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Daryl Cagle takes to his blog to defend Kathleen E. Breeden, the Harvard student accused of plagiarizing his cartoons. Cagle refers to the Yahtzee ("a term I coined to refer to times when five or more cartoonists draw the same gag at the same time") and says the fault is not with Breeden, but with editors:

When editors all want the same thing from a cartoonist, and the cartoonists are all drawing on the same topics at the same time, it is no wonder that we come up with the simple, easy, first-gag -that-comes-to-mind. That is what I see in this poor, besieged Harvard cartoonist - easy, Yahtzee gags - and that should be no surprise given that she is just a student, and her editor clearly suffers from editorial group-think. The other gags the cartoonist is accused of plagiarizing include one from Walt Handelsman (who shares my views on this issue) showing Bush saying something, and a Democratic donkey standing next to him with a sign and arrow pointing at him that says, "not." Readers of our site know that the t-shirt or sign pointing at something with a comment ("I'm with stupid") is a recurring Yahtzee theme.

It's a pretty good point. We salute the editors at the New York Post, who clearly always want something different.

HARVARD CARTOON "PLAGIARISM" [Daryl Cagle, October 30 entry]

Earlier: Down By the Banks of the River Charles: Lovers, Fuggers, Thieves, Plagiarists