Simon says...

My new pal Simon (www.bloggasm.com) has neatly summarized Round One of the Dowd/TPM dustup.

TPM isn't saying anything, whereas Dowd has constructed the inescapably lame excuse that she "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."

Uh....no.

You're saying your friend read Marshall's comment to you on the phone, and you put it into your piece verbatim, from memory? You only changed two words into four. EVERY OTHER WORD WAS THE SAME. Not similar, not an echo, not just like it -the same.

Hell, we all borrow. I read once in a music magazine that all of rock n roll is just ripping off The Beatles, who were, in turn, ripping off Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Elvis. Who were, in turn...blah blah blah blah....

Expressing the THOUGHT is not the problem-no one can lay claim to the idea that the timeline of events suggests that Bush and his minions were torturing to shore up the bona fides of their war. Someone thought of it, first, obviously. But the idea is out there. Just like no one can lay claim to the idea of writing a song about a pretty girl and a car.

Using the same bloody words-taking TPM's product and putting it under your name in the leading newspaper in the country-IS the problem. If you claim that you wrote "Maybelline", then you're a liar.