MOVE ALONG, MOVE ALONG
From RedState.org:
I want to apologize to National Review Online, my friends and colleagues here at RedState, and to any others that have been affected over the past few days. I also want to apologize to my previous editors and writers whose work I used inappropriately and without attribution. There is no excuse for this – nor is there an excuse for any obfuscation in my earlier statement.
I hope that nothing I’ve done as a teenager or in my professional life will reflect badly on the movement and principles I believe in.
I’m deeply grateful for the love and encouragment of all those around me. And although I may not deserve such support, it makes it that much more humbling at a time like this. I’m a young man, and I hope that in time that I can earn a measure of the respect that you have given me.
Regards,
Ben
He screwed up. And now has admitted it. It’s over. Leave it alone, okay?
9 Responses to “MOVE ALONG, MOVE ALONG”
![]() Comment by COD March 25th, 2006 at 8:46 am |
I’m think I’m very glad that my college work was not preserved on the Internet. |
![]() Comment by Audrey March 25th, 2006 at 11:28 am |
I don’t have any sympathy for this young man. I taught university for years and the kids who tried to pull off plagiarizing are the ones who pissed me off the most. Most kids worked hard to produce original material. Everyone does NOT plagiarize! What surprises me is that he wasn’t called on it before he got this far an embarrassed himself in such a public way. However, you are correct. It is over and we can just move along. |
![]() Comment by Doc March 25th, 2006 at 11:58 am |
Eek, my college work IS preserved on the internet. |
![]() Comment by Scott W. Somerville March 26th, 2006 at 6:52 am |
I’m sorry to hear this has happened. I know Ben and love him dearly, and I KNOW he didn’t learn these writing skills at his mamma’s knee. Sigh. |
![]() Comment by Daryl March 26th, 2006 at 7:06 am |
Ben served as an object lesson in plagiarism at our home yesterday. The kids are working on some kind of report and my wife had taught them that they need to put things in their own words. Our youngest daughter (age 9) showed me her report and mentioned that she knew it was wrong to copy. I, of course, agreed and told her about Ben’s fall. She immediately started bawling that she had copied a half-sentence. She was inconsolable for a good ten minutes. I felt horrible that I had inadvertantly caused her pain. But I can pretty much guarantee that she’s never going to be outed by DailyKos. |
![]() Comment by JJ Ross March 26th, 2006 at 8:31 am |
Reminds me most painfully of Road to Tara, the Margaret Mitchell biography in which her science-and-math worshipping mother and patent lawyer father teach her through shame and methodical beatings that “plagiarism as exactly the same as stealing” thus their most despised sin. And that all plays and stories were a shameful waste of her brain in any case, when she should be “conquering arithmetic.” There’s a vivid passage (page 32, just pulled it out to check) about her father giving her “a harsh scolding and quite a spanking” for “copyright infringement” because a la Jo March, one afternoon she and some neighborhood boys play-act her dramatized version of some book in her parlor. (Without that published author’s permission, how shocking!) So the little girl learned the word “plagiarism” for the first time that day and reportedly was turned into such an anti-plagiarism zealot that it colored her whole career and world view. Made quite an impression on ME just reading it as a young adult, never mind getting whacked with it as a child — but I don’t think the lesson it taught me (or her) is the one her parents intended. |
![]() Comment by JJ Ross March 26th, 2006 at 9:27 am |
Daryl’s new South Dakota site mention just linked me to a John Mark Ministries paper about the “fundamental” difference between healthy guilt and unhealthy shame, and how to avoid turning the former into the latter and then pushing it on our children (and each other.) “Guilt is a self-generated feeling of disgust with one’s actions. Shame is an other-generated sense of disgust with one’s self as a person of worth. . . shame becomes the central organizing principle around which the victim’s life spins. . .Frequently in fundamentalist circles, the inner emotional needs of shame-filled persons displace love. The fundamentalist needs to appear good in order to feel worthy.” Sounds like Peggy Mitchell’s parents were actually “fundamentalists” in their own shameful way, along with the Pearls and TOS (WaPo and Daily Ko too?) in theirs. |
![]() Comment by Scott W. Somerville March 27th, 2006 at 9:39 am |
Interesting distinction between “guilt” and “shame.” The Apostle Paul made a similar differentiation in II Corinthians 8-11. Here’s what he says:
Whether we call it “guilt v. shame” or “godly sorrow v. worldly sorrow,” may my dear young friend Ben get the good out of this painful situation. |
![]() Comment by JJ Ross March 27th, 2006 at 10:35 am |
*NO* lesson or belief is more important than the precious child on whom we would force it. That’s where our education methods always break down imo. False idols? – hsers see and reject false idols in the classroom, but less so at home. Schoolfolk vice versa. Why I am an unschooler I guess, because I see it everywhere. And I see teaching and learning as even more distinct than guilt and shame. 🙂 |