The newly reformed Ross Gittins

See, optimism about the human condition is justified after all. A little encouragement really can prompt even the lowest wretches to lift their game, as Ross Gittins, patron saint of the shallow and formerly a prime advocate of using others' words without attribution, has done in today's Silly. It is the usual Gittins drek and he gets any pretense at originality out of the way in the first few paragraphs -- original if you haven't tuned in to the ABC since the recent election.

What a [Coalition] to-do list: sack econocrats guilty of having worked with the enemy, pass an edict against climate change and discourage all discussion of it, stop publicising boat arrivals, build more motorways, move to a cut-price national broadband network and take science for granted.

After that, the column is largely composed of cut-and-paste quotes from chapter seven of this document, whose author Doctor Sticky Fingers rightly acknowledges.

And that is why we should all take heart. Even though Gittins borrowed almost an entire earlier column from an OECD report, and despite the fact that his Silly editors ruled that he had done no wrong, he has now taken it upon himself to change his ways and give credit where all but senior Fairfax executives would think it due.

 

See, even the worst of us aren't entirely beyond a small measure of redemption.