Actually, he wasn't thinking

Barnicle on the brink

Don't Quote Me by Dan Kennedy

I was just thinking . . .

If I'm Mike Barnicle, I've got to figure this is a pretty treacherous time for me.

The boss, Matt Storin, just put me through a humiliating public fact-checking wringer after my ex-colleague Patricia Smith was caught faking at least four columns, and possibly dozens more.

Alan Dershowitz and Boston magazine are still trying to get me for stuff they say I made up seven years ago. Brill's Content is ready to take a shot.

And some of Smith's defenders are criticizing the Globe for not showing me the door, too.

So I was just thinking . . . that this is probably the absolutely worst time I could ever get caught plagiarizing.

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As the Phoenix went to press Wednesday morning, the Globe was hunkered down. Editor Storin and executive editor Helen Donovan were on vacation. Managing editor Greg Moore referred a call to Globe spokesman Rick Gulla, who said the paper would issue a statement after editors sat down with Barnicle, a meeting that was scheduled to take place after the Phoenix's deadline.

Clearly the Boston Herald's Wednesday piece by Mark Perigard, revealing that at least 10 items in Barnicle's Sunday "I was just thinking" column were lifted almost word for word from George Carlin's 1997 bestseller Brain Droppings, was being taken very seriously indeed.

Barnicle's excuse -- offered to his buddies Don Imus, whose nationally syndicated show airs on WEEI (AM 850), and Gary Lapierre, of WBZ (AM 1030) -- was that a friend had provided him with a string of one-liners, and that he hadn't realized those quips originally came from Carlin. It may pass muster simply because it's hard to believe Barnicle is moronic enough to plagiarize deliberately when he knows everyone is watching him.

But it's equally hard to believe that Storin -- who's made it clear that he doesn't think his predecessors dealt adequately with ethical questions raised about Barnicle's work in years past -- is going to let this go by without consequences. Two years ago, the paper suspended Pulitzer-winning cartoonist Paul Szep for two weeks without pay after he was caught borrowing liberally from another artist's work. And Barnicle is a repeat offender.

Even leaving aside the unresolved questions as to whether Barnicle made up quotes and characters at various points during his 25-year career, it has been established beyond a reasonable doubt that on a couple of occasions he cribbed from the late Chicago columnist Mike Royko -- blatantly enough for Royko to howl about it.

Barnicle tried to laugh it off during Lapierre's remarkably obsequious interview, guessing the Herald went after him "(a) because it's the Herald; (b) because it's the middle of the summer; and (c) because they think it's fair to take whacks at people."

It worked with Lapierre. It's not likely that it worked with the Globe's top editors when he sat down with them Wednesday afternoon.

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Dan Kennedy's work can be accessed from his Web site: http://www.shore.net/~dkennedy

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Dan Kennedy can be reached at dkennedy[a]phx.com

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Articles from July 24, 1997 & before can be accessed here

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