Okay, so I didn’t weigh in on the whole plagiarizing thing because 1. I was barely plagiarized and 2. Julia can stand up for herself, as she has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt. I didn’t think it mattered because the culprit was obviously a very young person with very few brain cells. And it wasn’t like he was making money off the swiped content. And it wasn’t like anyone was reading his site.
(Just to recap for those with non-blogging lives to live: the fabulous Julia had whole blog posts swiped by Bryan “Jayson Blair” Lamb. A post of mine was also plagiarized. It was a dumb post, and he made it even dumber. Which I thought was kind of impressive; I wouldn’t have thought it possible. The thief has since re-edited the plagiarized material after a blog outcry that rivaled the reaction over New Coke.)
(And there goes my new year’s resolution to stop making pop culture references that are 20 years out of date.)
Anyway, I decided to raise the issue because it reminded me about human nature and the choices we make when we find ourselves under fire.
(Shut up. It’s my blog and I can talk like that if I want.)
See, I don’t think plagiarism is the worst evil in the world. It’s a very tempting thing to do, and a lot of people do it, and it’s bad, but it doesn’t make someone irredeemable. Everyone makes mistakes.
Heck, I don’t even think that woman who lied about the winning lottery ticket was evil. I’d totally invite her to my place to play a game of Justice League-themed Monopoly. I simply wouldn’t allow her to be the banker.
But this guy? One of the posts he swiped from Julia was a sad one about her cousin with HIV. Bryan didn’t lift facts or even figures of speech; he lifted, word-for-word, nearly the entire post, and attributed the story to an ex-girlfriend of his. And when he took it down, after being barraged by emails and complaints from outraged readers, what did he put in its place? Not an apology. Not an admission of guilt. No, he wrote:
“N has asked me to remove her story from the website. I have complied, and appreciate her bravery in allowing me to post it in the first place. Her courage is a testament to the power of the human spirit, and we could all learn a lot from her example.”
Check that out. That’s not the kind of sociopathy you buy in the store. It comes from a very special place deep down inside.
I wanna digress and tell another story about plagiarism. I used to teach freshman English so I’m pretty familiar with the concept of “creative borrowing.” Once I taught at a business college where the students were poorly educated, at least in comparison to students at other universities. A lot of them had serious writing problems.
One girl was very nice and enthusiastic, but not an adept writer. She struggled with the class. She wasn’t going to fail it, because she participated in discussions and did a lot of rewriting, but she was tilting somewhere between a C+ and a B- by the end of the semester.
The final paper assignment had a fun option: analyze a pop song. Write a structured, coherent paper that discusses both lyrics and music.
This student came back with a discussion of Leann Rimes, and there was a chunk in the middle of her paper with sentences like this one:
“With vocals that seemingly echo with a preternatural stillness, Rimes doesn’t always let you know whether she’s being a truck stop darling or a kitten with a whip.”
And so on.
I called her into my office.
I said, “What does ‘preternatural’ mean?”
She didn’t know.
So that student made a mistake and succumbed to the temptation to let a Rolling Stone review write her final paper for her. And she failed the paper. (Not the class. I’m a weenie softie.) But you know what? She’s probably over it, even if she remembers the incident. I’m sure she became a successful businesswoman doing things that had absolutely nothing to do with close analysis of Leann Rimes songs, and is no doubt thankful that the real world doesn’t generally require five page essays on a weekly basis.
She owned up to it, took the hit, and her life went on from there.
But in Lamb’s case, when he was caught, all he did was pour out vitriol and lies into the ether. It may be a reflection of his own self-loathing, but that doesn’t change his actions or what they represent.
I’m not a religious person at all. But I do believe that if you continually pour negative energy into the world, it’s likely to travel the globe, arcing through the sky and shooting across continents, and eventually swoop back around and smack you on the ass. It’s not karma, it’s not spiritual redress--it’s pure physics. Cause and effect. Nature abhors a vacuum--and let’s face it, our friend the plagiarist is a Hoover.
It’s something to remember next time you’re faced with a situation in which you look bad. Even one in which you look very, very bad. When it happens, you still have a choice, and it’s the only one that really matters: whether or not to face it with honor.
Personally, I’d rather not go out like a Lamb.
Sweet post, Greg! (Though Julia may still have you beat with her thoughts on the subject… maybe you could have ‘borrowed’ a bit from her posts. Um, yeah… on second thought, never mind.)
Anyway, it just goes to show once again:
‘Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery… but cut ‘n’ pasting will get you a hearty kick in the balls.’
Give that Lamb dickhead hell, man!
Greg, this is why I adore reading your site. Smart words from the good doctor! (Ha, I wonder if anyone else remembers that trivia.)
It makes me hopeful that EB (Evil Bastard aka ex) will get his, eventually. Especially because he didn’t admit to a damn thing.
Brilliant allegory for the whole Pete Rose thing.
We always knew you were funny, but Greg, honey, when you get serious, you really are the cat’s meow.
MEOW!
I agree with you on all that, but I’d like to point out he’s not not young. He’s 25. Way old enough to know right from wrong.
Just excellent Greg and you bring up another great point. At least, with the girl in the class, even though she took the writing from somehwere else (this is my attempt to not have to spell and mispell that aggrivating P word), at least she physically WROTE the words. Not much difference, but something! Our Boy Blunder just swept the page with magic mouse clicks and all of a sudden..."Hey, I am really decent writer!” Anyway, you’ve summed it up rather well I’d say!
Well, in Rose’s case, his attitude will probably get him into the Hall of Fame. Celebrity changes everything.
Great post, Greg! But, tell me, how would you like to have surgery performed by a doctor who passed her exams by cheating? Anyway, as I always say, having first said it in 1956 in my senior thesis in high school, when you steal from one author, it’s plagiarism, but if you steal from many, it’s research!
greg, as always your posts are a pleasure to read and further endear you to me. please move to indiana at once!
yeah, the same shit went on at my site. a reader of mine pirated 60 entries including posts about college and relationships, etc, etc. when i confronted him with it, he pulled the site, wrote a public apology, and sent me an honest, contrite, respectful apology. and i sincerely appreciated it.
stealing blog content is like stealing someone’s voice. to quote the illustrious and totally un-imitable sarah brown who recently had her own blog pirate(s), “it felt like someone was playing dress-up with my life.”
bryan’s reaction to this has been less than ideal let alone appropriate. however, i would encourage everyone when dealing with him, to do so appropriately and without the resorting to the same “negative energy” talked about here. that being said, let me state that i am not at all defending him, and i think we as readers of julia (and as fellow writers) have a right and even an obligation to express our disappointment with bryan and to demand an appropriate response.
greg, your post is an amazing example of how to do just that.
and one more example why if i were to steal anyone’s writing, it would probably be yours.
Great points all around, Greg.
On the other side of the coin, I was in a situation one time where I passing reader seriously disagreed with something I wrote, and began spamming my comments. To try to clear the air, I removed the post and wrote another in which I apologized for any (assuredly unintended) offense. The situation didn’t end. She continued to spam my comments and email me, and pursuaded friends to do the same. When I closed my comments and stopped reading her emails, she took my post content (which she had aparantly copied) and posted it on her own site with accusatory remarks, a link to my site, and a comments area so visitors reading her post could weigh in on the issue as she presented it. In the end, I had to close my site entirely, and I was so upset that I didn’t return to blogging for half a year!
Sorry to ramble, but I just thought I’d point out that sometimes people who apologize (and my post was only a personal opinion that was disagreed with!) still don’t seem to be redeemed in the eyes of some.
No one ever plagiarizes me, dammit!
*jealous*
No one ever plagiarizes me, dammit!
*jealous*
Beautifully, beautifully said. My initial thought on the whole thing was to give him the benefit of the doubt, and I sent him an email offering the possible solution of simply offering Julia an apology, because perhaps he didn’t realise that what he had done was wrong. After all, in his websites, of which he has three, he claims to be “a good, upstanding guy”, so perhaps he simply made a mistake. I pointed out his claims, as well. I never used any negative or threatening language - people tend to tune out if you are cursing them left and right - yet he responded as he did.
Ah well, as you said, nature abhors a vaccuum.
i missed the whole thing. thanks for the recap. and dude, thanks for the giggle that came with “leann rimes” and “preternatural” associated in one sentence.
Thanks, Greg!
i seriously don’t see the point of plagerizing a blog. i know it happened to jimbo, and didn’t it happen to sarah b awhile ago??
school makes sense. you gotta write something you dont feel like writing blah blah blah. but a blog? thats really pointless.
Passing off someone else’s work as your own is like trying to pass off vomit as a home-cooked meal.
Sooner or later people will notice the stink.
[This is a great site, by the way… first time here, and I can see I have a lot more poking around to do, but it’s clear you are in the right line of work!]
I’m sorry that people had their posts stolen (I heart Jimbo) but I agree with you that there’s a balance to the universe… Lamb will get his.
The Bryan Lamb Is a Sorry Plagiarist Punk Guestbook:
http://www.247webmaster.com/guestbook/?id=1073684564
Enjoy.
While I was in DC--wait a minute, I still am in DC--oh, well, anyway, I hung out with a friend of mine who also finished his PhD work and is now teaching. And he routinely catches four or five students out of his two classes of thirty each or so plagiarizing.
Every semester.
And now this??
This is really getting out of hand. My friend has a zero tolerance policy: he catches you plagiarizing even one line, and you don’t just fail the assignment, you fail the course. (And it’s amazing how easy it is for him to catch them: I can’t believe how much stupider students have become since I was an assistant TA.)
I have to say I’m more on his side of things than yours. Then again, I never actually finished my PhD, as is well documented elsewhere.