The following is just too good not to be shared around. It was published last week in Marketing Mix. Written by the editor, one Luise Allemann, this touching apologia relates to plagiarism allegedly committed by the Independent Newspapers columnist and author, Darrel Bristow-Bovey. Please note my use of the conventional journalist’s caveat ‘allegedly”. Following the publication of details of Bristow-Bovey’s alleged plagiarism it is also alleged that threats of legal action are floating around. I don’t want to be in the firing line.
Here’s what Allemann wrote. It might be advisable to take a strong anti-nauseant before reading it.
‘Now I must admit that I was not unaware of the hullabaloo surrounding Darrel but when the whole subject was dredged up in David Bullard’s Out to Lunch column in last week’s Sunday Times newspaper, it left a bad taste in my mouth. Firstly, Bullard’s holier-than-thou pontifications on whether Bristow-Bovey had committed the cardinal sin of journalism, namely plagiarism, smacked of kicking a dog when it’s down. And the real cherry on the top was his overly-dramatic assertion that some of Bristow-Bovey’s ‘fans’ were now describing him as the ‘Hansie Cronje of journalism’.
‘Yes, Darryl has obviously had a rough few months during which he probably accepted far too many commissions for his own good and paid the price for being overworked and under-inspired, which may then have led to his transgressions. However, the reason that he found himself in this predicament is that he’s an absolute genius of the pen and a lot of people want a piece of that. For many years, he has churned out some of the finest and most original columns to be published in South Africa, every one a masterpiece and every one unique. Bullard and many others, I am afraid, don’t come close and for that reason, I, for one, am willing to forgive Darryl his latest misdemeanours, because they have reassured me that he is human, which, quite frankly, I was beginning to doubt given his almost supernatural command of the English language!”
I’ve always believed that one of the best ways to assess a man is by taking a close look at his friends. It harks back to schooldays, when I saw that the most baleful of playground bullies always had little clumps of pilot fish around them. They ran the bully’s errands for him, offered him their sweets, generally sucked up to him in return for being in his gift. Later in life the same is often seen. There are strong similarities between the quality of a man and those who cherish and admire him. If he’s surrounded by pandering schlemiels, he’s almost invariably of the category himself.
For such reasons Bristow-Bovey should be very worried about Alle-mann’s glistening encomia, not only because there is such a thing as damning with too much praise, but because having meathead adoration poured all over one in public is a sure indication of the level at which one’s work is appealing. Who wants to hear the loudest applause coming from the monkey cage?
The short answer is Independent Newspapers, which has been deafeningly silent on the issue of Bristow-Bovey, though it must be acknow-ledged that it was one of theirs, the Saturday Star, that first broke news of the alleged plagiarism. Since then Independent editors have ascribed to the popular and repellently sentimental response voiced by Allemann in her line about not kicking a dog when it’s down. We might well say the same about the many other inhabitants of South Africa’s bustling Seedy Street. If the media stops cauterising prominent thieves and liars just because they’re down, who knows what will happen. We could today have the Reverend Alan Boesak as our ambassador in Geneva, Tony Yengeni would probably be in the Cabinet sitting right next to The Honourable Deputy Minister of Sport, H Cronje.
This wretched little saga has been depressingly indicative of a retreat from principles in South African letters. Something has gone desperately wrong when publishers become hostile in defence of authors who quite obviously have ignored the rules; when a senior academic at a university announces that there’s nothing wrong with plagiarism; when newspaper editors rick their necks from looking in the opposite direction.
As an editorial in this newspaper observed last week: ‘Journalists demand certain standards of politicians and other public figures and frequently call for the heads of those found wanting. The least the reading public could have expected from Bristow-Bovey was a humble mea culpa. And from those who publish him some form of sanction.”
Instead Bristow-Bovey is encouraged to continue to pitch his trade on the corner of Seedy and Sauer streets. Of this we should constantly be reminded. If not, then let the press drop all the attention currently being paid to Deputy President Jacob Zuma, those scrumptious Shaik brothers, Mac Maharaj, the Nigerian oil scam.
As Alleman so assiduously reminds us: a fool’s paradise has very dim lighting.
Archive: Previous columns by Robert Kirby