Caitlin flanagan biography of michaels
•
Plagiarists: Catch Your Own Clue
Plagiarism is on the rise – in journalism, by bestselling authors, on college campuses and online. But the one thing those of us victimized by it can’t do is speak up. If we do, we are accused of “sour grapes.”
Occasionally, reporters who make things up (Jayson Blair) or copy from another newspaper (most recently New York Post reporter Andy Geller) do get fired or suspended for sheer fabrication or thievery. But increasingly, only the form of expression is protected: I can steal your ideas all I want as long as I put them in my own words.
Educators are supposed to teach our students that intellectual theft is the worst crime they can commit in the academy, yet these same students see all sorts of people, from Doris Kearns Goodwin to Ann Coulter, profiting from it. One study in 2005 found that 70 percent of undergraduates said they had cheated. And why not?
Two recent cases expose the increasingly elastic
•
Caitlin Flanagan’s new hit del av helhet in The Atlantic suggests that school gardens are no more than modern-day sharecropping programs, shuttling Hispanic youth to migrant labor rather than higher education and academic excellence. The ever-incendiary mouthpiece of the reactionary does get some things right: It’s true that Alice Waters’ cachet—she’s close with the Clintons, Prince Charles has toured the grounds of her Edible Schoolyard—has meant school gardens have gained in resources, in visibility, and in coverage exponentially since the 90s. Also true that Waters takes a “foodie first” approach, she wants kids to learn about food, but not just any food, foie gras on every tallrik is more like it, which isn’t all that practical and replicable (the latter my point, not Flanagan’s). She also points to the rapid rise of school garden programs even in the face of dwindling state budgets, a result of gardens being buoyed financially
•
Inventing Marilyn
Culture
Anyone who thinks the story of Marilyn Monroe doesn't warrant such attention doesn't know much about it.
By Caitlin Flanagan
Thump—it landed on the doorstep last summer like an abandoned baby: the newest biography of Marilyn Monroe, a bouncing 515 pages and obviously loved. Tucked between its covers were 51 pages of footnotes, an 88-person list of interviewees, a four-page guide to abbreviations and “manuscript collections consulted.” Had it found a forever family? Sadly, no; it had been left at yet another hateful group home. After some mild bureaucratic processing—its publicity materials and padded mailer confiscated and tossed in the recycling bin, its well of familiar photographs perfunctorily ticked through—it ended up on a shelf crammed with other Marilyn bios, some tall and lovely and filled with pictures, others squat and densely written, a few handsomely published and seemingly important. It would have to find its place