Anyone seen Lewis Black's new television show, "Lewis Black's the Root of All Evil?" In it, two comedians take a side and debate which cultural figure or institution is more evil. Recently, the debate was between Oprah and the Catholic Church. If the following story is true, Oprah Winfrey might have another point against her. A woman in Lynn claims that Oprah Winfrey stole the idea for her new show "Oprah's Big Give." Darlene Tracy......

Update: Keller's editor, Michael Flamini, has provided the following defense to the Herald--“‘The Bluest State’ is a lively and controversial work” and “more akin to an op-ed piece than to a work of historical analysis or an academic treatise.... It is unreasonable to expect extensive footnotes for each and every quote, or a lengthy bibliography." Wow. How hard is it to print footnotes? And how stupid does Flamini think Keller's audience is? This statement makes......

With both local winter teams off Monday, all the local attention could focus on Globe writer Ron Borges, who was benched for two months for plagiarizing a Seattle writer in his Sunday football column. (Deadspin has the passages in question.) When asked for a quote, Borges said (not really): "'Tis a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done." Good news in Florida, as Jon Lester got back on the mound......

Apparently in Cambridge it's just too hard to pop the collar on a corset. Yesterday the Harvard Crimson published an arts editorial "Preppy-Goth Is Doomed Fashion." The skull fashion is on the rise at Harvard. Hipsters and Preps alike are taking on the emblems normally associated with a gothic look. We know all about the Wal-Mart Nazi t-shirts that have been pulled from all many stores. But that was a simple case of plagiarism. They......

There's an unsettled feeling in Boston at the end of the semester. The undergrads start pouring out of the city when they turn in that last paper assignment or take the last test until they have to do it all again the next year. Professors and TA's are busy grading, trying to get their own work complete so they can find a break in the winter recess. Associate Professor of Biological Engineering James Sherley is......

The Harvard Crimson is mired in the controversies of copycat cartoonists, quote cribbing, and an editor who would like to hide in a spiderhole. It's not a good sign for the future of journalism when the editor of an Ivy League paper takes damage-control tips from Saddam Hussein. You'd think the Harvard kids would have learned their lesson after Kaavya Viswanathan's legendary fall from grace. But, in the past few weeks, plagiarism fever has......

Sorry, Kathleen Breeden, you're no Kaavya Viswanathan. The Harvard Crimson broke the story last spring that then Harvard College sophomore, now junior, Viswanathan had included some suspiciously similar passages in her book How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life. This week they turned on one of their own and revoked two political cartoons drawn by Kathleen E. Breeden citing apparent plagiarism. The student-run paper cites two instances, including the October......

Last week when Bostonist posted about a craigslist ad in which someone offered to write papers for money, we were joking when we suggested that Kaavya Viswanathan might be behind it. After all, her M.O. is to steal other people's writing, not do it for them. But there's a new ad on craigslist that seems like it has to be Opal Mehta's doppelganger: Need help with college essays on Shakespeare and Philosophy College student that......

Well, as things get worse and worse for poor Kaavya Viswanathan, she has to be asking herself, "What now?" Apparently, she's back in Cambridge doing just that, and not without some soul-searching. Bostonist has to admit that if we feel any sympathy at all for her, it's because the fiasco of her massive plagiarism will be so hard to live down, and we definitely made our share of mistakes at the tender age of 18......

While we recognize that matters of greater substance are transpiring in the world, Bostonist just can't get over the Opal Mehta plagiarism story. Perhaps it's because we're bitter, mediocre writers (we can hear you saying, "Yeah. That's it."). Perhaps it's because we feel a natural, class-based animosity toward people with lots of money who pay fancy consultants to get them into fancy colleges (not a fair reason to dislike people, we realize). But whatever the......

Oh it’s been a doozy of a week for Harvard sophomore, Kaavya Viswanathan, since her college paper, the Crimson, first reported that her novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild and Got a Life, is just a bit too similar to author Megan F. McCafferty’s novels. At first, Viswanathan told the media that she had “no idea what they are talking about” and then went about her normal life as a Harvard co-ed. Of......

While Bostonist constantly struggles to get you the latest news here in the city, we like to think that we’ve got our act together (somewhat)…that is until we read about someone much younger who has accomplished something that we some day hope to. Last week, we read an article from the A.P. Wire about a Harvard student, Kaavya Viswanathan, who at age 17, signed a two-book deal with publishing house Little, Brown for a reported......