attend the hearing at which Schurick spoke and apologized, saying the reference to Schurick's expression was intended metaphorically, not literally.

The governor's office also accused Olesker of concocting a conversation with Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele at Pimlico Race Course in May 2004. But a few days after leveling the accusation, Ehrlich's office retracted it and acknowledged that Steele had spoken to the columnist.

Olesker began writing for newspapers while a student at City College and, according to a biographical note from one of his publishing houses, "imagined nothing in the world could be more fun than meeting interesting people and writing about them."

He worked as a reporter in London, England, for The Middlesex County Times and later joined the News American in Baltimore. After several years there as a reporter, he wrote his first column Jan. 18, 1976. Three years later, he moved to The Sun.

"I've written more than 4,000 columns," Olesker said yesterday, as several reporters and editors stopped by his desk to shake his hand. "I am sorry to say that in the course of doing those columns, I unintentionally screwed up a handful of paragraphs. I am embarrassed by my sloppiness. But it's not like I'm looking for a Hemingway turn of phrase or I'm stealing someone's ideas. These are boilerplate paragraphs."

In a statement issued later in the evening, Franklin said Olesker's departure "saddens us all."

"He has been an important part of this institution during his long career, and his strong voice has illuminated issues vital to our readers," Franklin wrote. "However, we can't tolerate practices that imperil the integrity of this newspaper. We expect every journalist at The Sun to produce his or her own work, and to attribute information from other sources."

nick.madigan@baltsun.com

The name of New York Times reporter David Leonhardt was misspelled when this article was published in the print edition. The Sun regrets the error.