Less than two months after a fellow Boston Globe columnist was forced to quit over fabricating characters, Mike Barnicle is rejecting his paper's demand that he resign on grounds that he lifted jokes from comedian George Carlin's book.
The Globe, where Barnicle has worked for 25 years, sought for his resignation after the similarities came to light between his column last Sunday and gibes in Carlin's 1997 book "Brain Droppings.""I don't know what I'm going to do about it, but I'm not going to resign," Barnicle said Thursday in a radio interview with Don Imus. "I have the truth going for me. I don't have my employers going for me.
"I made nothing up. There was no intentional deceit. There were no victims. As a result of what I did, I have had 25 years of my life flushed down the drain," Barnicle said.
At first, the newspaper decided to suspend Barnicle, 54, without pay for a month, because he told editors he had never read the book and had gotten the disputed one-liners from friends.
Later, it was revealed that Barnicle recommended "Brain Droppings" last June in a segment of short reviews on a local television program.
"In light of Channel 5's video clip, showing Mike recommending Carlin's book to viewers on June 22, it is clear that he misrepresented himself either to his television audience or his editors," Globe Editor Matthew V. Storin said in a statement Wednesday night. "This contradiction is unacceptable."
Barnicle told the Associated Press he had not read the book but recommended it on the television show because he thought Carlin was "a funny guy."
The Sunday column by Barnicle had 38 one-liners. Eight closely resembled lines in Carlin's book.