Still, it's a little difficult to work up sympathy for Barnicle. The jokes the Boston Globe columnist stole from George Carlin formed a part of one of those "random thoughts on the passing scene" pieces with which many a metro hack has stunk up the local newspaper. For those of us who have wasted countless cumulative hours flipping past "I was just thinking..." columns, seeing a columnist fighting for his job over a column that was literally called "I Was Just Thinking..." is sweet justice. You also have to fault Barnicle for not being on his toes. The sting operation that recently unseated his colleague Patricia Smith was originally designed to catch Barnicle himself, who has been a fabrication/plagiarism suspect for years. In this situation, rewriting jokes from your favorite book (and that's only the most generous interpretation of his various excuses) seems like a suicide attempt.

But if we're going to believe, as The New Yorker seems to, that dishonesties come in all shapes and sizes, you'd have to put Barnicle's pecadilloes in the "non-lethal" category.

There are certainly other specimens of joke theft to which a decent ethicist would assign a higher ranking. Consider a rib-tickler that appeared in the March 9, 1998 issue of The New Yorker. Bill Scheft's "Shouts and Murmurs" column, entitled "Saddam's Publicist," was a fantasia on the wacky notion that the Iraqi dictator would have a glad-handling flack planning his photo ops. Well, the imaginative Mr. Scheft wonders, what would the Bully of Baghdad put on his schedule? Here's one unexpected activity, quoted from the article:

"Two o'clock, you go on Radio Free Iraq and read 'Dilbert.'"

Imagine, you're probably saying to yourself, the Iraqi strongman doing something as endearingly cheesy as a reading from the funny papers, a show of leadership we haven't even thought of since Mayor LaGuardia read the comics to New Yorkers back in the Big Apple's golden age! Moreover, he's reading that contemporary touchstone "Dilbert"! What a comic imagination this Scheft must have! Who knows what delight this humorous gem brought you?

It certainly brought me delight back when I wrote it for the December 3, 1997 issue of simpleton (quote):

"Saddam Hussein lifts Iraqi spirits with LaGuardia-style readings from the funny papers?"

There are, of course, some substantive differences between Barnicle's joke stealing and Scheft's. All those differences tend to mitigate Barnicle's theft, and make Scheft look like even more of a rat bastard. For one, Barnicle is not a professional comic writer. He's a Metro columnist, and being funny is, at best, a sideline to his true mission of exposing municipal corruption or writing about kooky Real Bostonians or something. If he takes a few jokes, it's only to flesh out a column on a lazy summer weekend. Scheft, on the other hand, is writing a New Yorker column whose sole purpose is to be humorous. If all you do is write jokes, simple courtesy demands that they be your own.

More important, though, is that George Carlin is rich and famous, while I am poor and nameless. When Barnicle plagiarizes, he at least picks on somebody his own size. Scheft, like a thug who sets homeless people on fire, only victimizes those who can't fight back. George Carlin, with his battery of lawyers, can sue the Globe for all it's worth. I have only one recourse against Scheft, and you're reading it.

Now, as Barnicle tries to will his employers to keep him on the Globe payroll, he's trotting out some really hokey excuses, but overlooking the most obvious argument of all. The publishing industry is crawling with joke stealers. Barnicle should be proud to be the only one who believes in honor among thieves.