Publisher Calls Plagiarism Charge Against Coulter "Meritless"

[JABBS]

To read the latest, click here.

<snip>

If we were discussing a liberal bomb-thrower -- Michael Moore, Bill Maher or Randi Rhodes, for example -- charges of plagiarism would lead to wall-to-wall coverage on radio and television talk shows. There would be widespread calls for the publisher to recall the book from stores.

Careers have been ruined or sidetracked because of allegations of plagiarism among writers at the New York Times, Boston Globe and Washington Post. Why are some people giving Coulter a free pass?

[The Backlash Cometh]

1. She won't get a free pass if newspapers refuse to print her crap.

Can bookstores refuse to carry her books?

[atreides1]

4. Some Newspapers won't refuse

I'm not sure about book stores having the right to refuse to carry her books. But even if they did have that right, some would still carry it.

[JABBS]

7. sure

... although it's very rare.

[atreides1]

2. One Answer

MONEY

Her publisher knows that her "books" sell, even if it is mostly bulk sales, they still make money.

And that's what counts.

Did you really expect a publisher that puts out crap like Coulter writes to actually have any integrity?

[kurth]

3. Restaurant Owner Calls Health Department Report "Meritless"

[yellowcanine]

6. Because only two people got food poisoning and nobody actually died.

[yellowcanine]

5. Heh. Crown Publishing is doing some serious back filling here.

Meanwhile, Steve Ross, senior vice president of Crown Publishing group, which published Coulter's latest rant, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, defended the book to the Post by noting there are 19 pages of endnotes.

"We have reviewed the allegations of plagiarism surrounding Godless and found them to be as trivial and meritless as they are irresponsible," Ross said. "The number of words used by our author in these snippets is so minimal that there is no requirement for attribution."


So the number of pages of footnotes and the number of words in suspect passages is the way we determine whether plagerism has occured?

And the Bush's statement about uranium in the SOTU speech wasn't a lie according to Condi because it was only 16 words.

Is that the new standard?

[gratuitous]

8. We're back to the endnote defense

That was Little Arfin' Annie's excuse last time she was caught fudging data: Look at all the footnotes, endnotes, and quotation marks! Just like real research and legitimate scholarship! You liberals!

The problem then, as is the problem now, was that the endnotes didn't actually support whatever stupid point Coulter was trying to make. Endnotes are supposed to refer to other sources or quotations or facts that bolster one's argument; Coulter's endnotes are just there to fill out the page obligation, and often have nothing more to do with whatever she's babbling about than the moon has to do with green cheese.

I strongly suspected that when her publisher said it was going to investigate the charges of plagiarism that the result would be (surprise!) we stand by our author and her demented rantings. But I figured I should be fair, and wait until (surprise!) Crown Publishing actually came out in support of its cash cow. And now, here we are, and (surprise!) Crown Publishing has determined that their author's sloppy scholarship, which would be inexcusable in a freshman composition class, is no big thing for their highly profitable author (surprise!).

[JABBS]

9. iThenticate

found that many of Godless' footnotes were misleading, just as others had found that Slander's footnotes were misleading.

Click here (go to the bottom) to read a thorough run-through of something that Coulter wrote in Slander that created a lot of buzz, but was completely misleading, and for which Coulter mis-attributed her sources.

[yellowcanine]

10. Plus it is not enough to have references if one doesn't make it clear

which passages are from another source. In the absence of clear attribution, the implication is that a particular passage is the work of the author. And contrary to what Crown says, the number of words in a passage is irrelevant if the particular construct is recognizable as the work of someone else.

[JABBS]

11. the three citings of plagiarism

total 82 words. That doesn't seem insignificant. Insignificant would be, like, five or seven consecutive words that match another source. You could have two people simultaneously say something the same way -- even with peculiarities in speech -- and it wouldn't be plagiarism.

But passages of 24 to 33 words, in which zero or one words differ, is not a coincidence.

And again, this has nothing to do with poltiics. If someone found Michael Moore cheating, I would not likely trust future works by Moore.

[yellowcanine]

12. Lots of quotes are only a few words but they are recognizable as unique.

"Well, there you go again." 5 words.

"Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy." 6 words.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. 10 words.

"Good to the last drop." 5 words

"Where's the beef?" 3-4 words

In the last one, if MacDonalds used it to sell hamburgers you can be sure that Wendy's would be going after them. I would concede that advertising slogans are probably a special case, but I really do think that number of words is a weak defense, particularly if there are multiple places in the text with unattributed unique phraseology.

[JABBS]

13. agreed

But what I was suggesting was that you wouldn't build a plagiarism case because a random set of four or six words matched up.

Advertising slogans are different. But common phrases like "with us or against us" wouldn't lead to a plagiarism charge.

In Coulter's case, though, the incidences are 24 to 33 words, with 23 to 32 words matching. That's not coincidence.

[yellowcanine]

14. My feeling has always been that Coulter's "intellectualism" is way over

stated. That what she does is mostly regurgitate right wing talking points with a few outrageous constructs of her own thrown in for shock and attention getting value. So it doesn't surprise me that she did some wholesale plagiarizing.

[JABBS]

15. no surprise at all

She's all bombast.

But again, the value of her points or her politics really aren't at issue. The issue is just plain and simple -- should Crown do something? Should Fox News not promote her anymore?

What is the standard? Are these entities only concerned with profits, or is there also room for ethics? Certainly, Fox News' pundits would be very concerned with ethics if we were talking about a plagiarism charge against Michael Moore. You know they'll trot out the 20-year-old plagiarism charges against Joe Biden as he runs for president.

Why does Coulter get a free pass? Is this just the quest for profits, or is it a double-standard based on politics?

[yellowcanine]

16. If the plagiarism can be documented, Crown should recall the books.

Not that they will. But we are talking SHOULDS here. As for Fox, when did they care what we think?

[JABBS]

17. they don't, of course

Face it, if Coulter were 400 pounds and pimply, she'd never have gotten a single book published -- sloppily written or otherwise.

On another related note, count how many times conservative pundits -- especially on the radio -- mention "Joe Biden" when discussing/refuting the claims of Ann Coulter's plagiarism.

They find it useful to trot out, liberally, examples of plagiarism by the left in order to make the left look like hypocrites now. Of course, the left abandoned Biden after his plagiarism, but conservative pundits won't acknowledge that.

[bobbieinok]

18. Natnl Review's view of plagiarism in 2003 (regarding Biden)

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/comment-geraghty012203.asp

....

In 1987, Biden quit the Democratic primary race early after the revelation that he had delivered, without attribution, passages from a speech by British Labor party leader Neil Kinnock. A barrage of subsidiary revelations by the press also hammered Biden's image: a serious plagiarism incident from his law-school years, boastful exaggerations of his academic record at a New Hampshire campaign event, and the discovery of other quotations in Biden's speeches pilfered from past Democratic politicians.

In the post-Clinton era, plagiarism may seem like small potatoes. But, Sabato explains, the key to a scandal is how it counters — or in the case of Biden, reinforces — his public image.

"The reason it became such an issue was that it reinforced the Biden image that already existed among the press, that he's a blowhard, a guy who talked before he thought," Sabato says. "Now, he's a little older and more experienced, but do people really change that all much after they reach adulthood? I've rarely seen anybody change that much, and I've taught thousands of college students over the years."

more....

Note the 'necessary' slam at Clinton.

****

Where are Coulter's college profs??????

[warrens]

19. When you know Scaife and NewsMax will buy 1 million hardcover

You don't give a SHIT what crap you're peddling.

[tsuki]

20. Her publisher is supposed to have vetted her book.

He did a lousy job. But he's a Republican and not into that "personal responsibility" stuff.