Possible Plagiarist Ann Coulter May Have Been Plagiarizing As Far Back As 1997 (When She Was 36)
Following up on yesterday's suggestion that hate-speech-Pez-dispenser Ann Coulter may have plagiarized material from other writers, we've been informed that this isn't the first time Ann's been accused of lifting material. In 2001, Boston Globe columnist Alex Beam examined a controversy surrounding her 1998 tome, High Crimes and Misdemeanors. This is the book that David Carr called "fairly scholarly," which is interesting, because it appears that the scholarship came from someone else. Beam compared Coulter's prose to that of Michael Chapman, a former colleague of Coulter's who, in 1997, wrote "A Case for Impeachment" in the popular right-wing nutjob periodical Human Events. After the jump, those comparisons:
Chapman, "A Case for Impeachment," page 13: "Four Democratic fundraisers have stated that former DNC Finance Chairman Marvin Rosen explicitly advocated selling access to the President. . ."
Coulter, page 219: "At least four Democratic fund-raising officials have revealed that former DNC Finance Chairman Marvin Rosen explicitly advocated selling access to the president . . ."
Chapman: "A DNC fundraiser told Nynex executives they would receive invitations to White House 'coffees' if they joined the DNC's 'Managing Trustees' program and agreed to donate $100,000 . . ."
Coulter: "A DNC fundraiser told Nynex Corporation executives that they would receive invitations to White House coffees if they joined the DNC's 'Managing Trustees' program and agreed to donate $100,000 . .
The piece is unfortunately no longer available on line, but those of you with LexisNexis access should be able to find it pretty easily. As for Coulter, we're not sure how the charges of plagiarism might affect her career, but we suspect that this will do more damage to her reputation than any vile, inaccurate invective she's been spewing for the last seven years. The media will tolerate brutally meretricious bullshit, but God forbid you rip off another writer... You can accuse the media of cynicism all you want, but the fact that plagiarism is considered a bigger sin than unsubstantiated vituperation says something about the rest of us.
