Plagiarism Part II

I wanted to comment about this earlier in the month, but, well, I got busy.

First, I had no idea who Ann Coulter was. Hubbie did though. When I asked him if he knew her, he said, "Yeah, she is the blond conservative who wears leather miniskirts."

He says this like there is only one blond conservative who wears leather miniskirts. By the way, I asked if he thought she was hot, and he said he did not find her hot, but others do. I sort of believe him because when his eyes wander, they usually wander over to some brunette's breasts. Yes, my man is a breast man.

So last month, maybe the month before, I wrote about Kaavya Viswanathan. She was this college girl who was advanced $500K, and her first book lifted lots of phrases from a few books. Now Ann Coulter has been accused of doing the same. One of the many articles can be found below (oh, and I did not plagiarize the passage – that's what citing the source is about, Ms. Coulter).

So I am thinking to myself, "why should I work on an original work? Why not lift something from another book."

I mean, I could start my book with the following: "Marley was dead, to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that." But I am not sure I could have Marley's ghost doing the nasty with Leesa. It just would not make sense.

But using Dickens seems wrong. I mean, the sentence is short, the passage is recognizable. If I wanted to steal the longest first sentence I could find, perhaps I could use this one, the opening line from Bellefleur, by Joyce Carol Oates:

It was many years ago in that dark, chaotic, unfathomable pool of time before Germaine's birth (nearly twelve months before her birth), on a night in late September stirred by innumerable frenzied winds, like spirits contending with one another - mow plaintively, now angrily, now with a subtle cellolike delicacy capable of making the flesh rise on one's arms and neck - a night so sulfurous, so restless, so swollen with inarticulate longing that Leah and Gideon Bellefleur in their enormous bed quarreled once again, brought to tears because their love was too ravenous to be contained by their mere mortal bodies; and their groping, careless, anguished words were like strips or raw silk rubbed violently together (for each was convince the other did not, could not, be equal to his love - Leah doubted that any man was capable of a love so profound it could be silent, like a forest pond; Gideon doubted that any woman was capable of comprehending the nature of a man's passion, which might tear through him, rendering him broken and exhausted, as vulnerable as a smalll child): it was on this tumultuous rain-lashed night that Mahalaleel came to Bellefleur Manor on the western shore of the great Lake Noir, where he was to stay for nearly five years.

For those of you who only paused at the ending period, you can breathe now. Wow, what an opening sentence.

On a day when I don't know what to say, I guess I could steal something from Benjamin Franklin. I mean, he had to find all sorts of catchy lines for "Poor Richard's Almanac." I mean, you can see me bust out, " Then plow deep while sluggards sleep, And you shall have corn to sell and to keep." I can getting in to getting plowed deep!

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Expert calls passages in Coulter's 'Godless' book 'textbook plagiarism'

RAW STORY
Published: Wednesday July 5, 2006
Keith Olbermann's MSNBC show featured an interview with the CEO of a plagiarism recognition system which was used to look through conservative pundit Ann Coulter's latest book Godless and a year's worth of her columns, RAW STORY has found.

John Barrie, the creator of iThenticate, called attention to three examples of what he calls "textbook plagiarism" in Coulter's book, as reported on Sunday by the NY Post.

Barrie told Olbermann that he stopped looking after he found more than enough examples of "lifted" passages, and that many of her footnotes appeared to be in error, as well.

The Rude Pundit first blogged about the apparent plagiarism in a June 2005 column by Coulter a year ago, and Raw Story followed up on the blogger's work, revealing that the column was little more that a cut-and-paste repetition of points authored by conservative religious groups in the early 1990s. Barrie briefly mentions the 2005 column in the MSNBC interview as another example found by iThenticate.

One of the three "textbook plagiarism" examples in Godless cited by Barrie was also noted first by The Rude Pundit last month days after the book's release. RAW STORY then reported that Coulter "cribbed" a list of adult stem cell treatments from a Right To Life website for the seventh chapter of her book nearly word-for-word.

According to TPM Muckraker, Universal Press Syndicate, the company that syndicates Coulter's columns, will be reviewing Barrie's examples of "textbook plagiarism." Earlier in the day, Kathie Kerr, the media relations chief for the company, first told TPM's Justin Rood that Coulter "is the one that needs to address this."

Editor & Publisher notes that Coulter's latest column does "address" the NY Post. Coulter attacks the tabloid by calling it the city's "second-crappiest paper," but never refers to the plagiarism allegations that the paper broke first in print.

Wonkette is skeptical about any Universal Press Syndicate "probe."

"But now, tired of the phone calls, the hand-wringing, the tears and pouting, Ms. Kerr has done a totally convincing about-face, and vaguely promised a maybe-tomorrow-maybe-someday investigation which no doubt will totally condemn the woman who makes them wheelbarrows full of money which, placed end-to-end, could totally reach Uranus," writes Wonkette. "Oh, the wheels of fake justice are swift. I’m giddy, aren’t you?"