People rightly criticized Biden for it.Well, the first question to ask is what is "it." As KC Burke points out, Biden stole whole passages and passed it off as his idea - his view of the world.
Crowley is "stealing" ideas and them working them over pretty thoroughly as things we don't want to do.
Now, if as in the case of Biden, there is an idea that she claimed was original with her, something central to her argument that she stole from someone else and passed off as hers without attribution, like Biden did, then she is rightly criticized. But if the criticism is that her political screed lacks 2 inches of heft because it is shy 200 footnotes x 17 chapters, well, that is a blessing not a curse in many circles.
Smoking Gun Plagiarism? MY BUTT!!
99.9% of readers don't have time to wade through CNN's list of 50 "Smoking Gun" alleged plagiarisms to verify for themselves, and CNN damn well knows it.
Whenever leftist accusers present a huge laundry list of conservative transgressions, it only makes sense that they'd place the most damning examples at the top, right? So if you want to verify it for yourself, start with the topmost one, research it, then work your way down the list until you run out of time or a pattern of True or False emerges, whichever comes first.
Let's do that with the very topmost item on CNN's list - the Crowley / Klein / Reuters accusation:
CNN hopes you'll ONLY compare Crowley's wording versus Klein's wording, and forget all about the original source they BOTH quoted from.
NOTE that CNN doesn't quote the original Reuter's article. Why? It took me 10 seconds to find the original Reuters article right here by googling 4 words: Reuters Adbusters Soros Tunisia.
EXHIBIT A in the public trial of Monica Crowley:
- FROM ORIGINAL REUTERS ARTICLE:
"Adbusters, whose magazine has a circulation of 120,000 and which is known for its spoofs of popular advertisements, came up with the Occupy Wall Street idea after Arab Spring protests toppled governments in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, said Kalle Lasn, 69, Adbusters co-founder."
Notice that Reuters is, in turn, either paraphrasing or quoting Kalle Lasn of Adbusters. - Any book author wanting to quote Reuters' article is going to, A) Give credit to Reuters for it (which Klein & Crowley both did), and, B) Excise clauses they deem superfluous (or the book's editor will do this). The obviously unimportant pieces of this sentence are the circulation and mission of Adbusters, and the name & age of the Adbusters employee who gave the info to Reuters.
Thus the most "common sense" way to edit the original Reuters quote would now look like this: - OBVIOUS WAY ANY BOOK AUTHOR OR EDITOR WOULD MODIFY REUTER'S QUOTE:
"Adbusters, whose magazine ... came up with the Occupy Wall Street idea after Arab Spring protests toppled governments in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia ..."
Note I am showing a verbatim quote from Reuters, with the two non-germane phrases replaced with "..." elllipses.
Now, let's look at how both Klein and Crowley chose to quote Reuters: - KLEIN:
"... the billionaire’s connection to Adbusters, the magazine that is reported to have come up with the Occupy Wall Street idea after Arab Spring protests toppled governments in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia." - CROWLEY:
"... Soros’s connection to Adbusters, the magazine that is reported to have come up with the Occupy Wall Street idea after the Arab Spring" protests brought down governments in Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia."
YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME - This is Exhibit A in the People's Court Trial of Monica Crowley? Both she and Klein took verbatim phrases out of the original Reuters article and both excised the same non-germane parts of the sentence. Smoking Gun??? How about a broken water pistol?
I don't feel any need to move on to Exhibit B or further, if this is CNN's most damning evidence of plagiarism.