Bo Crader was a contributor to The Weekly Standard in 2001 and 2002, writing primarily about media criticism and journalistic integrity. Several of his pieces focused on the Doris Kearns Goodwin plagiarism controversy, examining questions of sourcing and historical scholarship. He also contributed pieces on firearms policy and other cultural topics.
THE COMMITTEE TO PROTECT JOURNALISTS reports that "most journalists who die in war zones are murdered." That is, they don't die from playing hopscotch through a mine field or getting dinged by a stray bullet, but are deliberately targeted and killed. The current war in Afghanistan is no different.…
IN AN interview with the New York Times, Doris Kearns Goodwin has now revised and extended her explanations for how other people's prose ended up in her book "The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys." In the January 28, 2002, issue of The Weekly Standard, I reported on similarities in the language of…
WHEN I was a kid, which wasn't that long ago, my buddies and I would play Marine Corps sniper with a scope-mounted Daisy 880 pump-action pellet-gun. Some of our favorite targets were G.I. Joes, in particular the ridiculous bargain-bin figures such as Destro, the evil metal-headed sidekick, and Snow…
IN 1993 HISTORIAN Doris Kearns Goodwin complained that Joe McGinniss had borrowed extensively for his "The Last Brother" from her 1987 book "The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys." "He just uses it flat out, without saying that it came from my work," Goodwin told the Boston Globe. "You expect that…
AS DETAILED in the current issue of The Weekly Standard, Doris Kearns Goodwin's 1987 book "The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys," used a number of phrases and sentences without quotation marks that had been drawn from three earlier works: Rose Kennedy's "Time to Remember," Hank Searls's "The Lost…
MY ARTICLE in the latest The Weekly Standard, "A Historian and Her Sources," points out several instances of copied language in Doris Kearns Goodwin's "The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys." Despite the fact that she had improperly copied from others, Goodwin in 1993 criticized Joe McGinniss for…
IN 1993 HISTORIAN Doris Kearns Goodwin complained that Joe McGinniss had borrowed extensively for his "The Last Brother" from her 1987 book "The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys." "He just uses it flat out, without saying that it came from my work," Goodwin told the Boston Globe. "You expect that…
EVERY GENERATION has its war, and every war has its merchandise. During the '70s, Americans supported our nation with "Ayatollah is an Assahollah" T-shirts. During the Gulf War, some patriots bolted "Bomb Saddam" license plates to their Camaros, while others used anti-Saddam condoms, confident…
MY RECENT ARTICLE comparing the AK-47 to the M-16 has elicited a substantial number of personal anecdotes, expert opinions, and gun-nut testimonials. Readers seem split when it comes to which assault rifle they prefer. One Vietnam vet suggests he's been spoiled by the M-16 and finds the AK-47…
SHROUDED IN MYSTIQUE, the AK-47 has played a central role in every insurgency and revolution of the past 40 years. It was the weapon of choice for Viet Cong and Somali warlords. During the Cold War it was a symbol of the Red Menace even as the Afghan mujahedeen used it to drive the Soviets out of…
SOME HALLOWEEN SPECIALS are funnier than others. Take, for instance, the New Black Panther Party's "Emergency Town Hall Meeting," at the National Press Club which was broadcast on C-SPAN as a "Forum on U.S. Anti-Terrorism Efforts & Muslims" on October 31. A surreal cross between a costume party, a…
WITH THE RIGHT TIMING AND PLACEMENT--a joint session of Congress, for instance--a weapon of mass destruction could kill dozens or hundreds of senators and representatives. What would happen then? How Congress would function in such a state of emergency was the subject of an October 22 panel…
WASHINGTON TIMES PENTAGON REPORTER Bill Gertz reported last week that U.S. officials believe Osama bin Laden may possess raw radioactive material, the source material for a radiological weapon, a so-called "dirty nuke." A 1999 Air Command and Staff College report by Major Scott Nichelson and Major…
1957 July 30: Born in Riyadh to Yemeni bricklayer cum construction magnate Mohammed bin Laden and his fourth wife, reported variously as a Syrian or Palestinian woman.1 He is the 17 th of Mohammed's reported 52 children and the only child of his mother. 2 1968 Inherits somewhere between $20 million…