Posted on 07/06/2006 8:40:20 AM PDT by Nachum
I'm fairly certain if I were to submit a manuscript titled, "Ann Coulter Is Destroying America" I'd have a six figure book deal tomorrow; such is the public fascination, or alternatively horror, with the what-will-she-say-next shtick that Coulter's been playing in the media to promote her new book, 'Godless'.
David Carr, in The New York Times, looks at the current controversy in light of his previous article on Coulter, noting the transfixing dichotomy between the package and the message.
Coulter's act, as we've previously noted, is the same kind of over-the-top, calculated, "look at me" stuff we've seen here previously from Al Franken. I've been in close quarters with both on several occasions and witnessed their blow-ups. While Franken tends toward fist pounding and finger pointing, Coulter tends to stick with verbal carpet bombing; both designed to leave the audience questioning whether their eyes and ears are playing tricks on them - they didn't really say (or do) that, did they?
As professional provocateurs, both are cagey enough to measure the level of shock, outrage, or hysteria, in direct proportion to the quantity (and quality) of cameras and microphones nearby. What good is meltdown without media coverage?
In the world on television punditry sanity and factuality aren't prerequisites for longevity, case in point Maureen Dowd. Still it is possible to be cast off the talk circuit reservation, though the number of transgressions that would qualify one for banishment seems to be ever shrinking.
That's where a report from liberal blogger The Rude Pundit comes in. They note that in the first chapter to Coulter's new book "Godless," there are two suspicious selections:
Coulter: The massive Dickey-Lincoln Dam, a $227 million hydroelectric project proposed on upper St. John River in Maine, was halted by the discovery of the Furbish lousewort, a plant previously believed to be extinct.
Portland Press Herald: The massive Dickey-Lincoln Dam, a $227 million hydroelectric project proposed on upper St. John River, is halted by the discovery of the Furbish lousewort, a plant believed to be extinct.
Coulter: A few years after oil drilling began in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, a saboteur set off an explosion blowing a hole in the pipeline and releasing an estimated 550,000 gallons of oil.
The History Channel: The only major oil spill on land occurred when an unknown saboteur blew a hole in the pipe near Fairbanks, and 550,000 gallons of oil spilled onto the ground.
Assuming what The Rude Pundit says about lack of sourcing is correct, the fist selection, on the face of it, sure looks like plagiarism. The second selection is somewhat less convincing, though the use of the word saboteur seems too be a bit too forced in this particular instance to be mere coincidence.
So is Coulter a plagiarist? At this point no, but there's a whole book to look through, which I suspect the legions of those who despise Coulter are organizing for right this very moment. Were they to put together a formidable collection of cribbed quotes Coulter's career would be over, since when it comes to publishing plagiarism is the scarlet letter.
With a prize like that you can bet the left side of the blogosphere will working overtime on this...
Is it considered plagiarism when you simply restate a fact? I would think that every journalist would be in jeopardy if that is the case.
And still... no one challenges the message, they only attack the messanger.
Depends on what your definition of "is" is, eh?
When you're speaking to incidents of fact there are only a few ways to phrase it.
The dog jumped over the fence.
The canine hurdled the barrier doesn't exactly say the same thing.
in a book with HUNDREDS or sources noted, I would not count one or two missed quotes as example of plagerism.
I mean look at the rest of the book- why would she quote hundreds of sources, and then plgerize these two statements?
Let's hope this leads thousands of liberal blogfools to buy Ann's book and pour throught he pages in search of grist for their liberal spittle ... one or two might actually 'get out of the religion' and stop being liberal lickspittlists.
This is hillarious. I just looked up the quote "The massive Dickey-Lincoln Dam" and found out that the Portland Newspaper was quoting an article in Townhall. Ann Coulter is a guest writer in Townhall, so she is being accused of plagerizing her own work.
Restating a fact is not plagiarism.
Restating it in exactly the same form is.
The first example is almost verbatum.
The second is not.
Keeping in mind that with small amounts of information, there are only so many ways to say it.
Had I written this, I would have changed the sentence structure, or leave it as she has, and just cite the publication.
I'm no expert on plagiarism, but they're going to have to find either many more like the first example shown, or else multiple examples of larger word segments that are clearly a copy of someone else's work.
At this moment, to me, the plagiarism charge seems late and lame.
Meanwhile, for his campaign kickoff, Joe Biden will be doing The Gettysburg Address.
So if CNN uses the same language to report the same incident as MSNBC, that's plagerism?
Boy, all media is in BIG trouble.
;^)
It is simple...
Ms. Coulter is right
The Coulter haters are wrong...That includes you Mr. 'sensitive' Billy O!
In a book so thoroughly end-noted (My only criticism is USE FOOTNOTES!....please), these two examples are silly, their highlighting is trite, and the haters simply need to:
SFU
SFD
Cheers,
Top sends
I wonder if she got her info from the same source the Portland Press did??? It seems a little bit of a stretch to claim that info that lines up with a newspaper article could be called plagiarism... If that's the case, newspapers are the biggest plagiarists around.
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