"Mike Barnicle, Fraud and Plagiarist"

I want to thank Tom Scocca for reassuring me that I'm not the only one who remembers that Mike Barnicle got caught plagiarizing and fabricating in his Boston Globe column, and lied about it, and was supposed to have resigned from journalism in disgrace.

I was a kid when the most blatant instance of plagiarism happened, but this was a journalism scandal I could understand. I saw Barnicle's syndicated column in my hometown newspaper now and then, so I knew how dimwitted and phoned-in it was as a matter of course. The way I saw it, there were really two facets to the scandal: first, that he'd stolen a bunch of jokes from George Carlin without giving any sort of credit; and second, that his column was regularly so pointless that a collection of apparently original Carlinesque one-liners was an unobjectionable use of the space. (The Boston Phoenix put it this way, back in 1998: "It's not so much that he copied Carlin as that he writes a lazy, second-rate column, using it to reward his friends, punish his enemies, and bore the hell out of just about everyone else.") The sort of laziness that would make someone steal to fill a waste-of-space opinion column about nothing in particular was hard for me to fathom.

And that was just one example. Barnicle had a history of plagiarism -- which I guess is not so surprising; if you hold the standards of your profession in that much contempt, what's stopping you? And of course he wasn't the only opinion columnist to ever craft a "column" entirely out of other people's ideas. But there are ways of doing it that are professionally acceptable. (Remember when Maureen Dowd got caught stealing a joke* from Talking Points Memo? Her defense was that she got it from a friend and didn't realize the friend was quoting someone else. In other words, she basically announced that she canvasses her friends for cutesy political punchlines to copy and paste into her terrible column. And that's the permissible way to fill 700 words!)  Barnicle plainly did not know or care to learn how to properly credit sources. Yet even after he was exposed definitively, I kept seeing Mike Barnicle's name, or face, in major media outlets. People kept treating him like an important commentator with something to say. He's managed to edit his Wikipedia entry (I assume) so that there's no mention of plagiarism or scandal in the introduction. And now I guess he's all over this new Ken Burns documentary about baseball, which I don't plan to watch, but seriously: stop giving authority to noted liar Mike Barnicle! Or: what Tom Scocca said.

Scocca links to Salon's Joan Walsh, who points out that Barnicle's wife's connections may have something to do with his prominence in The Tenth Inning. But here's what mikebarnicle.com has to say about his involvement:

Mark Feeney from the Boston Globe says, “Mike Barnicle, who toiled for many years at this newspaper, serves as representative of Red Sox Nation. One of his great strengths on both page and screen has always been what a potent and vivid presence he has.”

That's one way to put it. Red Sox Nation must be so proud.

* CORRECTION: Since I'm coming down hard on other people's errors, I ought to admit my own: it wasn't a joke Dowd lifted from TPM; it was a cogent political observation. So maybe that's what she customarily gets from her "friends."

Light and sweet

The first time you see In the Heights you're mostly just puzzled by the false starts and stumbles in the plot. Everyone agrees that it's formulaic, but the real problem is that it doesn't follow through on the formulas it adopts. I mean, formulas are formulas for a reason. It's sort of like watching an improv performance where the actors aren't picking up on each other's cues: you think you know where the story is going, and then it just...doesn't.

If you go back to In the Heights a second time -- at least if you're me -- you'll find yourself attempting to figure out where the plotting goes wrong, and the more you think about it the more confused you'll become. "Didn't this show have a long workshop period?" You'll think to yourself. "What in the world did they spend all that time doing, if it wasn't asking obvious questions like, 'Why can't Nina just go someplace a little more affordable than Stanford? Like, any other college?' or 'Why does the lottery win end up being almost irrelevant, when it seems like it ought to drive the whole story?'" It's maddening -- but then a really good number will come along and you'll forget all that for a while. The real dramatic tension and emotional content is all in the songs, and maybe it never goes anywhere, but it's moving just the same.

Last week I made my third visit to In the Heights -- I blogged about my first trip here at Restricted View, and I reviewed it a year later for Commonweal (when I compared it, very favorably, to the terrible Broadway revival of West Side Story). The musical, while still one of the better musical-theatre experiences on Broadway for my money, is starting to show signs of neglect. It could use a visit from the (or any) director and choreographer, to spruce up some of the musical staging -- and light a fire under a few performers, too.

God would like us to be joyful

Musical theatre is like any other art form: some people "get it" -- that is, are touched by it -- and some don't/aren't. That said, some shows make the case for the form much better than others, and Fiddler on the Roof (by Jerry Bock, Sheldon Harnick, and Joseph Stein) is one of those representative shows. See Fiddler and you ought to understand why it makes sense, at least sometimes, to tell stories in the "book, song, and dance" format. The show is just about foolproof. I've seen at least one shaggy high-school production and a similarly raggedy dinner-theatre mounting, and both were emotionally powerful in their way. And then there was the 2004 Broadway revival directed by David Leveaux, memorable only because it somehow managed to do away with all the warmth and joy the material offers: it was Fiddler on ice.

Lin-Manuel Miranda (of In the Heights fame) knows all that, which I guess is why he chose a number from Fiddler to liven up his wedding reception. Dave Itzkoff posted the video at the New York Times Arts Beat blog, and it's well worth watching if you're a sucker for musicals (or weddings). I admit, by the time the "Russian" in-laws made their entrance, I was teary at the joyful absurdity of it all.



The wedding (mazel tov, by the way!) was also written up in the "Vows" column last weekend. But I have another little bit of color to add to the story. Last year I was a guest at a gala dinner in support of Symphony Space, and in the course of the evening they presented awards to a number of Broadway personalities, one of whom was Lin-Manuel Miranda. (The other honorees were Brian Stokes Mitchell and Donna Murphy... I was in hog heaven.) Miranda's award was presented by Sheldon Harnick, who wrote the lyrics for Fiddler. And, knowing that this would be the case, Miranda had come prepared to tell us all about how he got his start performing in Fiddler back in grade school -- a little Puerto Rican boy playing a Russian Jew ("At three I started Hebrew school, at ten I learned a trade..."). But what he wasn't prepared for was Harnick's presentation: in honor of Miranda's freestyle hip-hop roots, Sheldon Harnick composed and delivered a "rap." It was really more of a patter song (sans music), but it was impeccable and highly entertaining. And it left Miranda speechless: "Sheldon Harnick just rapped for me!" he gasped when he got to the mic.

Just a couple reminders that "Broadway" and "musical theater" are not synonyms -- and the best of the latter often happens in spite of the former.

I made a repeat visit to In the Heights this past weekend, about which more soon (UPDATE: está aquí). In the meantime, enjoy this previous highlight from the Lin-Manuel Miranda archives.

You know my name

(Cross-posted at Hey Dullblog.)

You've probably seen the Experimental Jetset T-shirt design with the Beatles' first names written in Helvetica. It is "an attempt to create an archetypical shirt by stripping down the concept of a rock band to its bare essentials," according to the creators, and I own it in limited-edition tote-bag form (as seen here), thanks to my fashionable friend Betz. I carry it around the city a lot, because it's a perfect just-in-case-I-buy-something bag (holds a lot; folds up small). And because it's attention-getting, people tend to stare at me, or rather at it, which is slightly unsettling until I realize they're just admiring the way my bag "underline[s] the inner logic of graphic design itself" (again, per the designers).

Yesterday I was standing at the corner of 57th Street waiting to cross and I noticed a woman admiring the bag. She seemed pretty excited about it -- excited enough, in fact, that she approached me to say, "I love your bag!" That's when it got weird.

Bad Day at the Mamet Court

In April 2003, I saw Eddie Izzard in his Broadway debut, starring in A Day in the Death of Joe Egg. He was terrific, and so was the show, but I'm really only bringing it up now because I want to share with you his bio from the Playbill of that show:

EDDIE IZZARD (Bri). West End: Henry IX, The Two Losers, Geoffrey of Kent, The Death of Everything (Brixton drama nomination), Give Me Some Soap Mister, Jack and His Bench (from the German), Let Go of My Head, What! (RSC), Bad Day at the Kangaroo Court, That's My Lung, Good God Give Me Gravy (Trevor) and Sod Off.

Funny, right? I bring it up to contrast it with his bio from the Playbill for David Mamet's Race (which closed last week, but that's okay because I wasn't going to recommend it anyway). That one plays it straight, listing his legitimate stage credits (including his Tony nomination for Joe Egg) and his film roles from Secret Agent to Valkyrie. It mentions the FX TV series The Riches -- although describing it as "hugely successful" is a stretch, and I say that as someone who loved that show (or at least the first season) passionately. But one little thing goes unmentioned, and that is Izzard's career as a highly successful and very influential stand-up comedian. If you had your own special on HBO, wouldn't you mention it in your official bio? I would. If I were responsible for something as terrific as Dress to Kill I'd never stop talking about it. Certainly it would enter the conversation long before My Super Ex-Girlfriend. I can understand his wanting to emphasize his legit-actor credentials, now that they aren't all imaginary, but it does seem like a bio that fails to mention his stand-up career (except with the word "comedian" -- as in "comedian, actor, political activist and endurance athlete" -- in a plug for the film Believe: The Eddie Izzard Story) is giving you an oddly incomplete answer to the question "Who is this Izzard guy?"

Park51

What do the editors of Commonweal have to say about the controversy over the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque"? I am so glad you asked. Our latest editorial is online now.

P.S. There's lots more on the subject at dotCommonweal, as noted at the Daily Dish: hey, that's me!

The doctor is out

The recent collapse of Dr. Laura Schlessinger's radio show is a fascinating spectacle. I can't bring myself to listen to the audio -- I can hardly read the transcript without looking away in embarrassment. And then there's the self-justifying pity party she's throwing for herself in the media. And then there are the "She had it coming" responses, some of them very perceptive, like this one by Jesse Singal at The New Republic. There are a lot of lessons to be learned here -- and Dr. Laura is wrong about what they are (no, the white-people-are-the-real-victims act has not been vindicated, and no, the "first amendment" is not under assault, as Linda Holmes explains so capably). Here's the lesson I'd like to highlight:

People who give advice professionally, in public, are not really there to help. They are there to entertain.

An advice columnist for a newspaper/magazine/website is supposed to churn out entertaining copy. His/her job is not to serve the individuals who write in with their problems. His/her job is to be pithy and fun to read. (This is one illustration of the larger reality that mainstream journalists work to please their sponsors, not to inform the public; for more on this phenomenon, see Jonathan Schwarz.) I rarely come away from an advice column feeling enlightened, and in fact I'm often frustrated by what seems to me to be a terrible answer. Advice columnists often seem to be missing the point; they'll zero in on a minor detail in the letter and address that in their response, or they'll interpret the situation in a way that seems unwarranted, leaving me wondering whether they cut the relevant details out of the letter or just made them up out of nowhere. But I read them anyway. I'm a sucker for "Dear Prudence" at Slate, and not just because I love that song. (I draw the line at watching the videos, though -- I'm not that desperate for entertainment.) Like many other advice-givers, Emily Yoffe gives answers that tell you more about her than they do about how to fix problems. But she writes well, and she's quick on her feet, which makes the "chat" editions particularly entertaining. And that's really all I want. Which is good, because that is really all she's there for.

The dynamic is more obvious if you've ever picked up a women's general-interest or fashion magazine. They all have advice columns, and in my experience, they are all terrible. Wit is not as easy as it looks. Neither is wisdom. And it's hard to shake the feeling that the letters are fabricated, making the whole thing a pointless waste of time. (Would anyone really write to these magazines with their problems? You've seen the "letters to the editor" they publish, right? If not, this recurring feature at The Awl will give you the idea.)

Some time ago Sarah Bunting started an advice column called The Vine on her blog, at least partly in response to the fact that professional/syndicated advice columnists tend to be awful. She's very good at the actually-giving-pertinent-advice thing, for sure, but it's obvious that her success is not just a matter of skill; it's also a matter of format. She's not tasked with filing 1000 words that include at least three questions and answers. She can reproduce as much of the letter as is necessary to make the problem intelligible, and answer it at as much length as the situation requires. The result is still entertaining, but it's not only entertaining, and the entertainment value does not depend on her making an example out of the letter-writer. I mention it because the contrast is instructive -- look at how that advice column works to understand how most advice columns do not work.

The only popularly distributed advice columns that are actually service-oriented are the ones that give medical advice or weightlifting advice -- the ones where expertise in a specific field is sought and dispensed. ("Dear Dr. Brazelton, I have chronic eczema between my toes...") Those are also much drier and less entertaining to read, and they're less common, because you can't farm them out to some pseudonymous editorial assistant.

Which brings me to Dr. Laura.

My new favorite humor magazine

The subhead/kicker/deck on this article in The Economist made me laugh out loud:

Cheerleading in Court
Go Team!
A federal judge rules that leaping sexily about is not a sport

Investigate this for me, would you?

I have written before about my weakness for true-crime television, which I still indulge from time to time. I'm getting to the point, though, where I recognize people on the Investigation Discovery ads that show clips from the programs, and that's never a good feeling. "Oh, I've seen this brutal murder before."

Anyway, last time I wrote about how the host of 48 Hours: Hard Evidence, Maureen Maher, is always narrating from some incipient crime scene (sometimes it's just a green-screen projection, I'm pretty sure) and asked: What's up with that? I still don't know, but every once in a while someone ends up here because they have the same question. So now I would like to bring up something else that's been bothering me -- and is another indicator that I'm spending too much time watching reruns of 48 Hours.

If you're Catholic, you probably know the Marty Haugen song "Shepherd Me, O God." It's a setting of the 23rd Psalm in very wide use in American Catholic parishes (and probably beyond). If you don't know it, it sounds like this. So here's the crazy part: more than once, while watching 48 Hours, I have heard them use this very Marty Haugen tune as spooky background music. And no, it doesn't just sound like "Shepherd Me, O God" (the way this one song the organist at my old parish used to play sounded just like "Frosty the Snowman" for the first few notes) -- it is "Shepherd Me, O God."

So here's my theory: the arrangement was originally used on a churchy episode of 48 Hours, one where the murdered person was a church cantor or something like that. And then they just kept using it, unaware that it would make every Catholic/churchgoing viewer go, "Wait, what?"

I don't know how plausible that is. All I really know is, they're using a tune by Marty Haugen as background music on 48 Hours, and I really hope he's getting paid, but I also wonder: Why would he give them permission to do that? Why would they even ask? Another possibility, I guess, is that the person who writes incidental music for 48 Hours accidentally "wrote" a song he'd heard at church. In which case, whoops, looks like there aren't enough Catholics behind the scenes at 48 Hours.

I also sometimes watch Dateline on ID, but one surefire way to get me to change the channel -- aside from the uncomfortable realization that I've seen this episode, and gawked at this murder, before -- is to air an episode featuring Keith Morrison. Man does that guy drive me up a wall. Which is why I was delighted to learn that Saturday Night Live has aired a number of sketches featuring Bill Hader as Keith Morrison.



Of course, like almost everything on SNL, the sketches are underwritten, and I'm annoyed at the way they degenerate into a gag about a guy who says "Ooooooo" and "Ohhhhhhh" a lot (because he doesn't, really). But they start out strong, and that impression is dead on. Rarely have I enjoyed a SNL sketch built around a cast member's random celebrity impression quite so much.

Very Good Questions

Someone reached my blog today by Googling this:

"Why did the Paralyzed Veterans of America send me a nickel and ask me to give it to the Paralyzed Veterans of America?"

That is a good question! I wish I had an answer, but all I have is other, similar questions, in this old post of mine complaining about Catholic Relief Services mailings. (Stephanie, are you still getting nickels too?)