now here is a book that you don’t want to read…
So it turns out…
Monica Crowley of Trump fame may very well have plagiarized bigly portions of her book… Sad!
The Story
Conservative author and television personality Monica Crowley, whom Donald Trump has tapped for a top national security communications role, plagiarized large sections of her 2012 book, a CNN KFile review has found.
The review of Crowley’s June 2012 book, “What The (Bleep) Just Happened,” found upwards of 50 examples of plagiarism from numerous sources, including the copying with minor changes of news articles, other columnists, think tanks, and Wikipedia. The New York Times bestseller, published by the HarperCollins imprint Broadside Books, contains no notes or bibliography.
Crowley did not return a request for comment. A spokesperson for HarperCollins told CNN on Sunday: “We have no comment at this time. We are looking into the matter.”
Source: http://money.cnn.com/interactive/news/kfile-trump-monica-crowley-plagiarized-multiple-sources-2012-book
Okay…
So…
While basic facts can only be restated in a limited number of ways (e.g. Keynes was an economist)… That is not the problem I see here.
The examples CNN cited really do appear like somebody just copy and pasted articles they found from a google search into a text editor and then selectively deleted a few things and reworded what they deleted. Which of course would mean that any middle schooler could write Monica’s book in a couple of days… how inspiring.
CNN’s Plagiarism Examples
You know what’s sad… that’s only some of the apparent plagiarism CNN found. If you go read the article there’s like 20 more…
This is probably the part where I should tell you that plagiarism is wrong and is actually a pretty serious moral issue… but you already know that and will probably have already heard that from other media companies. So now is the point where we should talk about some other stuff…
An Aside About Books
There’s this thing that people do to exploit the notoriety, small and big alike, given to them by the media… and that’s to publish a book (Trump’s ghost-written books for example).
And you know what, that’s always bothered me. I’m not one to go around like a New York art snob and say that people aren’t “real” artists or writers because they care about money… but the feeling of blatant exploitation really makes those books feel icky. Almost as if they’re just some kind of perverted, mutant, form of literature that serves no purpose in this world.
It’s non-stop too… there seems to be ten books for every politician and 50 per celebrity. How they find the time to write so much (ghost writers) and how their life stories are so long and easy to compartmentalize into a stream of books (maximizing sales) is beyond me.
The Reaction on Amazon
People are burning What The (Bleep) Just Happened in the Amazon review section. I find it interesting that the book is still offered for sale… Which just brings more sadness to my heart since Monica is probably getting a nice bump up in sales from all of the media attention. She may very well be profiting even more from her apparent plagiarism than ever before.
Read the reviews here: https://www.amazon.com/What-Bleep-Just-Happened-Warriors-ebook/dp/B006IY9HS8/
So overall, I guess What The (Bleep) Just Happened is just another sad example of humanity. It must be nice… being able to steal other people’s work and get rewarded for it. But I guess that does mean she’ll make a good bureaucrat.
Update (1/10/2017) – Donald Trump’s little people’s response
“Any attempt to discredit Monica is nothing more than a politically motivated attack that seeks to distract from the real issues facing this country.”
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2017/01/09/the-trump-teams-embarrassing-defense-of-fradulence
So that’s fun…
You’ve gotta love how a matter of literary theft has become a partisan issue. I guess poor behavior is always excusable when you can just blame the other “tribe”.
Personal responsibility? What’s that???
Update (1/12/2017) – Monica Crowley Plagiarized Even More Than Thought
So, it seems that Monica Crowley has also plagiarized large portion of her PhD thesis… Amazon has stopped selling her book… and nobody has really taken any responsibility.
Read the full update here: https://www.pinkink.media/monica-crowley-plagiarism-continued/
Score 1 point for journalists though…
This is exactly the kind of stuff people WANT them to write about.