Word: carlin
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...that without the factor of race, last week's big dustup over Boston Globe columnist Mike Barnicle would have been seen as much ado about nothing.[2] The only reason anyone cared whether Barnicle, a white male, had recycled--without attribution--a few one-liners from comedian George Carlin was that only a few weeks ago another Globe columnist, Patricia Smith, a black female, had been forced to resign for making up stories...
MIKE BARNICLE Columnist charged with stealing George Carlin's jokes. Good Lord, is that a hanging offense...
Barnicle, a beloved, tough-guy metro columnist for the past 25 years, was suspended by the paper after a reader noticed that many of the gags in an Aug. 2 column seemed to be thinly disguised versions of material in Carlin's best-selling 1997 book, Brain Droppings. Barnicle claimed he'd never read the book and got the jokes from a bartender friend. "I had a friend familiar with the Internet, and we came up with all kinds of hits for every one of those jokes," Barnicle claims. "They're just out there floating...
...gets caught with 10 stolen jokes for a column of 38 one-liners. It can be argued that Barnicle's crime is of a lesser degree--more an act of slothful corner cutting than corrupt journalism. Should he fall, many believe it will have less to do with the Carlin incident than an arrogance that has long irked colleagues--and the need for the paper to act as tough toward a white man as it did toward Smith, a black woman...
Fans, including sharp-tongued radio deejay Don Imus, rallied around Barnicle. "He's obviously sloppy and lazy. He's admitted that," said Imus. "But you shouldn't be fired for that." Meantime, Channel 5, the station on which Barnicle reviewed the Carlin book, says it will keep him on, as will MSNBC, where he is a frequent commentator...