My father-in-law -- himself a left-winger -- always says: Don't do two "wrong things" at the same time.
> Meanwhile, haven't establishmentarian authors (Doris Kearns Goodwin?)
> been accused of plagiarism and then effectively forgiven?
Yes. Though Goodwin did resign from the Pulitzer Prize board, there are many defenders -- Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Sean Wilentz, etc. <http://www.hnn.us/articles/1195.html#doris10-27-03> -- and her next book will come out and probably sell well. Stephen Ambrose also comes to mind as an example of "establishmentarian authors" who were accused of plagiarism but have defenders <http://www.oah.org/pubs/nl/2002aug/jensen.html>.
It should be noted that both Ambrose and Goodwin are liberal, "establishmentarian" as they are. In both cases, the charges first surfaced in The Weekly Standard:
Fred Barnes, "Stephen Ambrose, Copycat," 14 January 2002, <http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/000/738lfddv.asp>.
Bo Crader, "A Historian and Her Sources," 28 January 2002, <http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/000/793ihurw.asp>;
I suspect that the fabled "vast right-wing conspiracy" is indeed out to get scholars at all points of the political spectrum to the left of Bush: from Stephen Ambrose to Ward Churchill. (I can't get away with saying this in a scholarly journal, but I'll say it here, according to the honorable tradition of political polemics.)
You all who are still in academia had better watch out.
And I'll redouble my efforts at fact-checking, for what it's worth. . . .
-- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>