I didn’t think the fact that Monica Crowley plagiarized multiple sources in her recent book “Obama is a Kenyan Communist Muslim”, or whatever it was called, was such a big story, given that we will soon be ruled by the puppet of a Russian dictator, but Jay Rosen makes a good point:
Here’s what I want you to watch for: Harper Collins is going to be asked about this. They refused to reply to Andrew Kaczynski, but when the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal call for comment it becomes harder to just… stonewall. If the normal sequence I just described unfolds — Crowley acknowledges the problem and apologizes, HarperCollins either fixes the reprint or lets the book drift out of print — then it’s a two-day story and everyone forgets about it.
But… The Trump transition team already went from zero to 60 on the politicize-everything dial. And Trump is known for backing his people when they get into scrapes. Monica Crowley may decide she did nothing wrong, or nothing “the other side” wouldn’t do. She may decide to tough it out, or even escalate this until it’s a full-blown controversy, complete with charges of fake news (Kaczynski’s report) and hypocrisy (CNN’s Zakaria problem.)
[….]So keep your eye on this. We may get an early read on how corruptible our cultural institutions actually are.
My sister pointed out to me that this isn’t the first time Monica Crowley’s been caught stealing:
On August 9–the 25th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s presidential resignation–the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page published a Nixon apologia by Crowley headlined “The Day Nixon Said Goodbye.” Four days later, the Journal ran an editor’s note that read as follows: “There are striking similarities in phraseology between “The Day Richard Nixon Said Goodbye,” an editorial feature Monday by Monica Crowley, and a 1988 article by Paul Johnson in Commentary magazine … Had we known of the parallels, we would not have published the article.”
Wapiti
West Point might need to change their honor code to something like “A cadet will not lie, cheat, steal, or tolerate those who do, except people who work in President Trump’s office.”
piratedan
IOKIYAR
Mnemosyne
It amuses me that the media is shocked — shocked, I say! — that a Trump staffer would be unethical.
Or, as someone said earlier, I’m not sure what’s worse, that she plagiarized, or that she plagiarized from someone as lame as Andrew McCarthy.
Yarrow
We don’t need to watch this to get an “early read.” We already know. The news media is rolling over. What other cultural institutions are we talking about? Churches? They rolled over during the election. At least celebrities are refusing to be associated with him. We’ve got that, I guess.
Yutsano
A year is not that far down the memory hole. The fact that she was so blatant about it AND STILL HAD A CAREER AFTERWARD is what makes that galling to me.
SiubhanDuinne
I’m glad you front-paged this story. Hard to predict anything about anything these days, but my personal guess is that this story just might have legs. If Trump actually ends up giving his much-postponed presser this week, as promised, and if any of the reporters decide to commit a spot of actual journalism, they might ask a few pointed questions about this. Monica Crowley’s plagiarism sins are orders of magnitude more serious and deceitful than Melania’s convention speech quoting a couple of lines from Michelle without attribution. I thought that was wildly overblown, so let’s see what our press corpse can do when dealing with multiple examples of actual, deliberate, copy-and-paste IP theft.
Isn’t HarperCollins part of the Murdoch empire?
Doug!
@SiubhanDuinne:
Yes
Jim, Foolish Literalist
why wouldn’t she? She’s not up for confirmation, is she? And even then….
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: In 1999 the plagiarism checking software just didn’t exist like it does today. So unless her editors had a reason to think they needed to do a manual check, even using the net by handjamming the thing in to the keyword space, they still might not have caught it if the earlier piece she was stealing from wasn’t posted online.
I’m sure Kaczynski or someone else is right now trying to get her doctoral dissertation and run it through one of the anti-plagiarism programs. Her book on Nixon itself should have raised red flags. By her own admission, without his permission, she made daily notes of their conversations in a master journal, then published this after his death. This is professionally unethical.
Vixen Strangely
This triggered a thing that happens in my head (Ozzy Osbourne)
Mrs Crowley did you steal for your book?
Mrs Crowley we should just take a look–
stealing some words that were printed
by someone else before
you can fool some of the people with bullshit
but how can you do that anymore?
Mrs Charming–do you think that walls work?
Fox News Alarming–sometimes being a jerk.
Repeating some news that was made-up
for the thrill of it all.
Your resume should be balled up
and thrown at a very Great Wall, yeah!
Mrs Crowley, will you ride with white pride?
Mrs Crowley, it shambolic, but yours.
Joining a team that’s so fascist, but who am I to judge?
The news station you repped was tragic–
no better than Breitbart or Drudge….
Right wing politically correct
Plagiaristic content
Don’t think we don’t know what you meant!
(Guitar …fadeout…)
RepubAnon
If Monica Crowley wrote Melania’s speech, it’s amazing there was so little plagiarism.
Mary G
He never backs down (Khizr and Ghazala Khan for example) so Monica the serial copy-and-paster will become a martyr due to political correctness, because Joe Biden did it much worse. (That’s me channeling Trump there, not my opinion). It really was something how many sources she copied from.
SiubhanDuinne
@Doug!:
After I wrote my comment I clicked through to your link and read the entire piece, which did confirm it.
Yarrow
@SiubhanDuinne:
Ha ha. I pretty much expect him never to have a press conference ever again. Why should he? He can give interviews to hand-picked “reporters” and tweet everything else. His people can “explain” what he meant and give him cover. He doesn’t need to have press conferences and he knows it
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: That wasn’t really the point. The point is it should have raised huge flags with the legal folks at the publishing house. An entire book filled with transcribed private conversations, with a dead former President made when he was within the last year or so of life, that had been recorded without the subject’s permission or awareness, and published without the permission of his estate. I wouldn’t want to touch that without a lot of legal vetting.
Lizzy L
@Yarrow: Agree. He doesn’t need to do a press conference: he has a great brain and he has all the best words. Also f**k the press. They can’t be trusted.
SiubhanDuinne
O/T
Damn. Nat Hentoff has died.
SiubhanDuinne
@Yarrow:
Hence my bolded and italicized ifs.
Mike E
@piratedan: This little rebuke will hurt her NOT AT ALL.
The Bad Sleep Well.
Mike J
@SiubhanDuinne: 91 is a good run.
Irony Abounds
The plagiarism will be duly noted and then ignored since the media will be cowed by Trump’s bellicose manner. Just like Trump’s constant lies were noted, Trump denied lying and then moved on to another lie and the first lie was quickly forgotten. We are dealing with complete psychopaths and since the media has the attention span of a two year old, nothing will come of any of the misdeeds that have or are going to happen. Perhaps we survive these four years, perhaps not.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@efgoldman:
Much harder to check for plagiarism in 1999 than it is now.
Mnemosyne
@Mike J:
Yeah, once people get past 90, I can be sad, but mostly I’m like, Good for you!
Adam L Silverman
@Mike E: And the Dead travel fast.
SiubhanDuinne
@Mike J:
Indeed it is. I’m informed (by someone on FB) that he cast his lot with anti-choice, anti-women types, but I knew him primarily as a terrific writer on music, mostly jazz, and I know he was a First Amendment absolutist.
GregB
@SiubhanDuinne:
An article by Hentoff about Trump’s war on the media.
GregB
https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/trumps-dangerous-war-press-freedom
Villago Delenda Est
I would be shocked if the slimy Ms. Crowley had NOT plagiarized like mad to throw her fish wrapper of a book out, and I’m not at all surprised that the lickspittles of the whiny-ass titty baby in a 70 year old body are behaving like whiny-ass titty babies.
All these people need to be put on a rocket ship to be shot into the sun. Oh, wait, we don’t want to piss off the sun. OK, send them to the Oort Cloud.
GregB
Testing.
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Yutsano:
Eleven years. Her piece came out in 1999.
Villago Delenda Est
@Adam L Silverman: These people DO NOT WORRY about trifles like “ethics”, “morality”, and “legal liability”.
piratedan
@Adam L Silverman: granted Adam, everything you said is true… but the guy who was just elected and the vast majority of the people who elected him and work with him do not give a single fuck for things like law and ethics. They’ve proven so time and time again… contracts… busted as long as they can save a buck, a piece of ass, sure, why not. Face it, the entire GOP is riddled with the same ethos, everything IS sanctioned, IF they can get away with it and be in charge.
They simply do not care, they exist in their own reality and all of those other civilization niceties simply don’t apply if it (being law and/or ethics) stands between them and whatever the hell they want at the time, be it a piece of ass, power, or financial gain.
khead
@SiubhanDuinne:
I feel he went a little too “get off my lawn” at the end – like a lot of old white folks. YMMV
Raven Onthill
Publishing? Cultural institution? I think Rosen idealizes it. Oh, well.
Villago Delenda Est
@Yarrow: Fuck, he’ll just phone shit in, and the lickspittles of the MSM will be happy to have that level of “access” of cheeto-face.
Yarrow
@SiubhanDuinne: Yes, sorry didn’t capture the bold and italics in copy/paste. I think even the bold and italics aren’t strong enough to offset the rest of the sentence. I don’t see why Trump should have a press conference. There’s little upside for him. He can take a softball question at the door of Mar-a-lago and claim he’s had a press conference and his followers will believe him. The risks involved in an actual press conference are too high for him.
Villago Delenda Est
@piratedan: This is why every last one of them needs to be hunted down and removed from society. Because they are in the process of destroying what makes civilization possible.
Adam L Silverman
@efgoldman: Thank you for the compliment. Again, I fully expect someone is trying to get a copy of her dissertation from Michigan Microforms or whatever its called these days and will be running it through the plagiarism checker. My impression is that highly credentialed, successful people who do this stuff don’t just start and do it by accident. Rather they’ve been doing it for a long time and just haven’t been caught because no one imagined they’d do it. I have no idea if that’s the case here, but I’m sure someone is trying to find out.
Brachiator
@SiubhanDuinne:
Sad. 2017 is not off to a good start.
I started out reading his jazz essays, then his other work. Really respected his writing on free speech.
RIP
GregB
I posted a *link to an article by Nat Hentoff about Trump’s war on the media. He broaches the subject of Trump’s ties to the Russian mob.
Speaking of corrupt goons, more dirt spilling about Trump’s man in Israel, Netanyahu. Or should I call him Crooked Bibi.
Also heard a brief interview with the brother of the airport shooter. It sounds like he was indeed crying out for help and it went unheeded.
*Seems held up in moderation.
Yarrow
@Adam L Silverman:
Agreed. It’s expectation bias. No one looks because it didn’t occur to anyone to look. Once the can of worms is opened it could get ugly.
I feel a bit of confidence that something is going to take down the Trump cabal. Not sure what, though. Does anyone have any ideas? I know it’s usually the cover up not the crime. But cover up of what?
Adam L Silverman
@GregB: Only your test was in moderation. The comment with the link went into the Trash for some reason. I’ve dug it out and freed it.
As for Bibi – I saw the Haaretz reporting. They’ve got the quid pro quo on tape. This is going to get ugly real fast.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman:
Oh dear. I thought I knew a fair bit about the government there, until I realized just now that I have no idea what the nuts and bolts of this coming to light thusly would actually entail.
ms_canadada
@SiubhanDuinne: Fuck! I hate getting old. Nate was an icon in the Jazz world. Come on, America, get your shit together. The rest of the world needs you.
Yarrow
@efgoldman: Well, something is keeping him from having a press conference. I guess there was that thing with Don King. Was that a press conference? It didn’t get good reviews for him and it had been something like 184 days since he’d had a press conference before that so it’s not like he loves doing them. Why doesn’t he since he thinks he’s the smartest guy ever.
Mnemosyne
@GregB:
I don’t know if it was confirmed, but I saw a story that the shooter walked into the FBI office in Anchorage earlier this year and told them that ISIS was telling him to kill people. Don’t they have involuntary psychiatric commitments in Alaska?
Major Major Major Major
@efgoldman: What was it, Trump’s Razor: ascertain the stupidest possible scenario that can be reconciled with the available facts?
Mnemosyne
@Yarrow:
I think what’s keeping him from holding a press conference is that he wouldn’t be in total control of it. Nothing more complicated than that.
Bruuuuce
@Mnemosyne: CBS Radio in NYC reports that story, and that he was in a mental hospital but released quickly and his gun returned to him. His family is sharply critical, asking how someone saying what he apparently was could only be in for four days.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: It is accurate and they did commit him for observation. Whatever this kid went through on his Iraq deployment did a number on him.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major:
http://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-1.763607
Yarrow
@Mnemosyne: Having to be in control all the time speaks to some kind of fear. At some level I think he knows he’s not up to the job, even the most basic job of having a press conference and not sounding like a moron. So he wants to avoid that situation. Hence, no press conferences.
RealityBites
Money laundering and pedophilia. Considering shitstain’s long history with mob-related people and deals, and his history with people like John Casablanca and Epstein and underage models and prostitution, and human trafficking, I think some seriously ugly criminal activity has been going on for a long time. Russian security services and the Russian mob can be pretty hard to tell apart these days. There is likely to be a lot of blackmail material on a lot of powerful people. He’s been doing business on other people’s greed and sexual desires for a long time. And some banks have been more than willing to get a piece of illegal action.
Mnemosyne
@Yarrow:
He has Narcissistic Personality Disorder. That means that he has a giant gaping hole at the center of his psyche that must be desperately filled at all times by everyone around him, or there’s hell to pay. His insecurity runs so deep that having any kind of vulnerability exposed triggers a vicious attack.
This is not somebody who should have been put in charge of the most powerful military in the world, but apparently just enough Americans mistake bluster and bullying for strength that now we’re stuck with him.
Major Major Major Major
Ah, now the rain is really starting.
Mnemosyne
@Bruuuuce:
Four days? WTF?
I understand why our commitment laws were originally changed — they were frequently used in abusive ways against vulnerable people — but when you have someone who says that he’s afraid he’s going to hurt other people, there needs to be some kind of mechanism for a longer involuntary commitment. FFS.
hitchhiker
@Mnemosyne: I read that he said the CIA was telling him to join ISIS, and that he had some domestic violence problems, along with financial troubles. The FBI apparently determined that he wasn’t homicidal or suicidal. His family knew that he was having hallucinations, but … like most of us would, they just thought it would go away. Or something. He was carrying a legally owned 9mm weapon.
He was in Iraq in 2010/11. Poor fucker. Poor families of shot people. Poor USA.
Major Major Major Major
@Adam L Silverman: Thanks. Oddly written article, I must say. It also seems to suggest that this evidence won’t result in much?
Mnemosyne
@RealityBites:
I do sort of wonder if the whole “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory was a form of projection. And, of course, once a totally bonkers story like that is spread against Clinton, it makes it harder to pin the same story on Trump even if it’s true. A lot of people will shrug it off as more fake news, which is of course the whole point of fake news in the first place.
Yarrow
@Mnemosyne: I agree he’s got NPD, at least it sure looks like it. He’s a disaster and we’e going to be in a mess. I really don’t know how it’s going to end. Someone like that, with access to the military and nuclear weapons is a massive danger to the world and the US. He could do anything and it sounds like no one will stop him. Or, if someone does try to stop him that could be its own disaster. Who will stop him? The military? That’s a coup. The CIA? Another type of coup? Congress will do nothing. It’s a mess.
Mnemosyne
@hitchhiker:
The FBI seems to be demonstrating a lot of poor judgment these days. Just sayin’.
Adam L Silverman
@Major Major Major Major: It is. The first part implies he’s in trouble. The second part appears to be transcribed spin from Bibi’s attorney. The tweets I’ve seen from Israeli analysts seem to indicate that there is jeopardy here for Netanyahu.
https://twitter.com/RaoulWootliff/status/817880755426721792
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: In California you can only commit somebody against their will for 72 hours.
Bruuuuce
@Mnemosyne:
I have long thought that this was part of the reasoning for impeaching President Clinton in the first place. Even — perhaps especially — if he was acquitted, went the thinking, it made it harder to get an impeachment, much less a conviction, of the next Republican who really deserved it. As, of course, the next Administration did.
Adam L Silverman
@Mnemosyne: I saw an interview with a former Field Office SSAC in regard to this. He stated that it looks bad, but the procedure is to do the following: 1) take the initial statements seriously, which leads to 2) the FBI doing there own check while coordinating with the appropriate local law enforcement which does one as well, which leads to 3) the individual is turned over to the local authorities for the psych eval/72 to 96 hour evaluatory hold, which leads to 4) the local mental health professionals recommending what needs to be done. In this case everything was done correctly. There was no indication of him being involved with ISIL or other Islamic or non-Islamic extremists or terrorists, there was some history of domestic issues and that he wound up with a less than honorable discharge, leading to speculation of PTS from his Iraq deployment. The evaluatory hold led to a determination that he wasn’t a threat to himself or others.
Adam L Silverman
@Bruuuuce: Speaker Gingrich is on record, from early on once he became Speaker, that the intention was to impeach Clinton because the Democrats had impeached Nixon. And it was time to settle the score up. It was at this point that it became clear that for the Congressional GOP leadership, at least on the House side, impeachment had been weaponized.
Mnemosyne
@Adam L Silverman:
Obviously, they were wrong, or five people would not be laying in the morgue right now. So do they change their procedures, or just shrug and say, Hey, it’s not our fault, we followed procedure?
RealityBites
@Mnemosyne: Speaking of projection, Trump has said a few times that the hacking didn’t affect the voting machines, so I think it is likely that there was some (limited) hacking of machines. I think his first reference was about Florida. Early voting, machines unguarded at night, a few carefully selected districts… And when the partial recount was done after the election, there were ballots found clearly marked for a candidate that the machine showed as blank. There were also teams of rabidly aggressive Republican lawyers everywhere to challenge entire precent’s votes. Where the fu*k were the Democrats’ lawyers? (That does piss me off)Add some strategic tampering to all the other cheating – many “broken” machines in Democratic voting areas, and too few polling places, and hours of waiting to discourage ” those people”, and caging, and voter ID and inaccurate information and obstacles to voter registration – and what we now know to be false news and disinformation. There are weaknesses all through our voting system, and every flaw was exploited. This has been a long game for the rethugs and the Russians.
Bruuuuce
@Adam L Silverman: Ah. Tit for tat. Typical of the modern GOP and its three-year-old emotional level.
Mnemosyne
@RealityBites:
Oh, I totally agree with you. The Republicans cheated to get this result, and they started it back in 2010 when Citizens United was decided and the first voter ID laws were passed. Shelby County only made things worse.
And anyone who tries to tell me it’s not “cheating” to get laws passed that prevent American citizens from voting can go fuck themselves with a rusty garden implement, as per tradition.
RealityBites
I don’t think the Russians and Republicans have been colluding for years, but I think the Russians could see the effectiveness of all the voter suppression and perhaps boost it up few notches
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: Well they don’t try to evaluate whether you’re going to be a threat to yourself/others later on that year. We’ve set up our mental health and associated parts of the criminal system quite intentionally to make it difficult to involuntarily commit somebody.
RealityBites
But I sincerely believe Trump and a number of this people were colluding for THIS election, possibly starting 2-3 years ago
mai naem mobile
@Mnemosyne: the FBI was too busy looking into Hillarys emails to worry about some guy hearing voices in his head from ISIS to shoot up Floriduhians.
mai naem mobile
@RealityBites: I heard somewhere that Lumpy copyrighted/trademarked the “Make America Great Again” logo in 2013. There’s 10 Russians who’ve bought either Trump condos or units in Trump Tower. There’s also some mansion that one of Putins pals bought from him in Floriduh that he made a tiny little amount of profit off.
MobiusKlein
@Bruuuuce: And to impeach Bush would leave Cheney in, a scary thought.
RealityBites
@mai naem mobile: guiliani had someone offer to wear a wire to get Trump for money laundering. Instead no case number was issued, Trump got $$$ to help elect guiliani mayor. Then all the obstacles to building Trump tower disappeared. I have to look it up, but I believe one or more crooked federal agents were involved. Lots of shady history all the way back to Roy Cohen.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
They could have confiscated his gun rather than giving it back to him.
I crack myself up sometimes.
Ruckus
@Adam L Silverman:
Back when I was in the navy (about 5 lifetimes ago it seems) I sat in on group sessions for guys that were having a very hard time adjusting to both the killing and stopping killing at the right time. It is possible for most of them to get help but I think that it’s possible that a few of the approx 60 guys should still be not allowed to walk around in public. I don’t know what happened to any of them all these years later but in trying to learn to deal with my cancer and other long term physical aliments I’ve recently been to more group sessions and realize that there are a lot of people who have trouble adjusting to life after the military. It can be a very different way of life and you are expected to just get over it. Not everyone does.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: At this point, having a gun’s as much a constitutional right as not being involuntarily confined in a mental institution. The authorities acted appropriately.
Ruckus
@Major Major Major Major:
Back in the late 70s, when the law was changed it became almost impossible to place someone on a mental hold. I know, I was a mental health counselor at the time and we discussed this a lot. It’s not that there were many holds placed reasonably but there were lots placed for living on the street or if the cops just felt like locking you up. The abuse was pretty bad, especially in the big cities. Patty wagons would drive around looking for people to roust. 3 days locked up for the crime of being homeless. It of course didn’t change the homelessness part one bit or help anyone get better, it was just abuse of power.
Major Major Major Major
@Ruckus: That’s pretty much what I’ve heard exactly, yeah.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
Again, five people are dead and eight more are injured, so something went wrong here. I am no longer willing to shrug and said, Well, homicidal crazy people are allowed to have guns, too, what are you gonna do?
There need to be some kind of intermediate steps between involuntary commitment and letting people go off on their own without any oversight. This system is not working for anyone.
Mnemosyne
@Major Major Major Major:
And, to be clear, from everything I’ve been reading, the killer himself is one of the injured parties thanks to these policies. He did not want to do this. He tried to turn himself in to prevent this. He cried out for help, and we let him down.
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne:
I agree but you were saying the authorities should have acted differently, and I am saying that they should not have since it is their job to enforce laws as they exist.
This I haven’t heard but I’ve also been waiting a few days before I read about it too much.
TriassicSands
Plagiarism — everybody does it.
Tissue Thin Pseudonym
@Mnemosyne: Or we recognize that, despite your extreme confidence in your abilities to diagnose people you’ve never met, figuring out whose mental illness merits involuntary commitment is not, and probably never will be, an exact science.
Ian
@Villago Delenda Est:
You frequently stray into eliminationist rhetoric. Do you really want to have American citizens hunted down and killed?
Gvg
I don’t know where you got the idea Trump is known for supporting his people who get into trouble. I would say the opposite. He contradicts them all the time. Of course they also contradict him all the time, and claim he really meant what they want him to have meant. I don’t think he will even get the issue.
She seems to have lifted a lot from her own side. That may hurt her. Trump people aren’t the only ones to plagiarize lately. Media is having problems with this. Not spending money on editors is part of it. Software that makes it easy is also part of it. It just occurred to me to wonder if it’s always happened some before the software and maybe all the is type of news is related to now being able to find it out.
Raven Onthill
@Gvg: “I don’t know where you got the idea Trump is known for supporting his people who get into trouble.”
Oh, heavens, no. He cuts them lose as soon as possible, mostly.
Mnemosyne
@Tissue Thin Pseudonym:
Read through the whole discussion. He was put under observation for a couple of days and then just … let go? Given his guns and sent on his way with no follow-up despite the fact that he was so worried about himself that he tried to turn himself in to the FBI?
There was a chance to intervene here, and we failed both him and his victims. What happened? What changes need to be made so that someone who is concerned about the homicidal thoughts he’s having can get proper long-term treatment, not a pat on the head?
Villago Delenda Est
@Ian: I want them jailed and removed from society. Anyone connected with Drumpf falls into this category.
Marina
Worth noting that Crowley herself likely had nothing to do with ‘her’ book–it was probably written by a ghost-writing team, much like G.W. B.’s memoir, which was also very heavily plagiarized. Funny thing: in the NYT’s review of W’s book, no mention was made of plagiarism. None. Zip. It was like it never happened. The London Review of Books, however, was all over it.
The Trumpian view of plagiarism is probably that it’s ‘smart’ because it’s a real time-saver. What kind of schmuck does more work than they have to?
MOKC
@Wapiti: Where are the citations for the comments on this article/blog.