Was that actually "Preplagiarism?"
Or "will" Palpatine be quoting ancient Obama history?[lol]

I agree, it likely will not. But that doesn't mean it's without advantage to Obama's folks to push the meme. With it, they help keep the Obama voters in line... they, after all, are by and large the ones who are going to pay attention to the charge that he 'plagiarized' his speech. It's not about changing minds, in short, but rather it's about preventing Obama voters from changing their minds.

I agree this is, on the whole, much ado about nothing. As I was once a regular reader of PoliBlog, I well remember your occasional posts on the general topic of plagiarism. That's why I posted what I did. Your two different responses when the subject was raised in a political context this year struck me as being inconsistent, not something I expected to find.

The easiest answer is probably: it is impossible to discuss everything. Further, sometimes things strike me, and sometimes they don't (not to mention sometimes I have time and inclination to comment, and sometimes I don't).

Nitpicking professors can be pompous, self important snobs. I hope our academic contributors can avoid that

Well, we do try.

I guess my bottom line is that I would like to hold a campaign for president to at least the same standard that I would hold a bunch of undergraduates.

Well, hope is a wonderful thing. But this crowd has show us that they don't have a lot of intellectual firepower. Focusing on Paris Hilton and Britney Spears is about their speed.

There are a finite number of ways to summarize facts so it's very likely there will be some overlap. If this were poetry with overlap I could see the charge having merit but with facts it's different and with summarized facts it's very, very different. Nitpicking professors can be pompous, self important snobs. I hope our academic contributors can avoid that.

Exactly my point. But I wonder if, were this Obama instead of mccain, the response would be the same?

(Nod to James, whose response was fairly even keeled)

I agree this is, on the whole, much ado about nothing. As I was once a regular reader of PoliBlog, I well remember your occasional posts on the general topic of plagiarism. That's why I posted what I did. Your two different responses when the subject was raised in a political context this year struck me as being inconsistent, not something I expected to find.

As to Wikipedia and your suggestion that at least they could get the information from a real encyclopedia, I couldn't help but think of this study which demonstrated that Wikipedia was on the whole no less accurate than Encyclopedia Britannica. ;-)

That said, it is somewhat ironic that others are taking McCain to task for being so clueless as to use facts obtained from Wikipedia to support his position at the same time he is being taken to task for his friendship with the President of Georgia and close association with the former lobbyist for the Republic of Georgia.

As I have repeatedly tried to point out (and this goes to RW's question above): mostly I am being curmudgeonly about Wikipedia, something that I am known to do ( this toon comes to mind). I also am pretty hardcore about plagiarism as a general topic.

Both of these candidates are a joke, I can't believe this is the best they could come up with for president.

I am betting you would be far more irritated by something like this if you were still teaching. ;)

Heh. Probably so.

It is a little disheartening, albeit neither surprising nor ultimately that big of a deal, that given the gravity of the Georgia situation that the speech writer/adviser was consulting Wikipedia. At least look at a real encyclopedia, as lame as that is, for crying out loud.

These are basic facts, really, the kind of thing Wikipedia is likely strongest at. Heck, I've got a PhD and use Wikipedia on a daily basis to look up this kind of thing. I've probably "plagiarized" bits of blog posts by doing that, in that I only hyperlink Wikipedia if quoting them extensively or sending people to look for more info.

I guess my bottom line is that I would like to hold a campaign for president to at least the same standard that I would hold a bunch of undergraduates.

But these are completely different exercises. A stump speech isn't a demonstration of the ability to conduct basic research and then write a coherent argument but rather an articulation of the candidate's position crafted by someone else.

Why are you so much more upset about this incident than you were about Obama's alleged plagiarism earlier this year? Obama, it should be noted, does write his own speeches.