Doris Kearns Goodwin has resigned from the Pulitzer Prize board as
a result of accusations she plagiarized. Goodwin (who is a kind
of a babe - for an old broad) says the purloined passages were the "result
of a longhand note-taking system that didn't distinguish between her
own observations and passages from other texts." The Wall
Street Journal's ace columnist Dorothy Rabinowitz reasons, in an
April Opinion Journal piece:
"Some don't find this plausible, others know exactly how possible it is to do such things when writing in haste, and a certain passion."Rabinowitz is in the latter camp, believing that Goodwin has been victimized by self-righteous
popinjays. Me too.
Still, the loss of her sterling reputation is, in some respect, a
proper comeuppance for Goodwin. It was during the time of Clinton's
Impeachment that I watched Doris Kearns Goodwin - make that Historian
Doris Kearns Goodwin - join the disingenuous gaggle of apologists
trying to excuse the President's rancid behavior by trashing the
reputation of others. She appeared on evening television talkies and
reintroduced/lent credence to an old and discredited (at least among serious scholars) tale
about Dwight Eisenhower's alleged affair with his wartime driver, Kay
Summersby. For me this was as despicable an act, for somebody
claiming to be a historian, as was Newt Gingrich's cave-in to Democrat
hyenas and subsequent firing
of Christina Jeffrey from her job as historian of the House of
Representatives. Both, I imagine, will live to regret those
decisions. Both certainly will spend some time in hell on earth,
even if it is for the wrong sins - the worst kind of hell.