Politico Puts the Max Boot to Wall Street Journal’s ‘In Defense of Football’
Review of News12 Phoenix 11-Minute Package on Whitney Lopus Lawsuit in Greg Winslow Case, Plus the National Swim Coach Sex Abuse Scandal
August 24, 2013A Twitter Dialogue With Dave (@EdgeOfSports) Zirin on the Crisis of Confidence at ESPN’s ‘Outside the Lines’
August 25, 2013We’ve finally found the writer who puts the “foot” in football stupidity. It is Max Boot. We recently brushed off his ill-researched Wall Street Journal essay, “In Defense of Football,” on the grounds that it would be a waste of bandwidth.
But as a Blog of Record, we are duty-bound to inform you that a plagiarism controversy has erupted inside the conservative community over the provenance of Boot’s 2,000 poorly chosen words. Politico has the story of the rejection by WSJ of freelance journalist Daniel Flynn’s article “In Defense of Football” — quickly followed, as fourth down follows third, by the newspaper’s soliciting of Boot to write a piece under the same (admittedly hackneyed) headline.
See “Plagiarism or coincidence? Writer, Wall Street Journal square off,” http://www.politico.com/story/2013/08/daniel-flynn-wall-street-journal-plagiarism-95865.html#ixzz2crLRYvY2.
Boot is a think-tank expert whose special expertise is being wrong about America’s benevolently imperial wars. The Journal editor who solicited Boot noted that he has a “football obsession.” Perhaps what he most loves about football is that it is such a faithful metaphor for America’s benevolently imperial wars.
Anyway, let me hold the principals’ coats while they duel amongst themselves over originality, credit, and filthy lucre (the newspaper paid Boot $4,000 after he accepted the assurance of sports editor Sam Walker that “This thing will write itself!”).
Irv Muchnick