On his XM satellite radio show on Friday, Jonathan Schwartz played a Jimmy Van Heusen song and reflected that Van Heusen would belong on a list of the top ten American popular composers. He started ruminating about who else should be on such a list; and as best as I recall, these are the other names he offered: Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, George Gershwin, Jule Styne, Harry Warren, Duke Ellington, and his own father, Arthur Schwartz.

It got me to thinking about my own top-ten list. But before going on, some caveats are in order. First, Schwartz was talking about composers, not lyricists--so that figures like Lorenz Hart, Ira Gershwin, Oscar Hammerstein, and Yip Harburg aren't eligible. Johnny Mercer wrote both words and music, but his most significant achievement was as a word man, and his music won't get him to the top ten. In addition, he was talking about contributors to the mythical Great...

We've gotten used to journalistic scandals: Jayson Blair, Stephen Glass, Janet Cooke, Jonah Lehrer, and all the rest. The scenario is generally that some high-flyer is caught having committed plagiarism and/or fabrication, is duly dismissed and shamed, and then all is quiet till the next incident.

But the latest such episode, as described a couple of days ago by the New York Times, is a little different. The Times piece by Katharine Q. Seelye starts out this way:

HYANNIS, Mass. — When an editor at The Cape Cod Times was reading the newspaper last month, she thought an article about the Veterans Day parade from the day before seemed slightly off. The article, written by Karen Jeffrey, a longtime reporter, told of a Ronald Chipman, 46, and his family from Boston. The Chipmans...