Nancy Nall has a post that thoroughly takes down White House Aide and Fort Wayne News Sentinel columnist Tim Goeglein for plagiarism (most likely copyright infringement too, given the extent of the copying).
Goeglein has apparently served in the Bush White House as an “ambassador” to the Christian Right and assistant to Karl Rove. According to Nall, he also has a sideline writing schmaltzy Hoosier-oriented columns for the Fort Wayne News Sentinel.
Turns out, for a recent column in the Fort Wayne News Sentinel, Goeglein lifted a 1998 Darmouth Review article by one Jeffrey Hart, more or less verbatim. Oopsie. Fear the Google.
Leo Morris, of Opening Arguments fame and, not so incidentally, editorial page editor for the News Sentinel, has posted that they have found plagiarized material in 20 (so far) of Goeglein’s 38 guest columns.
With new information, by the way. Twenty (so far) is how many of the 38 columns we checked for which it is possible to say that Goeglein lifted whole chunks of somebody else’s writings. Hart twice. A writer for the New York Sun twice. Numerous people one time each. It’s hard for me to fathom this. If somebody lifts a line or two once, maybe it was an accident. Two or three times, somebody thinks he can get away with something. But 20 times, and not a line or two each time but whole passages? The only thing I can think is that there is some crossed wiring that causes the person to think that plagiarism isn’t really stealing.
(I always get a bit muddled up when talking about plagiarism and copyright infringement. This seems to fit clearly in both categories.)
Isn’t plagiarism a moral and ethical issue as contrasted to the legal (property) issues of copyright?
I think that’s right. Copyright is clear enough to me. Plagiarism is more ambiguous to me. No grey areas in this case though.
btw, he’s toast (charred). He resigned!
This is even hit the BBC!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7272212.stm
“It’s hard for me to fathom this”?
An assistant to Karl Rove did something unethical. That is shocking, isn’t it?
Dear T,
I agree, I am truly shocked. :-)
Mind you, I have friends who have had whole passages of their work lifted by other members of the Bush White House without attribution – this seems to be a problem of larger proportions than anyone has noticed. Attention should be paid.
I’d think it would be wise to leave the White House out of the equation, perhaps a road the democrats might not want to go down. With the long long list of plagiarists and liars available from ALL corners, wouldn’t you agree the blue/red thing doesn’t really matter a hell of a lot in this instance?
This guy probably wouldn’t have had a column in the first place if he wasn’t politically connected. I don’t think this is particularly an indictment of the Bush White House.
http://x-wire.blogspot.com
i have made the case that mitch harper, city councilman, and former state rep is a serial plagiarizer too.
google:
david roach x-wire fort wayne, and x-wire, or fiddle around with my blog posts.
I have made seveal about mitch harper, citing same. he is ct\reatively corrupt, and should be voted out asap.
bonehead!
for more, see my blog, and e-mail me, andi will sing like a canary about this morally empty fort wayne politician.
I will be fair, but my opinion is very low of this hack.
tim zank,
Yeah, when Republicans do something wrong, it’s always best to look the other way.
Give me a break.
Branden, for a guy with a pretty decent intellect, you sure do resort to being a petty, petty man.
There is always good and bad, along with right and wrong on both sides of an argument. Try looking past your own ego once in a while.
tim zank,
I’m a tit-for-tat kinda guy. Most of the time I offer arguments no more rebuttal than they deserve. There are occasional exceptions, but these generally elicit no elevation of method on the part of my interlocutor–complaints about big words and “Cumbayah” [sic] are about par for the course.
Well, no, there aren’t.
“Heavier-than-air flight is impossible.”
“Objects fall with a speed proportional to their weight.”
“Slavery is an acceptable social institution.”
The world is rife with incorrect statements that do not deserve or command equal status with correct ones.
Similarly, it is almost always a pointless observation (and often a misleading and distorting one) that “both sides” of any dispute in which there are many participants. There are no doubt some instances where a peasant Cambodian managed to kill a member of the Khmer Rouge. If we apply Republican/conservative logic, this point gives us reason to claim “killings occurred on both sides of the civil unrest between Pol Pot’s regime and Cambodia’s domestic insurgency.”
So, no, I don’t take it as a given that because there are corrupt/plagiarizing Republican politicians and corrupt/plagiarizing Democratic ones, that we can declare the scales balanced and pay no further attention. (Moreover, it is almost inevitable that any argument so framed is immediately followed by an exhortation to choose sides in spite of the equivalence just drawn, because some other issue is “more important”. This makes the technique nothing more than a device for whitewashing wrongdoing by one’s own partisans.)
Anyway, Tim, what you think of me has nothing to do with anything. Quit slinging bullshit and people will quit calling you on it. It’s just that simple.
google news: nancy nall
google web: tim goeglein the pope
tim goeglein plagiarized THE POPE!
the pope for crissakes!
has thou no shame?
and on that note, heres some shamelss humor:
http://www.kilkelly.com/pope.jpg
the Pope, Tim Goeglein walk into a bar. bartender says what’ll you have. the Pope says I’ll have a beer.Tim Goeglein says “I dont want to seem like a copy cat, but I’ll have a beer too…ba dum-dum. crickets. tough crowd.
GIGGLE!
PLAGIAR-GATE?
The Pope and tim goeglein go fishing:
http://x-wire.blogspot.com/2008/03/tim-goeglein-plagiarized-pope-and-pope.html
david c roach:
google: “sentence fragment”
citations not an argument
term paper with section heads but no text gets a failing grade
random joke URLs of dubious utility
you want talk to grownups, speak in complete
SENTENCES
Do you find it windy way up there on that pedestal Branden?
Tim,
Come on down here from yours and find out for yourself. :)