Letters to the Editor
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Why do we care if she "copied"
when what she is actually saying is so inciteful, immature, and possibly illegal?
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Don't Be Fooled
I've looked at the examples of plagiarism offered by the critics of Coulter. Some of them are simply restatements of fact, and they don't qualify as plagiarism.
Other examples, though, are quite clearly plagiarism, and I say this an an academic who has spent 25 years in the academy. If she submitted these to me in papers, she'd flunk the assignment.
Here's what Georgetown University says about plagiarism (they're *not* my school):
"Plagiarism is defined by the Honor Council document as "the act of passing off as one's own the ideas or writings of another." In the Appendix to the Honor Council pamphlet called "Acknowledging the Work of Others" (which is used by permission of Cornell University), three simple conventions are presented for when you must provide a reference:
1. If you use someone else's ideas, you should cite the source.
2. If the way in which you are using the source is unclear, make it clear.
3. If you received specific help from someone in writing the paper, acknowledge it."
http://gervaseprograms.georgetown.edu/hc/plagiarism.html
This is a pretty good definition, and, by this definition, Coulter is guilty of plagiarism.
Don't be fooled. She's guilty, it's clear, and anybody who works in the field knows it.
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Reputation, Reputation, Reputation
In the future it would be helpful if Salon would use the phrase "Plagiarist Ann Coulter" when referring to the former journalist, Ann Coutler.
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Plagiarism
A better way to say it is 'The Plagiarist formerly kinown as Ann Coulter'. The un-Prince as it were.
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Disturbing what this says about publishers
Given her prior record and penchant for distortion and outright lying about her subjects, it really didn't come as much of a surprise that Ann Coulter is a plagarist.
What I'm having much more difficulty accepting is her publishers' cavalier dismissals of the evidence that she did, in fact, commit plagarism. Perhaps her publishers are so ideologically driven that they do not care at all about the damage it does to their reputations to defend the indefensible, but, hell, maybe I shouldn't be so surprised. After all, they consented to publish her hate- and lie-filled screeds in the first place.
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The Good News.
As a writer, I look at all of this as something of a literary windfall. I am now free to pillage the works of Random House authors, passing off their work as my own, without frear of legal reprisal! I am going to be the next Updike! Or, rather, the current Updike! Thank you, Ann Coulter!
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Ann Coulter and her minimal plagiarism
Anybody connected with Ann Coulter, the Bush Administration or any other right-wing nut case
can go straight to North Korea (Hades).
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No Surprise
This comes as no surprise to me. Al Franken used facts and references in his Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them book - to show how she plagarized and misquoted out of context in another of her books. Which just goes to show you...all media spends way too much time giving her notice. IGNORE HER!
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More business, less morality....
In a world in which profits supercede legality, it is no surprise that Ann Coulter's plagiarism should be swept under the carpet. Obscenity sells. Pornography sells. Violence sells. Sensationalism sells. In short, filth, corruption and hypocrisy is the order of the day because a wealthy end justifies any immoral means.
However, if the writers of the articles she plagiarized don't step forward and sue for their Intellectual Property rights, then certainly this deserves a class action suit. Artists and writers are protected by copyright laws and this seems a precendent-setting violation that begs for a slap-down. A lawsuit naming Coulter, her publisher and syndicate should be instituted immediately.
This isn't a political issue, although both sides would certainly use it as such. But writers everywhere, Democrat or Republican should be incensed and forcefully demanding her dismissal from the profession.
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ANN COULTER
is she a pre-op transgender? or Post-op ?
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she's the bad cop...
This is pretty obvious.
The right-wing creeps are playing good cop / bad cop, with certain attack dogs out there to float ideas that are horrendous attacks on our liberty, so that the rest of the right-wing will appear "normal" by comparison.
It is no more dishonest than the tap-dance that she does on the Constitution and Bill of Rights, every day, claiming she is honoring the documents by walking on them.
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Whew!
For a minute there, I thought you were really going to defend that...plagiarizing plagiarizer. Watch Keith Olberman's amazing show on MSNBC, and you will see her coined as the eye-patch wearing "Coultergeist".
Her 15 minutes of fame were up hours ago.
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Crap. It's plagiarism.
If she wants to use the words, she can either quote directly at length, with attribution (which would be fair use), or indicate her source and explicitly paraphrase.
Not to do so is plagiarism, period, whether her right-wing sources give a damn or not. This is one of the few absolute distinctions that can be made in the editing business.
Her publisher is disingenuous to suggest otherwise, but what would one expect of anyone depraved enough to publish this sinister clown in the first place?
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Hmm....
Ann Coulter is certainly a liar, and just about any other bad name you wanna come up with to describe her would probably be okay with me. I think the woman is a screeching traitorous dangerous stick of a harpy, truth be known.
But if this article from RawStory is typical of the plagiarism charges: http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/More_examples_of_possible_plagiarism_from_0710.html
then I'm not so sure it's a big deal really.
I'm certainly interested in the 850 word column about Roberts, mentioned in this article, as that sounds much more substantial than anything I've seen so far. I can't seem to find the LA times story though.
Why hasn't Salon published any examples yet? I had to dig out the examples I've seen so far myself.
If the stuff in RawStory is plagiarism, just about anybody who reports on events is probably a plagiarist. Not that it would have killed her to do some more attribution.
I wanna see her fall off the high horse more than anyone, but I don't think it does our side any great favors if we make a big ruckus about something so trivial as what I've seen.