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(And there goes my new year’s resolution to stop making pop culture references that are 20 years out of date.)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.