Serial plagiarist Benny JohnsonThis has to be the most pathetic story of the weekend, as Benny Johnson gets a plum job at National Review as their “Social Media Director” — just a month after he was fired from Buzzfeed for massive amounts of plagiarism.

I seem to remember a time when plagiarism was considered an unforgivable sin in journalism, but those days are obviously gone, gone, gone. Now it’s just one more item on the resumé. And this wasn’t just one or two or even 10 cases of plagiarism, but more than 40.

And the most ridiculous part of this depressingly absurd story: one of the publications plagiarized by Benny Johnson was — National Review. Yes, really.

Did any journalists take to Twitter to condemn National Review for this outrageous lack of standards? Nope. In fact, I saw numerous journalists doing the opposite, and congratulating Johnson on his excellent new job.

Welcome to the future of journalism.

To make the hypocrisy and craziness even more evident, in 2010 National Review published this: The Plague of Plagiarism | National Review Online. (h/t: @Gus_802.)

Leaving all partisan snark aside for a moment, this is a serious problem that bodes ill for our future. Respect for intellectual property is fading, and, along with it, the reverence for originality and drive for individual achievement that has animated American life and fueled American innovation for two and a half centuries.

It must be the season of the plagiarists — they’re back on the menu in Britain as well: Johann Hari Is Still Lying to You — Jeremy Duns