The Rude Pundit has been digilently on the detective trail of Ann "Sticky Digits" Coulter and her daring daylight robberies of other people's writing, as have other dedicated online sleuths, and now comes professional, systematic confirmation from an expert in the field, as reported by (fancy this) The New York Post:
"COPYCATTY COULTER PILFERS PROSE: PRO
"by Philip Recchia
"John Barrie, the creator of a leading plagiarism-recognition system, claimed he found at least three instances of what he calls textbook plagiarism in the leggy blond pundit's Godless: the Church of Liberalism" after he ran the book's text through the company's digital iThenticate program.
"He also says he discovered verbatim lifts in Coulter's weekly column, which is syndicated to more than 100 newspapers, including the Fort Lauderdale (Fla.) Sun-Sentinel and Augusta (Ga.) Chronicle.
"Barrie, CEO of iParadigms, told The Post that one 25-word passage from the Godless chapter titled 'The Holiest Sacrament: Abortion' appears to have been lifted nearly word for word from Planned Parenthood literature published at least 18 months before Coulter's 281-page book was released.
"A separate, 24-word string from the chapter 'The Creation Myth' appeared about a year earlier in the San Francisco Chronicle with just one word change - 'stacked' was changed to 'piled.'
[snip]
"Meanwhile, many of the 344 citations Coulter includes in Godless 'are very misleading,' said Barrie, who holds a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley, where he specialized in pattern recognition.
"'They're used purely to try and give the book a higher level of credibility - as if it's an academic work. But her sloppiness in failing to properly attribute many other passages strips it of nearly all its academic merits,' he told The Post.
"Barrie says he also ran Coulter's Universal Press columns from the past 12 months through iThenticate and found similar patterns of cribbing."
Confronted with a serial plagiarist, commentators often attempt a jackknife dive into the murky motives of the offender, trying to untangle the nagging compulsions that made the copycat risk his or her career by taking a heaping helping of other people's work. (Thomas Mallon's Stolen Words is probably the definitive book on the psychodynamics of plagiarism.) In Coulter's case, no dive is necessary, no onion-peeling of motives required. She is so devoid of character and psychology that any investigation would be superfluous. She's swiping other people's work not because she's trying to slip something past us but because she's sloppy, lazy, and arrogant. She just doesn't give a fuck. She's learned that the rules of journalism and public discourse don't apply to her, having cheerfully violated them so many times before only to be rewarded with the cover of Time, countless cable-news appearances, and bestselling success. Pisspoor Media will quote her sliming hyperbole no matter how much of a subliterary parasite she is revealed to be. She knows this. Her shampoo with its special conditioning agents knows this. Her spot in the green room is secure.
If we are stuck with her, the least we can do is not lend her credibility by pretending she's anything other than a freak attraction. I turned on CNBC Friday and there was Ann Coulter in one of those Brady Bunch panels, with Peter Beinart, Jonathan Alter, and some unsharpened pencil from the National Review occupying the other squares. (Beinart kind of looks like an adult Bobby Brady.) A boy has to hustle his book, as Truman Capote quipped, and I recognize that Beinart and Alter both have books to peddle, but appearing on Larry Kudlow's half-baked show with Coulter ought to be a threshold one doesn't cross. Not only because of Coulter's execrations in the past, but because when you're on a program with her, your role is as a bit supporting player, a grinning stooge. It doesn't matter if you're the former editor of The New Republic or a prominent writer at Newsweek, you're secondary to her shtick, and probably won't get a single book sale out of the charade. Don't lower yourself by consorting with such trash.
