The Boston Globe put the career of its one and only conservative columnist on hold
last week by suspending Jeff Jacoby for four months without pay.

His crime? He published a 4th of July column that included, without attribution,
parts of an often-told (and just as often disputed) story about what happened
to the signers of the Declaration of Independence.

Most of us have seen the email that related the trials and tribulations of the men
to put their John Hancocks on that piece of paper on July 4, 1776. I received more
than a 100 copies of various versions of the list before this year's Independence Day
and a number of readers published versions of it on this publication's discussion board.

It makes nice reading, talking about how "five signers were captured by the British as
traitors and tortured before they died. Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned.
Two lost their sons who served in the Revolutionary Army. Another had two sons captured.
Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or hardships of the Revolutionary War.
They pledged their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor."

Like many emails circulated on the Internet, it was interesting reading.

And like so much "inside info" that lands in our email boxes every day,
 a lot of it was dead wrong.

Advice columnist Ann Landers ran most of the email (attributing it to a reader named "Ellen)
and didn't bother to check the facts. Conservative pundits Rush Limbaugh and Oliver North
did the same. As of this morning, they were still on the job.
(Ediotr's Note: Pigboy cliams his sainted daddy wrote this urban legend.)

Jacoby, however, did not run the email verbatim. He actually attempted to verify the accuracy
of the information and chose not to run the most obvious distortions of history.

But he didn't say where he got the information and wrote a column that sounded like it
came from his own research. For that, the Globe bounced him off the payroll for four months.

The Globe, in recent years, has had its share of problem columnists. The paper fired columnist
Patricia Smith for playing fast and loose with the facts and finally canned longtime fiction writer
and known plagiarist Mike Barnicle (but only after giving him more second chances than Bill Clinton).

Yet the speed on which the paper lowered the boom on Jacoby surprised a lot of people and has
sparked a loud debate within the journalism community. Some say he deserves to be punished,
but perhaps not so harshly. Others say he had it coming. Still others say the paper overreacted badly.

A lot of people, us included, were surprised in 1994 when the Globe hired Jacoby as an op-ed
columnist. His conservative viewpoint just wasn't something you found on the editorial page of
the ultra-liberal paper. His first column in February, 1994, opened with
"What's a nice conservative like me doing in a paper like this?"

Jacoby produced nearly 600 columns since joining the Globe. His viewpoints often angered
the paper's liberal readers, but no one questioned his integrity
(Ediotr's Note: Horseshit! He's a goddamn liar!)

"We cannot look the other way if any of our columnists, reporters or writers borrow without
attribution from the works of others, even in an attempt to improve upon it,"
Publisher Richard H. Gilman said in a statement posted Friday in the Globe newsroom.

Boston Phoenix media critic Dan Kennedy says the paper is way out of line.

"They are way, way overreacting," Kennedy told the Boston Herald. "Smith made things up.
She made up characters and put words in their mouth."

Jacoby feels the Globe wants to get rid of him.

"I was suspended without pay for four months from my job at The Boston Globe, and effectively
invited to resign," Jacoby wrote in an "open letter" in today's Jewish World Review.
"I was put on notice that if I do choose to return in four months,
there would have to be a 'serious rethink' of the kind of column I write."

In other words, the Globe may be tired of having a conservative in their editorial woodpile.

Conservatives columnists are rare on major metropolitan editorial pages. Some pay
lip service by running the syndicated columns of William F. Buckley or George Will,
but it is odd for a metro daily to actually hire someone whose point of view is counter
to the more liberal owners in the executive suite.

Jeff Jacoby's case serves as a reminder to all of us who write for publication.

Never, ever, fail to cite your sources.

Not only is attribution good journalism, it's often necessary to cover your ass.
Why give the suits in the front office a stupid, but easy, reason to show you the door?
 

Awwww, let's all stop what we're doing and have some sympathy for the right-wing
hate-mongers who can't write what they're thinking because the mean liberals
who control allllllllllll the media just won't let them.