When the Boston Globe's award-winning conservative columnist Jeff Jacoby sat down to write an inspirational Fourth of July column on the fates suffered by many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence (not good, it turns out), he made much mention of sacrifice and poverty, persecution, and even death. What he failed to mention is that a similar version of this tale, riddled with errors, had been sloshing around the Internet for years. Though Jacoby fleshed out the story, drawing from a book by Paul Harvey and a Rush Limbaugh newsletter, and though he weeded out many of the errant details, his superiors handed him a four-month suspension without pay and made clear no tears would spill if he resigned.
Since his suspension, critics of all stripes have come to Jacoby's defense, from the Boston Phoenix's Dan Kennedy to Bob Hardman, a gay copy editor at the Globe who, in the past, voiced vehement objections to Jacoby columns he viewed as anti-gay. Conservative critics have suggested that the suspension was a political rub-out, a chance for the Globe to silence its lone conservative voice. In an interview with THE SCRAPBOOK, Jacoby, who has written for THE WEEKLY STANDARD, declines to endorse that theory. Instead, he says he is prepared to believe that the harsh punishment resulted from skittish Globe brass, still charred by the 1998 plagiarism/fabrication scandals visited on them by columnists Mike Barnicle and Patricia Smith.
THE SCRAPBOOK is willing to buy this, with a few caveats. Barnicle was first accused of borrowing people's work in 1992, but wasn't actually run off until the evidence of his fabrications mounted six years later. When Patricia Smith was exposed as a serial fabricator, the Globe still took several weeks to dismiss her, and let her write a defiant farewell column to boot. Jacoby, whom nobody has accused of actual plagiarism, as he was using facts in the public domain (he had even mentioned the Internet version of the story in an advance e-mail of the column that he sent out to acquaintances), was sent packing within five days. He wasn't even invited to make his case to editor Renee Loth until the morning of his suspension.
Loth, who became editorial-page editor in May, has hamstrung her own best defense against political favoritism, telling reporters that the severity of the punishment had nothing to do with the Barnicle/Smith fiascoes. Likewise, Jacoby has said that Loth told him if he came back (he has a 3-year-old son, and a wife who works part-time, making the odds of his seeking other employment quite high), a "serious rethink" of his column is in order. It is unclear how rethinking the contents of Jacoby's column has anything to do with properly attributing the information therein. But with a nearly unanimous outcry of disproportionality, and a protest petition circulating among disgruntled Globe staffers, Loth, who's called herself a "bleeding heart with a brain," might want to rethink her rethink.