Putting it bluntly, Riggs says: "Dowd stole some shit and admitted it." Fair enough.

In Slate, Jack Shafer has an uncharacteristically mellow view of the proceedings. After chiding, "Bad, Dowd, bad—deserving of hard time in a pillory!," Shafer proceeds to exonerate the columnist—Dowd "almost sets things right," he says, a conclusion the media critic arrives at through six-point reasoning:

1. She responded promptly to the charge of plagiarism when confronted by the Huffington Post and Politico. (Many plagiarists go into hiding or deny getting material from other sources.)
2. She and her paper quickly amended her column and published a correction (although the correction is a little soft for my taste).
3. Her explanation of how the plagiarism happened seems plausible—if a tad incomplete.
4. She's not yet used the explanation as an excuse, nor has she said it's "time to move on."
5. She's not yet protested that her lifting wasn't plagiarism.
6. She's taking her lumps and not whining about it.

Taking these points one by one:

1. Two of the most highly trafficked politics and commentary sites rub your nose in your own literary pilfering. What do you do: Retire to your Georgetown manse and burnish your Pulitzer, or acknowledge the obvious?

2. Could Times spokesperson Diane McNulty possibly have been squishier in her apologia? McNulty writes: "There is no need to do anything further since there is no allegation, hint or anything else from Marshall that this was anything but an error." Does the Times really need Marshall to come knocking before they force Dowd to grovel?

3. OK.

4. This smacks of a Chris Rock sketch. Regardless, Dowd deserves no props on this count.

5. Ditto, but OK.

6. Still got a job, check. Still got a column, check. Plenty of heavyweights coming to her defense, check. Them's some pretty meager lumps.

A major point that Shafer misses is the question of medium. When a book plagiarizes another book, or a print publication plagiarizes a book, reaction is likely to come slowly and by narrow avenues. When one of the most-read columnists in the country cribs from one of the most-read bloggers in the country, well, that's a different story: backlash is likely to come quickly and from all sides. Leaving the cribber on the defensive, and with little equivocal recourse.

All of which sidesteps one of the most troubling points: How often has Dowd done this exact thing before?

A final point: Shafer apparently misunderstands the purpose of a pillory. Pillorying a writer isn't the equivalent of slapping him or her on the wrist—it's a full-on public humiliation (see above), after which the writer's reputation is tarnished forever. Seditious pamphleteering, Papism, sexual deviancy—these were the crimes that merited a good pillorying back in the 17th and 18th centuries.

Far be it from me to recommend such for Dowd. But let's at least be consistent in our hyperbole.

Illustration above: "Defoe in the Pillory," engraving by J.C. Armytage, 1868.

Maureen had us correct the column online as soon as the error was brought to her attention, adding in the sourcing to Marshall's blog. We ran a correction in today's paper,  referring readers to the correct version online.

There is no need to do anything further since there is no allegation, hint or anything else from Marshall that this was anything but an error. It was corrected. Journalists often use feeds from other staff journalists, free-lancers, stringers, a whole range of people. And from friends. Anyone with even the most passing acquaintance with Maureen's work knows that she is happy and eager to give people credit.

This is complete bullshit: Dowd. Fucking. Plagiarized. But she's a Pulitzer winner, a media elite, and a total babe, so the NYT is looking the other way. (I bet Jayson Blair is seething right now! Rick Bragg–not so much.)

Calderone closes his piece with this bit of insight:

If I was e-mailed a 40-plus-word block of text for this blog, and I used it, I'd include some sort of attribution — whether "a reader writes in," "media insider points out" or whatever the case may be.

But from The Times' response, it seems the paper finds it acceptable for columnists to take entire paragraphs from friends (or sources?), over the phone or e-mail, and reproduce them verbatim in the paper under the columnist's byline.

Awesome, Calderone, you'd do differently. So would I. So would my colleagues and our freelancers and every other journalist who actually had to pay the consequences of handing in illegitimate copy. Now, can somebody suggest a good punishment for Dowd, a well-paid, respected columnist at a world-famous institution, who has demonstrated that she's too lazy to rework a friend's idea into her own words?

Perhaps a 500-word definition essay on integrity? Or maybe the same thing should happen to her that would happen to a first-year NYT reporter who stole from another journalist...

Eric Zorn says what I can't.

On Saturday, Colbert King stepped away from the juvenile crime beat to write about Fenty's ego. King thinks the mayor isn't so invincible. Why? The mayor's hubris may trip him up. King writes:

"The mayor out and about in the District of Columbia is not the candidate who captured all 142 precincts in the 2006 Democratic mayoral primary. There's a different man in office today. People seem to know it....

He's still quick with the smile and handshake, still good with names, still works the crowds, and makes all the photo ops. No D.C. government good deed gets announced without his presence.

But nowadays, something else comes with him when he shows up on the scene. There is a certain haughtiness in Fenty's bearing, a trace of scorn in his demeanor, a sense of self-importance that was not present (or at least was not noticeable) in him before."

Meanwhile, there were lesser crimes uncovered. I went to my first Nationals game of the season. When friends tried to buy the $10 tickets, they were told that they were all sold out. When we got inside the stadium—with the $20 tix—we couldn't help but notice plenty of empty seats in the 10-buck section. Conspiracy!

And then Maureen Dowd offered a very laughable excuse for plagiarizing TPM's Josh Marshall in her column.