The Rand Paul plagiarism accusation is absurd

I want to get back to a point made in this. Lawyers do this all the time. At a certain point, some standard motions/briefs have been written a certain way and aren't going to be improved upon. A lot of books at the state level on law are written/sold with the basic understanding that people are going to quote them word for word without attribution in motions. I am shocked in politics this doesn't happen more often, given all the lawyers. (although, to be fair, Paul himself is not a lawyer).

As to the other point, what is the bright line for attribution? How many sentences from Wikipedia's Gattaca page need he read before he says, "That was from Wikipedia"? And is the answer different because Wikipedia really doesn't have "an" author?

 

What do you expect from Libertarians?

 

Fuck you too!

 

I just think it's funny to read Maddow and hard-on in the same sentence...

 

Maybe it should have read "Maddow has a strap on for Paul."

 

This might be a record for recycling jokes, folks...

 

You did not see what he did there.

 

If you were an English teacher, and someone turned in a paper that was word-for-word from what was written on Wikipedia, would you accept it? If you were an editor and saw a reporter had lifted items wholesale from Wikipedia, would you accept it? (The speech didn't just have one line from the Wikipedia entry -- it had many lines.) Then why is it OK for Paul or anyone else?

Apparently this isn't the first time he's cribbed from Wikipedia. An example is here, along with Paul's accusation that the "haters" are behind this. ("Haters" -- is he 13?)

http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/10/rand-paul-blames-haters-for-plagiarism-claims/

Paul seems to be unclear on what plagiarism is. He's contending he never took credit for writing the movie. Well, shit, no one said he did. But he, and/or his speechwriters, didn't even bother to rearrange a few words from the Wikipedia entry. Actually, I'll bet if he had apologized and said he didn't realize the writer's speech had come from Wikipedia, people would understand. But now he's making this into a bigger stink than it should be. I can imagine someone in Iowa, during a debate, huffing, "Sen. Paul, is that your thought, or did you get that from Wikipedia?"

 

It was on the previous page... Sue me...

 

Bob beat me to it.

In grade school, you flunked if you turned in a report which was a direct lift from the encyclopedia. Those articles didn't have attributed authors, either. Why is that an excusing line for so many of y'all?

I think if Paul/his speechwriter felt uneasy about crediting Wikipedia, he could have said, "As a popular website describes the film ..." Someone would have figured out it was Wiki, asked him about it, and he could have breezed past it.

 

Of course not on the first two questions. And Paul answers the second one in your link - and I agree with him:

“It’s a disagreement of how you footnote things and I think people footnote things differently in an academic paper than they do in a public speech,” Paul told Ramos. “But a lot of time in speeches people don’t take the time to footnote things.”

 

I think Paul brings up a good point. It sounds awkward to write "according to the encyclopedia" in a written report, so you use a footnote instead. But because it sounds awkward to write that, it sounds equally awkward to say that.

The time when you cite a source directly in writing is when it really needs to be more specific. Mark Twain said this. The New York Times reported that. Stephen King once wrote...

Situations like that, in which you know the specific person or have a more specific publication are times in which you need to be more direct.

Obviously, your teacher would not give you a passing grade for lifting an entire page from an encyclopedia — but that's regardless of whether or not you cite the encyclopedia. You need to demonstrate you put some original thought into your writing, along with using more than just a general reference guide.

But one line from an encyclopedia? Your teacher might ask you to use a footnote next time but it's going to be a minor deduction, not the difference between an A and an F.