Heres a very interesting

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Here’s a very interesting George Will column on the apparent craze to name everything under the sun after Ronald Reagan.

(Why’s Talking Points praising George Will? Hold on, hold on.)

The gist of the argument is that there really is no popular groundswell in favor of commemorating our 40th president. It’s really just a handful of Washington-based professional Republicans, conservative ideologues and Reagan-worshipers. And in thoroughly non-Reaganite fashion they’re using top-down, Washington-based big government to shove this all down everyone’s throats.

National Airport here in DC was recently renamed Reagan National Airport. And the latest instance of this hypocrisy is that Bob Barr, whacky right-wing congressman from Georgia, is threatening to withhold federal funds from our subway system, the Metro, unless all the subway signs and maps are reprint and reposted to say Reagan National Airport for the airport stop.

Anyway. A great hypocrisy. And a great point.

What’s even more interesting is that Talking Points’ one-time quasi- kinda sorta protege Nick Confessore wrote the same article in the New Republic EXACTLY A WEEK BEFORE WILL’s COLUMN APPEARED.

Only Nick actually did a lot of reporting — as opposed to cribbing his column from the work of a promising young opinion journalist.

(Yes, Will’s prose is more orotund and the moral is more delicately unfurled. But I say we’re really talking about the same basic point, the same basic article. You be the judge though. Here’s Nick’s piece. Here’s George’s.)

Now, truth be told, opinion journalists actually love having their material plagiarized by nationally syndicated newspaper columnists. But there’s a convention, a way it’s done and a way it’s not done. At some point in the column you write “as so-and-so recently wrote in such-and-such.” Then you’re cool. Rehash the whole column if you like. But if you don’t say that, well … that’s really not cool.

And Will, it seems, is really not cool.

I mean, George. You can’t cut Nick some slack? He’s just a sapling, man. Just starting out. You’ve gotta snag his material and not even throw him a bone? Look at that face! He’s just a kid! Look at that face. Look at that punim, as my grandma would say! Just a kid, I tell you. And you with the cushy nationally syndicated column gig can’t even give the little guy his props?

Uncool, man. Very uncool.

I mean, come clean George. Give the kid his due. Or, at least, as Tim Noah would say, tell us you “disrespected the bing”.

P.S. Let’s be clear: I am not accusing Will of word for word plagiarizing. I’m saying that the first article appeared online a week before Will’s did in a magazine, The New Republic, which is extremely widely read in DC. And they make a very, very similar argument. And use many of the same examples. It’s certainly possible that this is just a coincidence. But I think the burden of proof is very much on Will.

P.P.S. So did Nick put you up to this? Eh … maybe.

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