UPDATE: Mrs. Herbert has addressed the concerns raised in this piece, largely assigning responsibility to others. Her response is beneath the break. External links added for humor.
After reading KC Star Columnist Danedri Herbert’s recent attempt to blame the judiciary for under-funding Kansas schools I shot a rebuttal tweet at her. This innocuous action had the unintended effect of opening a Pandora’s Box. Inside the box was a very deep rabbit hole. And a witches brew of some mixed metaphors.
Anyway, back to Mrs. Herbert.
@LOLKSGOP responded with this cryptic tweet:
Later in the day @LOLKSGOP would put a finer point on it:
Throughout the evening @LOLKSGOP would share a few more similarities found among the writings of Danedri Herbert and an anonymous blogger at www.insideksgop.com known only as @gidgetisit.
That’s when I took a long trip down the rabbit hole. I discovered those similarities are only the tip of the iceberg and found some pretty clear instances of plagiarism.
To wit:
Mrs. Herbert and @gidgetisit are similarly curious about how a court order to close schools might be enforced:
On Feb 9th, 2016, Mrs. Herbert wrote:
“There was no sane reason to threaten closing the schools, and there are serious questions of whether these justices even have that authority. Not to mention how they plan to orchestrate such a thing. It’s laughable. They can’t call in the National Guard. They can’t call out the Kansas Highway Patrol. There are more than 1,400 public schools in Kansas, and seven Kansas Supreme Court justices. I’d like to see them try barring the doors at every school building in the state.”
A little more than a month earlier @gidgetisit wrote:
“They also threatened to bar the school doors if the Legislature doesn’t act soon. And I for one cannot wait to see how seven unelected judges plan to close schools. They can’t send out the National Guard, they can’t order police to do it, they can’t even order students to walk out. So someone please explain to me how this magical seven plans to personally block the doors to every single public school house in the state.”
Mrs Herbert and @gidgetisit share an identical sentiment that Bob Dole is a “...frail, wheelchair-bound media sensation” , they share a word-for-word criticism of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons With Disabilities, and both assign the UN Convention a similar misnomer.
On Feb 9th, 2016, Mrs. Herbert wrote:
“Then in 2014, the frail, wheelchair-bound media sensation did a round of appearances in Washington in support of a United Nations treaty on disability rights. Wisely, Republicans shot down the disastrous treaty. This piece of work didn’t include a definition of the word “disabled,” while giving the state the right to determine the best interests of a disabled child.”
Compare to @gidgetisit’s July 22, 2013 comment:
“That's when the frail, wheelchair bound media sensation took to the Capitol to lobby for the U.S. signing a U.N. treaty on disabled rights. It was a terrible idea.…
The treaty declares that the state is in charge of determining what is in the "best interests of the disabled child.”
Mrs. Herbert and @gidgetisit also share a symmetrical dismay over Senator Dole’s celebrated political career, and a penchant for constructing nearly identical explosive metaphors.
On Feb 9th, 2016, Mrs. Herbert wrote:
“Dole is celebrated because he managed to get elected about 1 billion times. I don’t get praising politicians for winning elections. Nice job, I guess, but it’s not exactly jumping on a grenade to save a friend.
Exactly two months earlier @gidgetisit wrote:
Getting elected isn’t exactly jumping on a landmine to save a friend, but that’s the kind of praise Kansans heap on Bob Dole every two or three months.
From @gidgetisit, marking Dole’s 2015 birthday:
“He managed to get elected a million times.”
Mrs. Herbert and @gidgetisit are both fond of a term Newt Gingrich once used to describe Bob Dole approximately 20 years ago. It’s such an arcane reference that even the conservative fan fiction publication National Review acknowledges the obsolete reference may be lost on most of it’s partisan readership.
On Feb 9th, 2016, Mrs. Herbert wrote:
“Dole was one of the best at bringing home the bacon. Former congressman, speaker of the House and failed presidential candidate Newt Gingrich once went so far as to call Dole the “tax collector for the welfare state.”
Exactly two months earlier, @gidgetisit wrote:
“Dole’s resume includes being the Tax Collector for the Welfare State and getting elected a whole bunch of times. Oh, and the country gave him a lovely Farewell Tour when he was soundly and embarrassingly walloped by skirt-chaser in chief, Bill Clinton.”
Mrs. Herbert and @gidgetisit both call STAR Bonds a ”give-aways”, call the sales tax a “consumption-tax”, and are both fans of slip ‘n sliding and/or hang gliding to zero:
On March 8th, Mrs. Herbert wrote:
“The greatest irony in this entire mess is that Brownback’s overarching budget theme has been gliding the state income tax to zero. The goal was to eventually fund the state government using sales taxes instead of income taxes. Brownback and allies in the Kansas Legislature passed a sales tax increase coupled with an income tax decrease in 2012 for that express plan.
Brownback’s plan to glide to zero income taxes hit a snag when receipts failed to meet projections, repeatedly. However, as far as I know, he’s never wavered in his stated aim to move Kansas toward a consumption-based tax policy.”
I don’t understand how Brownback thinks that will ever work if he plans to give away all of the state’s tax revenues to deovelopers[sic] via STAR bonds.
Three days earlier, on March 5th @gidgetisit wrote:
“This is where things get really, really sticky. A few years ago, legislators, under the Governor's leadership, opted on a plan to begin reducing state income tax. The goal then was a gentle slide to zero. It's beginning to look a little bit like a crash landing.
Meanwhile, Kansas would begin funding government using consumption taxes.
...
It's also quite baffling that Brownback wants to move to a consumption-based tax model, but he is insisting on giving away the revenues. See Brownback's baffling and revolting proposal to veto a part of the (now busted) budget so he can offer STAR bonds to his friends in KCK.”
There is a clear and recurring pattern here. @Gidgetisit writes a thing, then days, weeks, months later that same thing (or a very similar thing) is published in the KC Star under a Danedri Herbert byline. All this (and more) leads a reasonable person to one of two conclusions:
1.) Danedri Herbert is plagiarizing from an anonymous blogger and submitting the work as her own.
2.) Danedri Herbert is @gidgetisit.
Decide for yourself.
If it’s the former, I think the Kansas City Star should take action to remove Mrs. Herbert from their editorial team. If you agree, I encourage you to let the KC Star know that plagiarists have no place in such an institution using this form.
If it’s the latter, I think they should do the same in the defense of her colleagues at the Star, which Mrs. Herbert attacks using her “Kansas GOP Insider” blog. And out of simple self-preservation.
Note: I had previously shared my suspicion that @Gidgetisit was Melissa Ward, of Kansas Department Of Children & Families.
UPDATE
Thursday, Jun 16, 2016 · 1:49:10 PM +00:00 · tlongpine
With this column, I’m about to dole out a few morsels and feed the internet trolls, something I try hard not to do. For that, I apologize.
I have a not-so-anonymous blog on the interwebs. It’s languished in the virtual world for more than four years at www.insideksgop.com, where I’ve slowly built a pretty decent readership. Mostly, I write about Kansas politics. I write unabashedly from a Christian, center-right perspective.
Because liberal activists are accusing me of professional misconduct, and because Kansas City Star editors prefer their writers be on-the-record all of the time, I am coming out of the closet.
I didn’t know about The Star’s requirement, but frankly, I’m kind of shocked it took this long for people to put Gidget Southway, my blogging nom de plume, and Danedri Herbert together. My writing style is hardly generic.
It’s not unusual for people on the opposite political side to attempt to run conservatives out of the marketplace. Cake bakers must use their talents to craft cakes for gay weddings, but Bruce Springsteen isn’t obligated to perform a concert in a state with policies with which he disagrees.
When attempts to damage economically fail, the other side moves on to attempts to silence the opposition. Conservatives are often protested right off of college campuses before they even set foot in a lecture hall. Right-leaning sportscasters are run out of the broadcast booth.
Sadly, for Kansas liberal activists, I am not on the public dole. I’m not on the payroll of any politicians. No one has ever paid me to write a single thing on my blog, yet.
Ironically, I decided to make my blog anonymous, in part, because I suspected people would eventually be looking for ways to damage me personally. I write controversial things, although as an aside, I’m always surprised at which things set the liberals off. I’ve said far more emotionally charged things than voters should fire Kansas Supreme Court justices.
I don’t particularly like people knowing my politics before they know me. Liberals love me, actually. I have an entire, private Facebook page devoted to “Liberal Friends of Danedri Herbert.” But I think you have to know me to love me, and Google is not friendly to people with unusual names like mine. Potential employers and people who Google everyone they meet find me immediately via internet search engines.
I’ve also had concerns about my safety and that of my family. There are a lot of crazy people in the world, and they sometimes seek more than simply economic damages. I’ve been recognized as a Star columnist and followed around Target. I’ve had to ask the police to keep an eye on someone who was tracking me around the internet making crude comments about me. This person’s interest was piqued by my political scribbling. It takes a lot of time and energy to track down everything I’ve ever written — I’ve had a long journalism and freelancing career — and make rude comments on every single one. When I discovered the guy lived in my hometown, I alerted police that this person appeared to have an unhealthy interest in me.
I am proud of my blog. Because a lot of people are willing to talk to me without going on the record, I am able to write a lot of things that a traditional newspaper would never print. I’ve broken a few major stories there. Most recently, I broke the story that Congressman Mike Pompeo was considering running against Sen. Jerry Moran. I don’t curse, and I don’t post things I wouldn’t say to someone in person. I am as hard (sometimes harder) on Republicans as I am on Democrats.
Because I’ve been outed, however, I’ll refocus my attention. In the next week or so, I was planning to write about the skeleton that was recently stuffed back into one Kansas congressman’s closet. I intended to update information about the investigation into the former Johnson County election commissioner. Instead, I think I’ll redirect my attention to some of the shadow groups, like Kansas Values Institute and others who will be active in elections this fall. It’s time they came out from the shadows into the sunshine.
I wield a mighty pen, and a longstanding tradition of not feeding internet trolls. You will always be able to find me on the internet. There’s no amount of name-calling or character assassination that can ever silence me there.