I've Been Robbed

It looks like I've been violated. I feel so ... so ... tawdry.

Apparently some 24-year-old woman with a blog on Xanga who goes by the moniker TastefulWhiner is stealing entire blog posts from yours truly (like here and here and here and here).

On the plus side, I now get to say I'm in the same league as the Rude Pundit, one of my blogging faves, since TastefulWhiner has also lifted his material, as well as a slew of others.

But yikes, the absolute shamelessness of the thefts is almost breathtaking. I mean, not only is she stealing copy verbatim, but she lives in Chicago, no less -- home of Oprah Winfrey.

I mean, Christ. Did the girl not see Oprah last week squeeze out a boatload of Cleveland steamers on the prevaricating mug of James Frey? Is TastefulWhiner not a wee bit scared of such mischief under Oprah's very nose?

When I was in college, I purchased a prepared term paper from a hole-in-the-wall business off of La Cienega Boulevard that catered to Los Angeles universities. It's not something I was proud of; I mean, wouldn't it be kinda silly for me to be proud of that ? (Now, if I had done something like a ventriloquist act or a Bill Withers song for the paper, damn right I'd be proud.) To my immeasurable credit, however, I had the good sense to discard with the "by Jason Gottlieb" on the front sheet as well as change some words and phrases here and there.

I guess my point is this: If you're gonna plagiarize, at least be creative about it. Anything worth plagiarizing is worth plagiarizing well. Just ask Joe Biden.

**Update** I guess she took the site down shortly after she started getting complaints from fellow bloggers. Hopefully, she will return with a different site of her own writing. The stuff she wrote herself was actually pretty good.