Thursday, July 6th, 2006...6:24 am
Coulter Caught Borrowing Liberally
Ann Coulter, your friend and mine, is in a bit of trouble. She has been caught lifting several passages from her last book from a number of sources without attribution.
Pobrecita Ann!
She apparently cribbed from papers like the San Francisco Chronicle and Los Angeles Times, and also from her friends at the Heritage Foundation.
This story has been circulating for a few days since the New York Post broke it on Monday, but it is only this morning that the not usually so quiet Coulter responded. As expected, she didn’t actually address the charges, and instead accused the Post of a shake-down. I didn’t say it made any sense, I just said it was her response. I suppose she did this because it would hard to accuse a paper founded by Alexander Hamilton and owned by Rupert Murdoch of being part of the “liberal media.”
Also, she accused the Post of becoming a tabloid. Maybe she hadn’t noticed, but the Post has been a tabloid since 1942. Dave Astor of Editor and Publisher (note the citation) said it best when he said:
Of course, the Post could hardly be “reduced to tabloid status” since it is, in fact, a tabloid.
We’ll see if her syndicate takes any action or if any of the papers that carry her column drop her for this. This sort of thing should be a career ender, but doesn’t seem to be if you are a big enough deal: Mike Barnicle still works, but where is Patricia Smith?
Given that I don’t listen to KVOI much, or at all, actually, I missed Steve Aiken’s last program. Aiken had an interview with Coulter about her book Godless: The Church of Liberalism. Aiken had just talked about it being his last show, and the story about his prosecution for having sex with an underage girl had even made national news. I find it hard to believe that Coulter knew nothing about his situation. So, guess what Coulter talked about? How we liberals are immoral, permissive and…well, you know the drill. Given why that was Aiken’s last show, to say nothing about Coulter’s own admissions about her personal life, isn’t this a bit, I dunno, hypocritical?
NB - Coulter noted that the guy that dumped salad dressing on Pat Buchanan was only a student at a “two year college.” Great…she’s on the show of the “Working Class Conservative” but takes this shot. Nice. But, she did note that the judge in the case was a “black female.” Twice. I’m not sure what this was supposed to mean.
I wanted to use the “borrowing liberaly” line, but found it was in the Editor and Publisher article. I decided to use it anyway, even though I was complaning about plagiarism and hypocrisy…
8 Comments
July 6th, 2006 at 8:00 am
From what I have read, her apparent plagarism extends to some of her articles as well as her recent tome.
The software used to help check up on the questioned passages is well-considered, and there seem to be enough disparate instances to show a trend. Hopefully her publisher takes it seriously enough to drop her, which would be a real professional embarassment (assuming Coulter is even capable of embarassment … nothing to date has indicated hs is).
July 6th, 2006 at 12:45 pm
If she is borrowing from the San Francisco Chronicle and the L.A. Times, it sounds like they aren’t exactly the monolithically liberal papers that the conservative pit bulls like to accuse them of being.
I wrote about Coulter in the wake of the 9/11 widows incident as follows (after properly attributing a letter I quoted, respecting both the original source and the first rule of writing):
No one has suggested that there is anything wrong with rebutting anything that the 9/11 widows (or others who have spoken out against Bush policy after suffering personal tragedy) say. For example if one of the 9/11 widows (or Cindy Sheehan, or Mary Tillman, or whoever else) quotes a statistic, anyone is welcome to dispute it, challenge it or rebut it with appropriate data. Coulter’s frustration (and the frustration on the part of many on the right) is a product of the fact that it is difficult to find a way to attack people like this personally. Personal smears have long been a staple of the right wing attack machine, and Coulter stands out as one who simply is incapable of debating any other way. To ask her to seriously debate issues without resorting to some sort of personal attack is like asking Jay Leno to deliver his monologue without telling any jokes, or asking Mark Cuban not to talk about basketball. Coulter just isn’t capable of debating issues seriously, so she has to resort to personal attacks. Maybe the 9/11 widows or the others will force her to actually consider how to debate issues on the issues (or at least expose how vacuous she is, once you take away her attack bludgeon).
July 6th, 2006 at 2:15 pm
And here I thought the reference was a rif on “Drinking Liberally.”
July 6th, 2006 at 2:16 pm
And here I thought the reference was a rif on “Drinking Liberally.”
July 6th, 2006 at 7:37 pm
Here you go Tedski. Just what you were waiting for. (I guess they were actually crying wolf so they could get more than needed.)
http://www.azpolicy.org/ff.php?id=379
July 8th, 2006 at 1:42 pm
Masochistically read the opening pages of her book, Godless. They are taken verbatim from paragraph 1, chapter 1 of Joseph A. Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy. However, Coulter substitutes “liberalism” for “Marxism.”
Accusing her of unattributed quotations is a little bit like accusing Jeffrey Dahmer of bad breath. The breezy equation of totally unrelated things, the snarling administration of egregious lies, the palimpsest of deceit–this is odious enough.
July 9th, 2006 at 10:24 pm
Ted, you secretly love Ann Colter, I know it, everyone knows it. You can only dream of her Teddie, makes ya wanna be a Republican doesn’t it? (ha ha!) Sorry there aren’t any hot liberal babes you can dream of? Ann only goes with us GOP men; and the GOP don’t stand for Grand Old Party either…LOL!!!
July 10th, 2006 at 6:20 am
Are you telling me that you guys actually find this woman “hot”?
Wow, y’all are different from us then. I don’t find overly skinny, aging but still think they are 23 women sexy. Sorry.
Leave a Reply