Writers who ought to know better

I was shocked to read that the well-known columnist Maureen Dowd recently was caught plagiarizing. Not only that, but the paragraph she lifted was the work of a really high-profile blogger!

She claims that she heard the line from a friend, and didn't realize that her friend was just repeating something she'd read. I'm not sure that I buy that, but in any case, wasn't she still trying to pass off someone else's words as her own? Does it matter if she thought they were her friend's words, rather than another writer's?

Even more laughable, the article referred to the plagiarism as an "error." Ha! Really, a writer like Maureen Dowd ought to know better than to make an "error" like that!