Posted on 08/06/2002 3:51:13 AM PDT by jalisco555
CONCORD, Mass. -- In early January, an anonymous letter arrived at the Washington, D.C., office of the Weekly Standard. It was addressed to Executive Editor Fred Barnes, who had written a piece suggesting that historian Stephen E. Ambrose's book about World War II bombers contained some passages "barely distinguishable" from another author's work.
The mystery correspondent opened with a salute, saying Barnes had been "quite right" to expose Ambrose, and then moved on to the main business of the missive--ratting out another celebrity historian: "I've long been concerned by several instances of plagiarism I noted long ago in Doris Kearns Goodwin's 'The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys.' I believe she ought to be called to account, just as Professor Ambrose has."
Passages from the Goodwin book and other Kennedy histories were set down for comparison, beginning with a three-sentence snippet that appeared to be borrowed from a biography of Kathleen Kennedy by Lynne McTaggart, a London-based writer. McTaggart, it would develop, had accused Goodwin long ago of "slavishly" copying her work, a complaint that led to a secret legal settlement.
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(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
One need only to read one item, however, to reveal the true nature of this lady: An erstwhile Brooklyn fan, who changed allegiance to the Bosox! One who cannot adhere to the serious loyalties of baseball cannot be trusted to convey truth in any matter.
Well, I don't know. The Dodgers broke the hearts of many loyal fans when they left Brooklyn. Loyalty is a two-way street.
LOL... Lady Liberal... It is so funny how every time you start out with saying that you do not like a person and how liberal that person is you always follow with a long defence of that same person. I guess that it is too bad that Bush is not a liberal or that you dislike him. Perhaps then you might have a kind word for our president.
One of her recent books has six examples of verbatim excerpts from other biographies. That is more indicative of systematic plagiarism than any other well-known writer, even Ambrose. Even she , herself, has said all the footnotes diminish "the flow" of the book, which is why she avoided them in many cases.
Who wants to read a book in which 91 out of 200 pages are inundated with obtrusive footnotes? She knows there arent many awards feted out for books like that, or long lists of avid readers, either.
Right, there are six sentences or half paragraphs in a book of, what maybe 400 pages? Do you really care? If so, why? Do you think anybody else should?
Even she , herself, has said all the footnotes diminish "the flow" of the book, which is why she avoided them in many cases.
Seems reasonable to me. Who wants to read dozens of footnotes per page? What's your complaint with all this?
I've had kind words for our president, when he's done decent things. For example, except for the fact that he botched getting the chief, his war on Afganistan was fine. Also, I praised his speech on Palestine a few weeks back, when he declared they need new representation and to become a republic.
What has our President done that you like? His tax cuts to date are so pushed out, they've been part of the problem with the economy. Meanwhile he's signed budget busting spending bill after spending bill, spedning is growing under Bush far faster than it did under Clinton, even though government's income is way down. He imposed horrific steel tariffs, screwed up air transport without providing any increase in security, put Saddam on notice that he should ready and deploy his WMD's and given him 10 months and counting to do so. What has he done worth defending?
Are you going to sit there and defend what Bush has done to air travel in this country? He appointed Mineta to run DoT because he wanted to appoint a democrat and a Japanese to something, and he figured DoT was expendable. Then Sept 11 came, and Minetka was in the center of stuff-- but he's made a total mess of things. Bush had to do someting about that, but he hasn't. What are you defending here?
Also, all that "copying" implies a laziness and attempt to deceive on her part. Like the article says.. just because most of the book is not a verbatim copy, so what? It is still fraud.
That would make a good SAT question for the kids:
Doris Kearns Goodwin was to LBJ what:
FILL IN BLANK (Monica lewinsky) was to Bill Clintoon.
Give me a break. Her "research" consists primarily of reading other people's biographies and putting some of it in her own words and some of it not even bothering. I read the Kennedy and Roosevelt books and read several reviews of them and I'm convinced she's an elaborate phony.
Just because you like her politics is no reason to blindly defend her, especially if you haven't even read her work and criticisms of it ( which I assume based on the superficiality of your posts).
Is that supposed to be worse? If she copied six different passages from one book, and didn't cite the book, I'd come closer to saying you have a case she was ripping off the author. When she lifts six paragraphs from six different books, citing the books but changing the language of the paragraphs not very much, I'd say you have a problem, not her. Who is defrauded?
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