Gadling

I agree, Aaron. Kohnstamm's "clarifications" at World Hum don't leave me feeling terribly contrite. In fact, I feel kind of jerked around.

If you read between the lines of the interview, it suggests that LP spun this controversy out of a "joke" about plagiarism and the "regrettable" line about Colombia, possibly as a pre-emptive strike against Kohnstamm and his book. Let's say for a moment I accept that as the truth. There are still a lot of things not adding up here. The Observer story cited in the World Hum interview is dated April 9th. Reuters, CNN, etc (not to mention you and me!) have been going crazy over this all weekend. And it takes Kohnstamm until April 14th to respond? To a publication that hadn't even repeated the allegations yet?

Personally, if Reuters was falsely accusing me of plagiarism, I'd be in a hurry to ask them to print a correction. If they refused, I'd be calling my lawyer. So either a) the allegations are true (in which case we REALLY have nothing to apologize for, or b) they're false, but Kohnstamm and Random House wanted to ride the publicity wave (in which case I definitely feel jerked around).

Kohnstamm wrote to you on your other post that you should have contacted him to verify the Reuters coverage - but he's had days to correct what they wrote if he wants to, and to my knowledge he still hasn't asked them to print a retraction. The Colombia quote - which he doesn't deny - was pretty cut and dry. I still don't understand what he expected readers to take away from that, if not the impression that he ditched a Colombia trip on the sly.

Was your post slanderous? That's a big word. I'm still waiting for Kohnstamm to call a lawyer, if he feels so hard done by...

And I stand by my comment about the bad porno scene, too! :)

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