17 January 2002

More Theft

Stephen Ambrose has been caught plagiarizing again. What a bogus secondhander! The guy should be ashamed of himself. But yet he offers this defense (reproduced from the linked article):

[Ambrose] did, however, defend himself last week to the New York Times: "I wish I had put the quotation marks in, but I didn't. I am not out there stealing other people's writings. If I am writing up a passage and it is a story I went to tell and this story fits and a part of it is from other people's writing, I just type it up that way and put it in a footnote. I just want to know where the hell it came from."

Sorry, Ambrose, but you ARE stealing when you represent the writing of other people as your own because the lack of proper scholarly apparatus indicates that you have written an original paraphrase, when in fact you have not. But hey, if it fits your story, why let the fact that it's someone else's writing get in the way?

Glenn Reynolds remains dubious that the practice is plagiarism, noting lack of proper quotation of his material in a speech given in the past by Justice Brennan, which caused none of the parties any great consternation at the time. I find it slightly more plausible that a speech might inadvertently use improper scholarly apparatus, and while technically plagiarism, the circumstances serve as a reasonable enough explanation. I find no circumstances to explain what Ambrose has done. He admits to ripping off other people to tell the stories he wants to tell! It's a shame he doesn't consider that plagiarism, because that's what it is. And it's hard for me to understand the mentality.

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Switching gears entirely, I've been working on Myanmar lately, and it's a difficult case. All of the signs are present for trouble in the future, but I can't quite identify the one triggering event that is likely to set things in motion. Maybe tomorrow it will become clear. Some days, political risk is much more an art than a science. Probably most days, actually.

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I just glanced at my "Sorry, Ambrose" line above, and thought of Bob Knight. Of course, one must refer to Knight as Coach Knight, or Mr. Knight, or it upsets him greatly. Of course, Bob Knight isn't a plagiarist. An ass, definitely. But not a plagiarist.

[Posted @ 11:56 PM CST]