Accused of plagiarism

One of the most delightful things to be wrongly accused of is plagiarism.

After all, isn't the accuser saying in some sense "This is so good it must be stolen."

I had a very fine compliment like this once on a major news media website. In the comments section I couldn't resist pasting in most of a blog post I had written. I felt it fit some situation being written about in an article. Someone then angrily proceeded to berate me that I had taken this without attribution from The Clerk Manifesto. They were disgusted.

It is hard for me not to see this in the following way:

They were so taken with the elegance or humor or quality of my comment that they checked it against the whole of the Internet. "This is too good for some random guy to comment on the Internet!" They said, so to speak. So they took my comment and searched it. A hit! Their suspicion confirmed, they rode out to protect the honor of my blog. They informed me that I had been caught red-handed.

I explained the misunderstanding, letting them know that I am clerkmanifesto. 

And they became a regular reader.





Just kidding about that very last part. 

Which oddly calls into question my interpretation of all the rest of it as well.