We know New York Times columnist Bob Herbert likes to recycle his own columns. But has he started recycling other people’s?
Two columns on the Amish school shootings:
Mike Hendricks in the Kansas City Star, October 6: “The shooter wanted to harm only the girls. Does it strike you as curious — the way it did me — that more wasn’t made of that?”
Bob Herbert in the New York Times, October 16: “In the widespread coverage that followed these crimes, very little was made of the fact that only girls were targeted.”
Hendricks: “Had he singled out and shot 10 black men or 10 Jews or 10 gays or 10 of almost any other group, we’d be calling it a hate crime — whether it fit the legal definition or not.”
Herbert: “Imagine if a gunman had gone into a school, separated the kids up on the basis of race or religion, and then shot only the black kids. Or only the white kids. Or only the Jews. There would have been thunderous outrage. …And the attack would have been seen for what it really was: a hate crime.”
(I’ve sent Herbert an e-mail, asking if he had seen Hendricks’ column.)
I doubt Herbert plagiarized Hendricks. This column idea probably occurred to dozens of liberal victimologists at once.
UPDATE: Herbert says he never saw Hendricks’s column.