Pundit theft

Earlier this week, David Brooks began his New York Times column, titled Vulcan Utopia (subs. req'd) as follows --

If you’re going to read Al Gore’s book, you’re going to have to steel yourself for a parade of sentences like the following:

“The remedy for what ails our democracy is not simply better education (as important as that is) or civic education (as important as that can be), but the re-establishment of a genuine democratic discourse in which individuals can participate in a meaningful way — a conversation of democracy in which meritorious ideas and opinions from individuals do, in fact, evoke a meaningful response.”

Now take a look at Andrew Sullivan's Sunday Times (UK) opener --

In America, reason is under assault. How do I know this? The same way all reasonable people know anything. Al Gore has written it in a book, The Assault on Reason, with no pictures on the cover. He has also unloaded himself of enlightening profundities such as the following: “The remedy for what ails our democracy is not simply better education (as important as that is) or civic education (as important as that can be), but the reestablishment of a genuine democratic discourse in which individuals can participate in a meaningful way – a conversation of democracy in which meritorious ideas and opinions from individuals do, in fact, evoke a meaningful response.”

Of course he could have read the book and independently zeroed in on that sentence. But he was surfing the web earlier this week for blog posts about the book -- a possible alternative to reading the actual book (which of course might vindicate Gore's complaint). And he did read Brooks, so surely blogger ethics demands a hat-tip for that lede?