{"id":56,"date":"2004-08-10T12:34:29","date_gmt":"2004-08-10T18:34:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/index.php\/2004\/08\/10\/dupe-duplicative-dupe\/"},"modified":"2009-07-07T22:27:22","modified_gmt":"2009-07-08T03:27:22","slug":"dupe-duplicative-dupe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2004\/08\/dupe-duplicative-dupe\/","title":{"rendered":"Dupe duplicative dupe"},"content":{"rendered":"

Doop a dupe a doop<\/span><\/h4>\n
Copyright 2004 Ben S. Pollock<\/span><\/h6>\n

Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2004.<\/strong> The Berkeley Breathed “Opus” panel for Sunday 8\/8\/04 looked very familiar (His syndicate does not allow open online access). So I walked from the paper on the dining table to my home office (the north side of the sunporch I have fenced off with bookshelves and a filing cabinet and nicknamed “Poet’s Corner”) to find in my framed ’80s collage o’ clips, a favorite “Bloom County,” dated 2\/15\/87. Yes. It’s the same penguin and almost the same set-up and punch line.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sunday’s had the flightless bird at a bar with one woman then another asking his political leaning. When they conclude he’s undecided, they pounce amorously, while Opus tells the reader he merely wanted directions to the potty.<\/span><\/p>\n

Back in 1987, the issue was AIDS, and he gets similarly swarmed after questioning of his sexual history by admitting to being a rather a prude, though all he wanted was directions to the men’s room. This strip seems to get to the point much more tersely, yet more clearly, than the new one. This year’s model certainly is better drawn, though.<\/span><\/p>\n

If even terrific columnists and cartoonists end up with, oh, no more than half-a-dozen themes throughout their careers, as any surface analysis will prove, then repeating oneself is inevitable. Self-plagiarism thus is only self-contradictory, not an ethical lapse.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the artist really ought to improve on the past. Otherwise, what’s the point? I want Breathed to succeed so this was worrisome<\/span><\/p>\n

I e-mailed to Poynter’s Romenesko<\/a> to ask, did anyone else notice? I got one response that this is an accepted practice termed a “callback,” which I’ll remember the next time Romenesko or Editor & Publisher<\/em> report that a sports columnist got fired for “stealing” years’ old copy from himself, which happened earlier this year. -30-<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Doop a dupe a doop Copyright 2004 Ben S. Pollock Tuesday, Aug. 10, 2004. The Berkeley Breathed “Opus” panel for Sunday 8\/8\/04 looked very familiar (His syndicate does not allow open online access). So I walked from the paper on the dining table to my home office (the north side of the sunporch I have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7],"tags":[29],"class_list":["post-56","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-course-of-words","tag-columnist"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":400,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2008\/01\/by-george-part-ii\/","url_meta":{"origin":56,"position":0},"title":"By George, Part II","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"January 26, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Only some of the essayists in What Orwell Didn't Know: Propaganda and the New Face of American Politics, edited by Andras Szanto for PublicAffairs Books, which I will review soon, think George Orwell (1903-1950) is the man for 2008. After all, their thesis is in the title. Any other George\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4394,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2013\/07\/hartford-conference-notes\/","url_meta":{"origin":56,"position":1},"title":"Heartin’ Historic Hartford","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"July 20, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"For most summers, Brick has included reportage from the annual conferences of the National Society of Newspaper Columnists. They were long, even when broken into several posts per weekend. Reporting this year's, in Hartford, Conn., was tricky because I left my seat and note-taking repeatedly\u00a0 when called away to troubleshoot.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "UConn and More"","block_context":{"text":"UConn and More","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/nsnc\/hartford-2013\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":76,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2004\/03\/china-cups\/","url_meta":{"origin":56,"position":2},"title":"China cups","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"March 13, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2004 Ben S. Pollock \u00a0 Saturday, March 13, 2004. Green tea from red China. Nice, but no one says \"red China\" anymore. -30-","rel":"","context":"In "The Course of Words"","block_context":{"text":"The Course of Words","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/course-of-words\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":75,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2004\/03\/is-it-real-or-desenex\/","url_meta":{"origin":56,"position":3},"title":"Is it real, or Desenex?","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"March 15, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"\u0005^q\u00c2\u00ac\u0005\b\u0015dt face=\"Courier New, Courier, mono\">Copyright 2004 Ben S. Pollock Monday, March 15, 2004. Reality TV shows are not reality. Even close. Just think about them with a little deliberation, and it's obvious. Yet people watch them, and talk about them, as if they are. -30-","rel":"","context":"In "American Culture"","block_context":{"text":"American Culture","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/american-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":74,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2004\/05\/the-medium-needs-a-massage\/","url_meta":{"origin":56,"position":4},"title":"The medium needs a massage","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"May 1, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Copyright 2004 Ben S. Pollock May 1, 2004. I keep starting funnier \"Bricks,\" but anger keeps cropping across the pad with ink, the typewriter (a royal Royal standard jettisoned in 1979 by the Fort Smith newspaper), this iBook keyboard -- the medium indeed does not matter. I'll settle for coherency,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Technical Difficulties"","block_context":{"text":"Technical Difficulties","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/briefs\/technical-difficulties\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":44,"url":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/2004\/01\/resolved\/","url_meta":{"origin":56,"position":5},"title":"Resolved","author":"Ben S. Pollock","date":"January 1, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Thursday, Jan. 1, 2004. New Year Resolutions: 1. Do right. -30-","rel":"","context":"In "Life Lessons"","block_context":{"text":"Life Lessons","link":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/category\/life-lessons\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1518,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56\/revisions\/1518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benpollock.com\/brick\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}