AP: Plagiarism is a New “Conservative Weapon”

Remember when the AP had a modicum of credibility? Over the past few years it’s been working hard to shed that modicum to the point that the formerly respected wire service is indistinguishable from the Washington Post which is the same as The Nation or the old Gawker. That is to say most media now looks like the same stew of leftist snark, explainers and narrative warfare.

That’s also how we end up with this spectacular AP response to Harvard President Gay resigning over plagiarism charges.

Harvard president’s resignation highlights new conservative weapon against colleges: plagiarism – AP

There used to be four Ws of journalism to which we can now add, “what the hell”.

Even within the entire “Republicans pounce” meme where the focus on every leftist scandal is how it’s a cynical ploy by Republicans, that’s really something.

Harvard’s president is caught with instances of plagiarism in the majority of her work and the response is… Republicans pounce.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The downfall of Harvard’s president has elevated the threat of unearthing plagiarism, a cardinal sin in academia, as a possible new weapon in conservative attacks on higher education.

Possible new weapon.

After a few paragraphs the AP “report” reads like something from a college student paper.

The plagiarism allegations came not from her academic peers but her political foes, led by conservatives who sought to oust Gay and put her career under intense scrutiny in hopes of finding a fatal flaw. Her detractors charged that Gay — who has a Ph.D. in government, was a professor at Harvard and Stanford and headed Harvard’s largest division before being promoted — got the top job in large part because she is a black woman.

Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who helped orchestrate the effort, celebrated her departure as a win in his campaign against elite institutions of higher education. On X, formerly Twitter, he wrote “SCALPED,” as if Gay was a trophy of violence, invoking a gruesome practice taken up by white colonists who sought to eradicate Native Americans.

Intersectionality is a beautiful thing.

The AP “article” doesn’t get around to describing the plagiarism until the very end of the article and claims that Gay merely “mirrored” the language as if she were doing a Marx Brothers routine. The key points are that the whole thing is a racist conspiracy by the right-wing that threatens academic freedom. Since plagiarism is now a conservative weapon, the only thing to do is legalize it. That will show those conservatives.