Awww…poor Ben/Augustine. He’s decided to step down to spend more time with his family. For those who want to know why Ben’s plagiarism is everyone’s fault but his, make sure to check out RedState. The pity-party is full effect, with Ben whining :

But in the course of accusing me of racism, homophobia, bigotry, and even (on one extensive Atrios thread) of having a sexual relationship with my mother, the leftists shifted their accusations to ones of plagiarism. You can find the major examples here: I link to this source only because I believe it’s the only place that hasn’t yet written about how they’d like to rape my sister.

I know that charges of plagiarism are serious. While I am not a journalist, I have, myself, written more than one thing that has been plagiarized in the past.

Don’t you understand? Ben’s the victim here. If he can’t convince you, take a look at some of the other diaries on the site’s homepage for various calls to arms, posted under titles dripping with self-righteousness like “This is About Decency”, “We Must Defend”, “We Must Continue”, and my favorite “We Must Attack” which begins with this hilarious bit of faux-intellectualism :

It was Hannah Arendt who introduced us to the banality of evil. There was more to this thing called “evil” than grainy newsreel footage of delirious chanting of “Sieg Heil” or the “Internationale.” Rage and hatred were not the first steps toward convincing seemingly normal people to go along with totalitarianism. First, repression had to seem normal. Domestic enemies were not hated – they were dehumanized. In the eyes of their countrymen, their souls were emptied of any qualities extraneous to Political Man. They were the imperialist/capitalist running dog/Jew/Trotskyite – and that was all.

In 2006 in America, we see perfect replicas of Stalin’s drones at work in response to about the only decent thing said about the Domenech affair on Daily Kos. It is an exquisite performance right out of the two minutes hate.

The left is all bent out of shape about Ben’s plagiarism. You know who else hated plagiarism?? Hitler!

Of course, it would be unfair to blame Ben for something written by others (no, Ben only takes credit for the good stuff other people write), so let me highlight the last line in his oh-so-classy resignation letter :

To my enemies: I take enormous solace in the fact that you spent this week bashing me, instead of America.

Such a humble statement from a guy who started this little disaster with the line “This is a blog for the majority of Americans.” The most pathetic part of this whole experiment gone wrong is that his “To my enemies” postscript is the closest this self-described spokesman for “the majority of Americans” gets to taking responsibility for his own actions.

Get over yourself, Ben. You screwed up. A lot. Real men don’t throw temper tantrums when they’re caught cheating.