first rule of journalism: don’t plagiarize. i think i learned that on my first day of my first journalism class in college. just don’t do it. write your own stories. doesn’t seem like a difficult thing to remember.

apparantly it is for chris cecil. chris is…er, was…the associate managing editor at the daily tribune-news in cartersville, ga. on may 12 he “wrote” this column:

“I like hypocrites.

You would, too, if you had this job. A hypocrite is the next best thing to a day off. Some pious moralizer contradicts his words with his deeds and the column all but writes itself.

It’s different with Bill Cosby.

I don’t know if he did what a Canadian woman alleged: drugged her and fondled her. Cosby denied the accusation, and the fact that prosecutors declined to prosecute obviously supports him. Still, his ambiguous remarks during a National Enquirer interview back in March (“Looking back on it, I realize that words and actions can be misinterpreted …”) leave open the interpretation that something illicit might have occurred.

Cosby’s attornies acknowledged earler this week that the entertainer offered the woman 1 1/2 tablets of Benadryl during a visit to his suburban Philadelphia home in January 2004. She apparently had some trouble sleeping.

All that aside, there is one thing I do know. Bill Cosby has built a career as a teller of family-friendly tales. It is not mere hoopla when he is described as America’s dad. And these allegations, whether true, false or somewhere in between, are starkly at odds with that image.

What is infinitely worse, though, is that they undermine his moral authority precisely at the moment he was using that authority to prod African-Americans into a long-overdue public discussion.

Now granted, his language was overbroad and sometimes harsh. But who can deny that last year’s now-famous remarks about lackadaisical parenting, refusal to invest in education and willingness to embrace street values among the black underclass struck a chord precisely because there was more than a little truth in them?

The man talked openly about black folks like black folks do when white folks are not around. In so doing, he sparked a national debate about the need for the African-American community to bear at least some of the blame for its own dysfunction.

I should probably point out that Cosby is one of maybe two black people on Earth (Oprah Winfrey is the other) beloved enough, “black” enough, respected enough and with moral authority enough to have pulled that off. I don’t even think the “Good Reverend” (Jesse Jackson) could have
gotten by with it.

So it’s painful to see that authority compromised. I take solace in remembering that moral authority is not the same as moral infallibility.

Out on the Internet, meantime, some folks are looking not for solace but for blood. Like the person who suggested on one message board that the Cosby contretemps was manufactured by liberal conspirators out to silence him before he could derail their gravy train. I am not nearly as paranoid as I’d have to be to buy that notion.

At the other extreme is a small core of commentators gleeful at what they see as Cosby’s new demise. It’s that silly, short-sighted response that irritates me most.

I will put the obligatory disclaimer here: Racism exists. Racism opresses. But after you acknowledge that, after you commit yourself to sounding the alarm and resisting it wherever it is found, what do you do next?

Must African-American progress await the day racism no longer exists and oppresses? If so, it will wait a very long time.

Cosby’s achievement was to get black folks talking publicly about their role in their own uplift, to encourage them to see themselves not as passive victims of what white people have done to them but, rather, as men and women capable of taking their fate in their own hands. The debate he sparked was difficult, healthy and needed.

As somebody who has followed Bill Cosby since childhood, I will admit to a certain affection for the man. But here, I speak from affection for the community in which I live and proudly share with members of all color and nationality.

Its once-upon-a-time values, its once-upon-a-time solidarity and strength, have been largely lost in this era of destructive violence, shiny materialism and anti-intellectual posturing. Blacks should be fearless in exploring any avenue that promises to return them to the best of what they were (and in many cases still are). Yet some of them rejoice at the stumbling of a man who tried to point the way?

That’s about as hypocritical as it gets.”

on march 11, this column ran in the miami herald by columnist leonard pitts:

“I like hypocrites.

You would, too, if you had this job. A hypocrite is the next best thing to a day off. Some pious moralizer contradicts his words with his deeds and the column all but writes itself.

It’s different with Bill Cosby.

I don’t know if he did what a Canadian woman has alleged: drugged her and fondled her. Cosby denies the accusation, and the fact that prosecutors have declined to prosecute obviously supports him. Still, his ambiguous remarks in this week’s National Enquirer interview (“Looking back on it, I realize that words and actions can be misinterpreted . . .”) leave open the interpretation that something illicit might have occurred.

All that aside, there is one thing I do know. Bill Cosby has built a career as an avuncular teller of family-friendly tales. It is not mere hyperbole when he is described as America’s dad. And these allegations, whether true, false or somewhere in between, are starkly at odds with that image.

CREDIBILITY DIMINISHED

What is infinitely worse, though, is that they undermine his moral authority precisely at the moment he was using that authority to prod African America into a long-overdue public discussion. His language was overbroad and sometimes harsh, I will grant. But who can deny that last year’s now-famous remarks about lackadaisical parenting, refusal to invest in education and willingness to embrace street values among the black underclass struck a chord precisely because there was more than a little truth in them?

Cosby talked about black folks like black folks do when white folks are not around. In so doing, he sparked a national debate about the need for the African-American community to bear at least some of the onus for its own dysfunction. It is worth noting that he is one of maybe two black people on earth (Oprah Winfrey is the other) beloved enough, “black” enough, respected enough and with moral authority enough to have pulled that off.

CRITICAL DISTINCTION

So it’s painful to see that authority compromised. I take solace in remembering that moral authority is not the same as moral infallibility.

Out on the World Wide Web, meantime, some folks are looking not for solace but for blood. Like the person who suggested on one message board that the Cosby contretemps was manufactured by liberal conspirators out to silence him before he could derail their gravy train. I am not nearly as paranoid as I’d have to be to buy that notion.

At the other extreme is a small cadre of black commentators gleeful at what they see as Cosby’s comeuppance. It’s that silly, short-sighted response that vexes me most.

I will put the obligatory disclaimer here. Racism exists. Racism oppresses. But after you acknowledge that, after you commit yourself to sounding the alarm and resisting it wherever it is found, what do you do next? Must African-American progress await the day racism no longer exists and oppresses? If so, it will wait a very long time.

IMPORTANT ACHIEVEMENT

Cosby’s achievement was to get black folks talking publicly about our role in our own uplift, to encourage us to see ourselves not as passive victims of what white people do to us but, rather, as men and women capable of taking our fate in our own hands. The debate he sparked was difficult, healthy and needed.

As somebody who has followed Bill Cosby since the days of I Spy, I will admit to a certain affection for the man. But here, I speak from affection for my community.

Its once-upon-a-time values, its once-upon-a-time solidarity and strength, have been largely lost in this era of nihilistic violence, shiny materialism and anti-intellectual posturing. We should be fearless in exploring any avenue that promises to return us to the best of what we were. Yet some of us rejoice at the stumbling of a man who tried to point the way?

That’s about as hypocritical as it gets.”

sound familiar to you? it does to me. exact, in fact.

well, yesterday a reader called the paper and told chris’ supervisor she had read the same column in the miami herald two months earlier. chris was immediately fired, and this column appeared in today’s herald:

“Dear Chris Cecil:

Here’s how you write a newspaper column. First, you find a topic that engages you. Then you spend a few hours banging your head against a computer screen until what you’ve written there no longer makes you want to hurl.

Or, you could just wait till somebody else writes a column and steal it. That’s what you’ve been doing on a regular basis.

Before Tuesday, I had never heard of you or the Daily Tribune News, in Cartersville, Ga., where you are associate managing editor. Then one of my readers, God bless her, sent me an e-mail noting the similarities between a column of mine and one you had purportedly written.

Intrigued, I did a little research on your paper’s website and found that you had ”written” at least eight columns since March that were taken in whole or in part from my work. The thefts ranged from the pilfering of the lead from a gangsta rap column to the wholesale heist of an entire piece I did about Bill Cosby. In that instance, you essentially took my name off and slapped yours on.

On March 11, I wrote: I like hypocrites. You would, too, if you had this job. A hypocrite is the next best thing to a day off. Some pious moralizer contradicts his words with his deeds and the column all but writes itself. It’s different with Bill Cosby.

On May 12, you ”wrote:” I like hypocrites. You would, too, if you had this job. A hypocrite is the next best thing to a day off. Some pious moralizer contradicts his words with his deeds and the column all but writes itself. It’s different with Bill Cosby.

The one that really got me, though, was your theft of a personal anecdote about the moment I realized my mother was dying of cancer. ”The tears surprised me,” I wrote. ”I pulled over, blinded by them.” Seven days later, there you were: “The tears surprised me. I pulled over, blinded by them on central Kentucky’s I-75.”

Actually, it happened at an on-ramp to the Artesia Freeway in Compton, Calif.

I’ve been in this business 29 years, Mr. Cecil, and I’ve been plagiarized before. But I’ve never seen a plagiarist as industrious and brazen as you. My boss is calling your boss, but I doubt you and I will ever speak. Still, I wanted you to hear from me. I wanted you to understand how this feels.

Put it like this: I had a house burglarized once.

This reminds me of that. Same sense of violation, same apoplectic disbelief that someone has the testicular fortitude to come into your place and take what is yours.

Not being a writer yourself, you won’t understand, but I am a worshiper at the First Church of the Written Word, a lover of language, a student of its rhythm, its music, its violence and its power.

My words are important to me. I struggle with them, obsess over them. Show me something I wrote and like a mother recounting a child’s birth, I can tell you stories of how it came to be, why this adjective here or that colon there.

See, my life’s goal is to learn to write. And you cannot cut and paste your way to that. You can only work your way there, sweating out words, wrestling down prose, hammering together poetry. There are no shortcuts.

You are just the latest in a growing list of people — in journalism and out — who don’t understand that, who think it’s OK to cheat your way across the finish line. I’ve always wanted to ask one of you: How can you do that? Have you no shame? No honor or pride? How do you face your mirror knowing you are not what you purport to be? Knowing that you are a fraud?

If your boss values his paper’s credibility, you will soon have lots of free time to ponder those questions.

But before you go, let me say something on behalf of all of us who are struggling to learn how to write, or just struggling to be honorable human beings:

The dictionary is a big book. Get your own damn words. Leave mine alone.

P.S.: Chris Cecil was fired Thursday by Daily Tribune News Publisher Charles Hurley, immediately after he learned of the plagiarism.”

plagiarism gets you an “f” in college, and in the real world it gets you fired. i learned that seven years ago. i guess chris is learning it now.