why can't people just be honest?

It's 4:30 in the morning and I've drank way too much tonight. I think it's telling that even while drunk, the whole Ben Domenech issue has bothered me so much that I bother to write about it right now.

I don't want to make a blanket judgement about Republicans, but there has been a long trend of excessive pride coming from the party of the pachyderm. If you make a mistake, take responsibility for it, you don't need to write an excessive backstory to make yourself look like a victim, and you don't need to try and justify what you did. The fact is pundits, politicians, reporters, etc. will not take responsibility for their mistakes until they are cornered.

Ben Domenech is guilty of many counts of plagiarism and rather hateful speech. He was recently hired as the conservative blogger for WashingtonPost.com in order to "balance" the existence of Dan Froomkin. This was obviously ridiculous, there is no such thing as a liberal bias in the media, and even if they were Dan Froomkin is no liberal conspiracist. Froomkin is a good journalists who just reports and analyzes what he has seen and heard as a White House correspondent, intelligent people will not see any effort on his part to be the antithesis to the right wing of the nation.

Ben Domenech, from his alias, Augustine, recently labeled the late Coretta Scott King a communist. That is just unnecessarily hateful.

If we look at some juicy bits collected on: http://yourlogohere.blogspot.com/2006/03/meet-ben-domenich.html

Here are some gems.
-Al Gore can suck it.
-Peace Through Superior Thermonuclear Capability.
-I don't know about you, but the more Colin Powell insults the French, the more I like him.
-etc etc etc.

A few days ago, over controversy of plagiarism (many counts of which) and his ridiculous off handed remarks, especially calling Coretta Scott King a communist on the day of her funeral, he resigned. As if nobody saw that coming. What was his response? He had to defend himself, he had to make himself out to be the victim.

"But in the course of accusing me of racism, homophobia, bigotry, and even (on one extensive Atrios thread) of having a sexual relationship with my mother, the leftists shifted their accusations to ones of plagiarism. "
**So... the leftists are the problem, this has nothing to do with you actually plagiarising things. Way to be a martyr.

"I know that charges of plagiarism are serious. While I am not a journalist, I have, myself, written more than one thing that has been plagiarized in the past. But these charges have also served to create an atmosphere where no matter what is said on my Red America blog, leftists will focus on things with my byline from when I was a teenager."
**You have been plagiarized too? Boo hoo. That doesn't make it ok for you to do so.

And then he continues talking about how the plagiarism wasn't of his own doing, that it was ACTUALLY his editors sneakily inserting things into his writing.

"As you all know, I am a conservative, but not a partisan"
**All you have to do is read his writings to see that it is blatantly obvious that he is a partisan. There is no balance from him at all. By very definition of running a site called redstate.org or having the conservative blog for the WashPost you are a partisan. If you were a journalist like Froomkin and not a hardcore conservative, then maybe you'd be non-partisan.

What irks me is that he couldn't bring himself to confess and take responsibility for what he had done. Everything was, oh my editors did it, or this is out of context, or soemthing or another. That just shows the utter lack of integrity he has.

Two days later, the blogosphere delivered example after example of his plagiarism and bigotry. When backed into a corner, there was no proud standoff, justifying his actions. Only apology.

"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."

Why didn't you say that at the very beginning? Ben Domenech, I'm glad you resigned. You're a piece of shit. Just another unethical conservative... judging from the responses on RedState, people think he is an upstanding citizen. Had this happened to a leftist writer, the entire right wing internet community would be butchering that person. It is always easy to be a victim, it's always easy to hide your inadequacies and mistakes by blaming the "vast left wing conspiracy" and the "leftist attack machine". Give me a break.