Lifting Material from the Blog World
No More Mister Nice Blog calls out Washington Times columnist John McCaslin for retailing an anecdote, sans attribution and with lightly mussed word changes, from a conservative blog Libertas. The column concerns an incident at a film-festival screening of the Ronald Reagan vehicle The Killers, in which the audience burst out into spontaneous applause when Reagan's character was shot and killed. One can cluck--oh, can one cluck--about journalistic ethics and whatnot, but we sort of take this as a positive sign: Clearly the professionally indignant conservative pundits are running out of things to be operatically outraged about if they're lifting ideas from blog entries about film revivals. What's next, after all? Complaints that Harry Reid's manner is curt, or that Ted Kennedy is red-complexioned and bulbous? That the peanut bags you get on airlines are hard to open?
Though we do of course look askance at the MSM's unacknowledged lifting of material from blogs. That's bloggers' work: Step off, Mr. Salaried Columnist Man!-- HOLLY MARTINS
There Are Two Possibilities Here [NMMNB, via Romenseko]