The following was posted to the legacy site last Sunday:

Current events sure have taken us down some unexpected side streets lately. Most notably here, from campus antisemitism to the tip of the iceberg with respect to (what appears to be) rampant academic plagiarism and on to (what looks like) a future of on-demand plagiarism reviews for the masses. Interesting times indeed.

It occurred to me this weekend that the central case featured in these current events – Harvard’s now ex-president Claudine Gay – may serve as an educational moment for how we got to this point. That led me to one of my favorite punching bags: Forbes. You remember them; they were the buffoons who fell all over themselves to endear themselves to the new American authoritarian regime (and its enablers and tools everywhere) in early 2021 with this:

DISPATCHES FROM FORBES’ ‘CHIEF CONTENT OFFICER AND EDITOR’: Let it be known to the business world: Hire any of Trump’s fellow fabulists above, and Forbes will assume that everything your company or firm talks about is a lie. We’re going to scrutinize, double-check, investigate with the same skepticism we’d approach a Trump tweet. Want to ensure the world’s biggest business media brand approaches you as a potential funnel of disinformation? Then hire away.

(For those too lazy to follow the link, I want it documented here that my reply to that bluster was:  “It should be shocking to you that the chest thumping threats from Forbes above are not already their standard practice in doing their job. Maybe that touted “brand” is just a bunch of fluff. From this point on, I guess I am forced to consider Forbes nothing but a bunch of fluffers. But I digress.” I will only add here that I wonder if they will utilize the results of the coming “on-demand plagiarism reviews for the masses” to assess the integrity of those hired by and associated with the companies and firms they cover every bit as much as they promised to do for those hiring “Trump fabulists.”)

With that, I will direct you to the following Forbes article from December 22, 2022: Claudine Gay Hired To Be Harvard’s New President. I leave it to you to perform your own review of the scrutinization, double-checking, and investigating done then (as demanded by the obvious pride in their brand) and how that compares to what is known today about being a potential funnel for shallow anti-intellectualism that is “inconsistent with basic American values.” I’ll warn you in advance that it is some real hard-hitting stuff. (Yeah, almost said that with a straight face.)

You decide for yourself…as for me, it is clear that – aside from the occasional conspicuous, self-serving braggadocio – fluffers are really only ever going to fluff. And that’s one hell of a brand. 

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UPDATE #1: A few links to what people are saying today that the Forbes “scrutinizing, double-checking, and investigating” brand didn’t manage to see:

The tragedy of the Claudine Gay saga isn’t plagiarism; it’s that she was the president of an Ivy League school in the first place.

and

The true scandal of the Claudine Gay affair is not a Harvard president and her plagiarism. The true scandal is that so many journalists and academics were willing, are still willing, to redefine plagiarism to suit their politics. Gay’s boosters have consistently resorted to Orwellian doublespeak—“duplicative language” and academic “sloppiness” and “technical attribution issues”—in a desperate effort to insist that lifting entire paragraphs of another scholar’s work, nearly word for word, without quotation or citation, isn’t plagiarism. Or that if it is plagiarism, it’s merely a technicality. Or that we all do it.

(There is another link somewhere around here about the validity of her data that she refuses to produce for review. I will have to insert that as another update when I find it.)