Sometimes August really is a slow season for news. Case in point
in recent days is the amount of ink spilt to discuss liberal
political blogger Joshua Marshall’s charge that in an “egregious
trespass” the WashingtonPost.com has “purloined” the name
of his site for one of its online columns. Best of the Web
Today, InstaPundit,
Tapped
and the Washington
Times have all weighed in, some pro, some less so, regarding
the little guy’s plight at the hands of the conglomerate. Most
damaging to Marshall’s case has been BOTWT’s discovery that Fox’s
Bill O’Reilly began using the name Marshall implies is exclusively
his some two years before Marshall’s site came into existence.
But all that may be neither here nor there. Marshall’s site is
called Talking Points Memo. So is O’Reilly’s segment on his
Fox News show, though often it’s simply called Talking Points and
at other times “The Memo.” Meanwhile, the
WashingtonPost.com is calling its new political column
Talking Points, a much less controversial unacknowledged borrowing
from Marshall than Marshall’s unacknowledged borrowing from
O’Reilly. By itself, Talking Points sounds relatively generic, a
widely enough used term of the bureaucratic age. But add the word
“memo” to it and right away something distinct is formed. Marshall
should go vegetarian: he has no beef.
There is, in short, a world of difference between Talking Points
and Talking Points Memo. Just as there is between Grover Cleveland
and Grover Cleveland Alexander, or between George Washington and
George Washington Carver.
InstaPundit Glenn Reynolds defends Marshall against O’Reilly on
the grounds that the Talking Points Memo has become identified with
Marshall’s in a way it apparently hasn’t with O’Reilly. But one
could just as easily argue that until Marshall lodged his complaint
no one paid much attention to the name of his site anyway. Reynolds
expresses disappointment that the Post’s Howard Kurtz
didn’t address the matter in his recent weekly online chat, and
Marshall himself claims that people at the Post must have
heard of his site given that Kurtz’s online Media Notes column has
kindly picked up on items from his site once a week or so for the
last two years. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the name of his
site caught on, since a spot check suggests that when Kurtz links
to Marshall it is always to him by name and not to the name of his
site.
At least Marshall doesn’t have to complain that nobody knows his
name. Perhaps his complaint all along has been that nobody knew the
name of his website, and now he’s found a way to get it out. Then
again, the recent publicity just might only serve to get his name
out that much more, widening still further the gap between his own
fame and that of his site. Marshall should be happy he’s not one of
those obscure bloggers who hide behind cute site names and monikers
as if they were still stuck in the CB radio world of Smokey and
the Bandit. One exception to this practice is the so-called
Bull Moose, which
only pretends not to have a known author because everyone knows
it’s the product of Marshall Wittmann, a major league
Washingtonian. The Bull Moose he may be, but whenever Howard
Kurtz’s cites him he always calls him Marshall Wittmann.
Oddly, although everyone also knows that InstaPundit is really
Glenn Reynolds, more often than not he’s referred to as
InstaPundit. Reynolds doesn’t seem to mind. Nor does he appear at
all upset that his web moniker has sparked many imitators —
Indepundit, Gedankenpundit, Happy Fun Pundit — whom he links to
with no worry they are somehow trespassing on his product.
By Internet democratic standards, it’s almost unseemly for
Marshall to be so uptight. One would think his progressive nature
would have him calling for a thousand Talking Points to bloom.
