One full day after finding out that they have a plagiarized speech adorning their homepage, I check on it today, and lo! I find out that it is still there. I am bumfuddled by this, since we have all been solemnly instructed that this is the most grievous of academic offenses. Maybe there has not …
For the Unreasonable
One of the most obvious and exquisite ironies in all this is that the particular webpage where our alleged plagiarism is documented has a homepage. That homepage has a bunch of places to go in order to get your tolerant juices flowing, and the seventh link down, inspirationally-placed, is Martin Luther King’s “I Have a …
For Reasonable People
The subsequent paragraphs are more extensive quotations from a letter to involved parties of some months ago. For those who are interested in what happened, they contain that explanation, as well as our attitude toward all this before our slander impresarios started this most recent campaign. At the same time, one place where Dr. __________ …
Distinguo
The circumstances of this recent blowup are such that I have to make a fundamental distinction in my responses. Out of the tumult of the last several years, this is the first issue where those attacking Christ Church have a substantive point. For all reasonable people who are watching this, it is important for all …
Plagiarism, Aye
As some may recall, a booklet that I cowrote with Steve Wilkins entitled Southern Slavery As It Was was at the center of quite a hubbub last February. What some may not realize is that Canon Press pulled the title from their inventory around the time of that controversy. This was not because we were …
A Two Party System
I have to qualify my political observations on a regular basis because it is always and everywhere assumed that to speak the truth about the Democrats makes one a Republican. But I am not a Republican. I belong to that school of thought which maintains that we have a two-party system: the Evil Party and …
George Orwell, Call Your Office
One of the problems that Orwell had in his classic 1984 is that of a disjunct between the inhabitants of the world he was describing and the inhabitants of the world in which people were reading his book. In other words, while Big Brother held everyone in thrall with propaganda that was believable to them, …
Polling As Farce
In all cultures, at all times, a great deal can be learned by looking at what everyone assumes together — left wing, right wing, moderate, libertine, conservative, or anarchist. In our day, virtually everyone assumes the legitimacy of polling as a way of spot-checking what demos, the people, has to say at any given moment. …
Taking Over Moscow?
A certain kind of mind cannot wrap around the concept of political consequences being accomplished apart from political instruments or means. Indeed, a certain kind of mind, being made of wood, cannot wrap around anything. And consequently, when we say, as we have often said, that we do not have a political agenda, we are …
Local Rumpus
David Johnson of the Tribune did a good job representing our conversation yesterday in his article. There was one significant detail that needs to be corrected, however. I did say that if we won our appeal, we would be looking for ways to donate a comparable amount of money. But no decision has been reached …