Say Anything Blog

I’d like to say that I don’t care to pound a point into the ground, but that’s just not true.

I’ll club a point like a baby seal if that’s what it takes to get it across. It’s a character flaw. And that brings me to this well clubbed point.

Several months ago I caught another blogger plagiarizing several of my posts. Just as in the recent case of Walton and Johnson stealing what I’d written, the guy was taking some of my articles, changing them a bit, and posting them on his blog.

We called him out by name here on Say Anything in an article similar to the one Rob wrote about Walton and Johnson. Here’s where the difference between the two plagiarists comes in.

The first guy put a post in the comments section of the article criticizing him and in it he apologized profusely, telling us that he was sorry he’d done it and said it was over, and that he’d never do it again. I thought the fact that he manned up and actually came to us and gave a written apology was classy.

He didn’t have to do that. He could have just stopped posting other people’s stuff and stayed away and the issue would have quietly withered around him.

The reception he got here was far from hostile. In fact myself and some other commenters told him to forget it and stick around and enjoy the give and take - and the occasional bloodbath - in our philosophical battles on Say Anything.

And now, as Paul Harvey used to say, for the rest of the story.

Far from having the class - or manning up - to apologize or even link the article as I and others asked them to do, Walton and Johnson became insulting, rude and boorish about the whole thing. And one of the things they insulted were bloggers who, I suspect, they think are pasty skinned computer geeks with no life other than what they can extract from their computers.

I don’t think they understand - since understanding doesn’t seem to be their strong suit - that bloggers are everyone, everywhere, lawyers, cops, nurses, teachers, business men and women, butchers, bakers and candlestick makers.

And isn’t it funny that a blogger, of whom they obviously think so little, would have the style and class to publicly admit when he was wrong, but that the self proclaimed “Radio Gawds” (no, really, that’s what they call themselves) don’t even have the class to respond with civility in the issue?

Like I said, (gotta club that point one more time - sorry) a tale of two plagiarists - the classy and the abysmally classless.

File this one under “Asshats”, if you please, Rob.

Update by Rob: Apparently all the emails and phone calls have worked.

It would appear as though Walton & Johnson have replaced the plagiarized copy of Pilgrim’s post on their site with something about “must-see mini films.”  They’ve also taken down from the front page of their website the Islam-as-mob theme from Pilgrim’s post (you can see what it used to look like in this post).

They did all that with no acknowledgment of having stolen Pilgrim’s post.  But hey, at least they’ve admitted (tacitly) that we here at Say Anything do matter.  And that even radio “gawds” don’t get to plagiarize.