‘Washington Post’ Endorses Plagiarism to Defend Obama

by Ben Shapiro

Yesterday, the White House announced that it was removing Alma Thomas’ plagiaristic piece “Watusi (Hard Edge)” from its walls.  The White House announced that the painting was moved “because it didn’t fit the space right.”  The Washington Post pointed out that posters at FreeRepublic.com had examined the similarity between “Watusi (Hard Edge)” and Henri Matisse’s “The Snail” (1953), ignoring the fact that Big Hollywood actually broke the story.  The Washington Post covered for the White House, explaining, “Stephens’s explanation makes sense because it is inconceivable that the White House’s art experts would imagine Thomas’s painting was fraudulent or a copy … Elaborations on earlier artists’ work, even full appropriation, have been common practice in art for hundreds of years.”  

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Andrew Breitbart immediately emailed the author of the piece, Blake Gopnik, to point out that Big Hollywood had not been properly attributed on criticism of the piece.  Here’s Andrew’s email: 

“Ben Shapiro at Big Hollywood broke this story with a legitimate report. Not blog opinion. To credit Free Republic or conservative opinion sites is either bad journalism or… bad journalism. Even at Free Republic they cite Shapiro and Big Hollywood. The story was cited properly all over the Internet, why the Washington Post breach? We have been at the forefront of reporting on what the MSM won’t regarding this admin. We had the ACORN story, the NEA propaganda conference call. All hard news stories. And so is this. Shapiro is a Harvard law grad. He is hardly worthy of this kind of brush off. We’d like to see a correction as soon as possible.” 

And here is Gopnik’s response:   (more…)

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Posted Nov 6th 2009 at 11:49 am in Art, Featured Story, Media Criticism, Politics | 124 Comments