Perhaps for the first time since I began wearing long pants, I'm actually shocked:
Time editor-at-large and CNN host Fareed Zakaria has been suspended by both the magazine and the network for lifting several paragraphs by another writer for his use in a recent Time column.
In his apology, at least he had the decency to abstain from pleading sloppy note-taking ("I meant to include quotation marks--really!") or a sudden forgetfulness of the word "paraphrase." But his honest apology clarifies nothing about his extraordinary dishonesty.
I'm simply at a loss--not because his plagiarism was about as bright as Woody Allen's bank robbery in "Take the Money and Run," but that he was ever even tempted to plagiarize, let alone commit this most wretchedly mortal of authorial sins.
I just don't get it. I'm generally quite lenient and forgiving to a fault when it comes to human debauchery; I figure I've violated pretty much every entry in the Judeo-Christian code of morality, so who am I to start casting rocks and that sort of thing. But plagiarism? I'd sooner covet or even grope my neighbor's ugly wife before I'd plagiarize. There are at least some degrees of human abomination to which I just won't go, but "nice boys" will, I guess.