billmon on ben

* it's great to see billmon back in action:

"Which is why in a way I'm sorry Baby Ben's plagiaristic sins came to light. It gave the Posties an easy out. It would have been much more interesting (and significant) to see whether the Washington Post -- the old Pravda on the Potomac, the paper Richard Nixon loved to hate -- really would have been willing to keep on board a web columnist who clearly believed, in his heart of hearts, that Coretta Scott King (and no doubt her husband as well) were communists. (I'd also throw in "Augustine's" comment about abortions reducing black crime, but that would hardly be fair, given that the same theory has been seriously entertained by no less an expert than a former Secretary of Education.)

The Post, it seems, isn't so far gone it's willing to ride out the storm with a redbaiter who's also a serial plagiarist. But the obvious reluctance of the paper and its editorial minions to face the facts, either before or after hiring Baby Ben, is rather telling -- as is the absurdity of their lies:
We obviously did plenty of background checks" on Domenech, Brady said . . . .Plagiarism, though, is not an easy thing to spot, Brady suggested.

So hard, in fact, it took a few left-wing bloggers three whole days to come up with about twenty zillion examples of it. (Note to Jim Brady: Google. Check it out.)

The point is that when it came to Ben Domenech, the Post tried desperately to handle the situation with kid gloves -- even though the paper's own editorial credibility, as opposed to its hiring judgment -- was never on the line. One suspects that if the sins of a Janet Cook or a Jayson Blair had been exposed so quickly, they would have vanished without a trace within minutes. But of course, they weren't former political appointees who had powerful friends (and Daddies) in high places.

No matter, I'm sure there are plenty of other well-connected young GOP apparachiks out there willing to take on the evil MSM conspiracy by going to work for it. And many of them probably aren't serial plagiarists. All the Post has to do is ask around."

i missed him so