Skip to content
Categories:

McCain, Georgia, and change you can Xerox

Post date:
Author:

There was a point, in the spring, when the media was abuzz with talk of “plagiarism.” Apparently, Barack Obama and Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick (D), who are friends, shared some a few rhetorical lines. Politicians do this all the time, both Obama and Patrick had each other’s permission, and there was nothing untoward about it. The media flap lasted a few days before everyone suddenly realized how inane the story was, and the political world moved on.

I’m wondering if we may be poised for yet another “plagiarism” flap. CQ’s Taegan Goddard has the story.

A Wikipedia editor notices some similarities between Sen. John McCain’s speech today on the crisis in Georgia and the Wikipedia article on the country Georgia. They appear similar enough that most people would consider parts of McCain’s speech to be derived directly from Wikipedia.

At one point in the speech, McCain described Georgia as “one of the world’s first nations to adopt Christianity as an official religion.” The Wiki page describes Georgia as “one of the first countries in the world to adopt Christianity as an official religion.”

This one was a little more interesting. Here’s the Wiki page (emphasis added throughout)…

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Georgia had a brief period of independence as a Democratic Republic (1918-1921), which was terminated by the Red Army invasion of Georgia. Georgia became part of the Soviet Union in 1922 and regained its independence in 1991. Early post-Soviet years was marked by a civil unrest and economic crisis.

…and here’s the McCain speech.

After a brief period of independence following the Russian revolution, the Red Army forced Georgia to join the Soviet Union in 1922. As the Soviet Union crumbled at the end of the Cold War, Georgia regained its independence in 1991, but its early years were marked by instability, corruption, and economic crises.

Taegan has a third

, which was relatively similar, but not quite as blatant.

Now, I suppose the most obvious question is one of timing. Is it possible the Wiki page was edited after McCain’s speech, and that the person who changed Georgia’s entry relied on McCain’s speech for the content? I suppose, but if a Wikipedia editor noticed the similarities, it’s likely that the Wiki page came before the speech.

Truth be told, McCain’s done far worse than rely on lifted text for a speech. Hell, practically his entire policy and political agenda was lifted from Bush’s playbook, and few called that plagiarism.

Nevertheless, it strikes me as something of a gaffe, which when added to the list, points to an embarrassing situation. McCain thinks Czechoslovakia is still a countrybetween Sudan and Somalia; he’s confused about how many U.S. troops are in Iraq; he’s confused about Iran’s relationship with al Qaeda; and he doesn’t understand the difference between Sunni and Shi’ia.

And now, McCain can’t give a speech about the war in Georgia without relying on an online encyclopedia for content.

As Taegan added, “It should be noted that Wikipedia material can be freely used but always requires attribution under its terms of use. Whether a presidential candidate should base policy speeches on material from Wikipedia is another question entirely.”

It’s not a scandal, but it is embarrassing.

Comments

  • Michigoose

    says:

    I thought he didn’t know how to get on the Intertubes? Maybe Cindy’s helping with his speeches now. . .

  • MsJoanne

    says:

    Michigoose, after the Rachel Ray recipe business, methinks you might be on to something.

    Why earn it when you can inherit or steal it! (New McCain slogan?)

  • Dale

    says:

    Not to mention the general unreliability of Wikipedia anyway. It’d be fun to mess with them and put some jokes in the wiki before they do their copying, er, research.

    The Wiki page describes Georgia as “one of the first countries in the world to adopt Christianity as an official religion.”

    Correction: Georgia is one of the first states to adopt Christianity as its official religion.

  • Aaron

    says:

    That second one is not really that similar at all to the Wiki entry. It’s absolutely fair to go after his position, but I challenge anyone to recap those facts in 3 sentences without coming at least that close to the Wiki entry.

  • JWK

    says:

    Sure, Aaron, but why those three facts? Surely Georgia is known for much more than this.

    Have to laugh at McCain trying to look all intelligent and stuff. He stick to dumb. He does it better.

  • Racer X

    says:

    I can understand if McCain doesn’t know South Ossettia from South Park, but what pisses me off is the indifference in the traditional media towards his glaring lack of understanding of Iran (which he jokes about bombing) and al Qaeda, who he said Iran supported, even though they are mortal enemies.

    He fucked that quiz all to hell, even though they’ve been on our radar for decades.

    If the media can’t call him out for that one, and demand to know if he’s stopped smoking crack, then we’re ripe fruit for the next bogus war based on lies, be it in Georgia or elsewhere. Russia stands to gain a lot if Georgia goes to hell, and the less our leaders know about that region the worse we’ll be if they decide they want another war for Halliburton and Blackwater.

  • TCG

    says:

    I give him a pass on this.

    After all he is new to the internet and presumably Wikipedia. So this is not that unexpected.

    At least he did not use conservapedia. So actually this is a step in the right direction for him.

  • T-Rex

    says:

    Oh come on, cut the poor guy a little slack. What’ s Wikipedia for if not to do a little quick-and-dirty research on the run, when something comes up unexpectedly and you need to say something intelligent about it? He did change the wording of his source, and just quoted the facts. I couldn’t take a student of mine to the Academic Conduct Council for that. Of course, the student would have to give me a footnote citing the source of the information, and I’d scold him for using Wiki instead of chasing down a more reliable print source, but we don’t ask politicians for footnotes in their speeches, any more than we ask professors (thank God!) to cite their sources in lectures.

  • Mark D

    says:

    The fact he used Wikipedia shows what a Maverick he is, willing to buck his party’s preferred collaborative online encyclopedia (TCG’s noted “conservapedia”) for the more liberal (read: factual) Wikipedia.

    So it’s good news for McCain.

    /snark

    See? I could have a space on the New York Times editorial page, too!!

  • chrenson

    says:

    Aaron, the deal is the man doesn’t know shit about the world he wants to rule. And Googling World History isn’t a very convincing or smart way to try to change that perception. This means he is “faking it” to try and appear savvy.

  • NObama08

    says:

    Trex, you hit the nail on the head. wiki is a source of information for everyone; i’ve used it as a quick reference for many topics that come up in the news. i guess if he would have “quoted” the encyclopedia, you all wouldn’t have had a problem with it. typical liberal bs to make excuses for poor little BO.

  • JoeW

    says:

    This is, of course, good news for McCain. It shows that unlike the grade school, Yeehaw foriegn policy of the Bush regime, he has a full blown middle school policy backed up by the Wiki. That, my friends, is called progress.

  • The Answer is Orange

    says:

    The media flap lasted a few days before everyone suddenly realized how inane the story was, and the political world moved on.

    Those were the days.

    “one of the world’s first nations to adopt Christianity as an official religion.”

    Now Das Base is going to be up in arms again. “Nuh-uh! Jesus came to America with the Pilgrims!”

    Also, so fucking what? If they weren’t “Official Christians” would McMoron not care what happened to him?

  • Dee Loralei

    says:

    You know there my be a way to test Taegan Goddard’s hypothesis. Next time some small out of the way country makes the news wire several folks could go change it’s Wiki entry, just tweek it a bit so the editors would be unlikely to catch it. And see which Reps and talking heads start quoting from it. Say the uprising is for control of the dreaded “Iocaine Powder” mines. or some such nonsense, and then change the wiki of Iocaine powder, or make one, etc. Kinda feed the beast and see if it pops up somewhere in the mainstream. (Iocaine Powder, was what Vizini used to try to best the Dred Pirate Roberts in “The Princess Bride.”)

    Like in this Georgia thing, on Friday someone coulda gone to Wiki and added in the paragraph about Georgia being free until 1924 something about Comrade Shermanofski’s March to the Baltic Sea, taking the country for Mother Russia. Or the heroine of Georgia, S.O. Haraskov defending her town of Atalantiskoval and repelling Shermanofskis troops as they burned and pillaged and laid waste to the country side. There is now a statue of SO Haraskov at the Tiblisi Parliament Building.

    See, this could be fun. Live by the Wiki, die by the wiki.

    (Yes, I know I am silly.)

  • Equal Opportunity Cynic

    says:

    @Dale:

    Wikipedia is intended as a tertiary source. It’s not intended as a primary or secondary source, and original research is explicitly banned.

    If you quote a “fact” from Wikipedia without looking up the accompanying source, or worse still one that has no accompanying source, you deserve whatever fate befalls you. Essentially unsourced info there has about as much validity as the mass e-mails about Obama’s Muslim background.

    But only a fool would take that to mean, “You can’t believe anything you read in Wikipedia.” To the contrary, Wikipedia is a tremendous research tool, provided that you always check the sources of controversial information. People with basic critical thinking skills already do this as second nature.

  • Equal Opportunity Cynic

    says:

    Next time some small out of the way country makes the news wire several folks could go change it’s Wiki entry, just tweek it a bit so the editors would be unlikely to catch it.

    “The editors” (which includes anyone who wants to watch an article) are pretty numerous and hard to fool collectively. Any article that’s high-profile enough to be worthy of your subterfuge probably has plenty of people watching every edit to it.

    Also, now that so many people have declared their intent to try something like this, I’m sure people watching articles like Georgia (country) will be extra-careful. Apparently they’ve limited edits to the Georgia article so that unregistered and new users can’t mess with it, but that probably has more to do with the war than with this Carpetbagger Report thread. 🙂

  • WWB

    says:

    I think this is pretty unlikely. Consider that plagiarized text is almost always longer than original text because the plagiarizer is trying to hide the origin — but the McCain speech text is shorter.

    Second, historical facts can’t be plagiarized, only their expression. But here the words are very much different — other than the first, very short, example, even sentence structures are different.

    Plus, the third McCain section even contains information not in the Wikipedia version — the bit about the U.S.-educated lawyer.

    I think that about covers it. (Oh, and I’ve cross-posted slightly altered versions of this elsewhere, in case anyone accuses me of self-plagiarism.)

  • Equal Opportunity Cynic

    says:

    Oh, and before I forget: A wiki is a generic term coined by Ward Cunningham for a user-editable web site. Wikipedia is one particular wiki, but the two words aren’t interchangeable.

    I don’t say, “I read this great article in Newspaper” when I really mean, “I read this great article in the Times.”

  • joepa

    says:

    The “amazing” similarities are nothing but that key historical facts are listed in chronological order in both excerpts. Key historical facts that are found in multiple sources listed the same way since that is pretty much how short summaries of history is done. That is not plagerism under any academic definition. Can we stop with the silliness.

  • Karl

    says:

    Normally I have no problem with anything you post. You’re basically my main authority for showing people all the things McSame does that the MSM doesn’t bother to mention or get right. But this one is just stupid. Get back to the important stuff.

  • chrenson

    says:

    NOb #15: i’ve used it as a quick reference for many topics that come up in the news.

    Sure, man. We all have. But, neither you nor I are running for president. And neither you nor I have a history of making gross misstatements about history, geography, world politics or economics in front of large audiences.

    And sure, it might be making a mountain out of a mole hill, but see, McCain didn’t do us liberals the courtesy of going to visit his grandmother in Hawaii so we could lambaste him for being “elitist” and whatnot. So, we’ll gut him for reading a speech on the world stage that someone cut ‘n’ pasted from Wikipedia to make him appear savvy. Speech writers are supposed to do better than that.

    Ask yourself, were the tables turned [and you better believe there are a couple hundred right-wing bloggers out there right now cross-referencing every word Obama has uttered against Wikipedia] would you give Obama a pass on this? When you call Obama elitist and snobby, aren’t you accusing him of portraying himself to be something he’s not? So what is it when McCain pretends to know something about pre-Soviet Georgia? Or when you sit down in a company meeting and pretend to know something about current events because you Wiki’ed it a few minutes before? Or, more accurately, when you waddle up from your apartment in your mother’s basement after a long day of GTA4 and surfing the web to sit down to a Stouffer’s lasagna and Mr. Pibb?

  • PeJx

    says:

    Now, I suppose the most obvious question is one of timing. Is it possible the Wiki page was edited after McCain’s speech, and that the person who changed Georgia’s entry relied on McCain’s speech for the content? I suppose, but if a Wikipedia editor noticed the similarities, it’s likely that the Wiki page came before the speech.

    The Wikipedia article came first, the first bit they copied was added on May 21st.

    Or the McCain campaign has a time machine, or they write wikipedia articles in their spare time. But that’s not very likely.

  • Aaron

    says:

    chrenson – having said what I said (and having a number of commenters agree with me; ones that normally do not), I want to make sure that I say that while not a huge deal, it does smack of laziness, which has no place in a presidential campaign. I’m sure this is the place where you will cite 153,394 other examples of the McCain camp’s laziness, most of which will probably be true, and a few of which will be generally relevant.

    JWK@#8 – no, I doubt that Georgia is really known for anything other than what was cited before this week. Unless you are trying to make every American a history professor.

  • Lance

    says:

    Dee Loralei said: “Iocaine Powder, was what Vizini used to try to best the Dred Pirate Roberts in “The Princess Bride.””

    Actually, it was Wesley (the Dread Pirate Roberts) who had and used the Iocaine powder, to which he had built up a tolerance, to defeat Vizini in a battle of wits to the death (normally, a classic blunder, going against a Sicilian when death in on the line, only slightly less well known than getting involved in a land war in Asia).

    What amazes me is that McC*nt is paying a speech writer who couldn’t even take the time to rephrase the wikipedia article. Such a dumbass, who can’t get good value out of his staff, certainly is NOT fit to lead a country already bogged down by rampent political appointee incompetence.

  • Lance

    says:

    Aaron said: “I doubt that Georgia is really known for anything other than what was cited before this week. Unless you are trying to make every American a history professor.”

    The Kingdom of Georgia was smart enough to acknowledge Gengis Khan as Emperor, and thereby not only forestalling an invasion of their country but achieving a higher standing in the new political order.

    Didn’t even have to check wikipedia (of course, it might have been Armenia?) 😉

  • libra

    says:

    There’s no pleasing you, Benen, is there? When he’s clueless about the intertubes, it’s bad. But, when he learns enough to find Wikipedia, that’s bad too. How come? You should be praising him for the quick learner he is. Though, I suppose, he had nothing better to do but learn to use the ‘puter, since they took his cellphone away from him, the poor, lost, ox…
    http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/10/us/politics/10mccain.html?_r=1&ref=politics&oref=slogin

  • Aaron

    says:

    Also chrenson, I’ve read many posts from you lately and I think that you are above the “mom’s basement” thing. The reason I come to this site is because generally the readership seems more refined than that stuff, and does a great job of exposing me to new ideas or forcing me to hone my own opinions. Keep up the good stuff, don’t stoop to the same tactics you blast McShame for using.

  • libra

    says:

    The Wikipedia article came first, the first bit they copied was added on May 21st.

    Or the McCain campaign has a time machine, or they write wikipedia articles in their spare time. But that’s not very likely. — PeJx, @26

    Whyever not? It could have one of the forms Scheunemann’s lobbying for Georgia took. Writing an entry (or contributing to one) on Wikipedia would not be a bad way to skew public opinion towards that country, given how many of us *do* check it for little bits of quickly accessible info…

  • SickofBushMcCainLiebermann

    says:

    In a generation where people can just cut and paste off the internet, doing actual research and having a cogent basis of information is rare.

    Cindy McCain’s best recipes for cookies- “cookie cutters” off the BHG websites.

  • SickofBushMcCainLiebermann

    says:

    Oh, and don’t trust anything on the web the general populace can edit.
    50 million people CAN be wrong, we learned that in 00 and 04.

  • chrenson

    says:

    Whenever I think about pulling important information from a web-based source like Wikipedia, I’m reminded of what Jon Stewart said best: “The Internet combines all the credibility of hearsay with the thrill of typing.” Although, I think he was talking about people who post comments to blogs.

    Sorry about the “basement” comment, Aaron. It was a snark I cut and pasted from another blog that I thought made me sound more…um…snarky. I’ll try to be more refined. But, I’ll be the first to admit, I’m way out of my league at this blog. In other words, I appreciate your tone, and apologize for mine.

  • Steve

    says:

    Maybe Cindy’s helping with his speeches now. . .

    Nope. Cindy’s help would have McCain’s speeches looking like Budweiser—and those speeches of his makes Budweiser look good.

    Which is pretty much an impossible thing to do….

  • R Fouche

    says:

    Umm, doesn’t McCain have ready access to State Department reports and the CIA Factbook? Kinda scary he’s using Wiki to determine international policy — but then again, he seems to think we have an endless supply of soldiers to do the bidding of the big petro-military behemoth growing like a cancer over the Middle East, Africa, and Asia.

  • pittforpres

    says:

    Obama says ” can’t we all just get along” ? He is right. That is how we backed down Hitler. Camberlain was right all along. Jimmy Carter stared down the Iranians didn’t he?

  • T-Rex

    says:

    @NObama08: Whoa there. I never said I supported McCain. I’m for Obama all the way. I just hate this kind of trivial non-issue that somehow is supposed to reveal something terribly important about CHaracter. How about, uh, considering the candidates’ actual policies on the issues?

  • T-Rex

    says:

    Pittforpres, go watch the video (it’s on YouTube) of Chris Matthews blasting a conservative commentator right out of the water on that silly analogy. Talking to someone, going to the negotiating table, is not the same thing as agreeing to let Hitler take half of Czechoslovakia.

  • N.Wells

    says:

    Perhaps I’m wrong on this, but I don’t think plagiarism standards should apply to either political speeches or sermons. It is the job of politicians to inspire, not to do original research. If they want to write their own rousing speeches, great, but if someone else has some phrasing that they like, I think they should be able to use it without having to cite its origin. There is nothing wrong with artfully working a citation into a speech (“As my hero Lincoln observed, …”), but overall they are trying to explain and inspire, not write a term paper. [“My friends (McCain, 2000, 2001, 2006a, b, 2008), America is a great country (Lincoln, 1860, Hoover, 1928, Nixon, 1971 ……)”.]

  • Gerald Murphy

    says:

    Sen. McCain’s biggest challenge could be to find a useful way for the Navy to draw on its strengths in an engagement in Georgia.

  • Rabi

    says:

    That longer example is textbook “I’m going to find a source then paraphrase it just enough that it’s not too obvious because I’m a lazy ninth grade kid.”

  • JWK

    says:

    No, Aaron, don’t expect every American to be a professor. Never said so. I do expect a candidate for president to be smart, and not simply pretend to be smart by quoting Wiki– especially a candidate purporting to be strong on foreign affairs ( a media meme I highly suspect).

    And why did he mis-pronounced the Georgian President’s name three times. Three times!

  • JWK

    says:

    Also, I find it rather appalling that McCain is turning this truly sad event in Georgia into a media op to promote his presidential bid.

  • Dennis

    says:

    Swing….. and another miss.

    Not citing Wikipedia as a source for basic factual information about a country, even if in fact that was the case, is ridiculous.

    The only place mention of this non-story belongs might be as an addendum to Cliff Schecter’s ‘The Real McCain’.

  • Lance

    says:

    JWK said: “Also, I find it rather appalling that McCain is turning this truly sad event in Georgia into a media op to promote his presidential bid.”

    Being “right” about the danger of a resurgent Russia is about the only advantage he has. Of course, eight years of the Bushites mishandling Russia (I’m talking about you Condi Rice) have made them the danger they are, but can we blame McC*nt for that?

    Well, yes actually.

  • JS

    says:

    i always come back to this site, looking for answers to my dumb questions, because I actually trust a lot of the regulars on this site. I keep putting all this Georgia stuff together in my mind and reach some troubling conclusions.
    John McCain has been egging on the president of Georgia for some time now, and one of his lobbyists has been employed by Georgia. They have been pushing for Georgia to belong to NATO, and have promised help to Georgia.
    I’m hearing that US troops/advisers have been in Georgia for awhile now.Could it have been to help out with this push against Russian power. Anyway there was no way Russia would let this succeed, and we are certainly not helping Georgia, as the people hoped we would.
    My question is – Did Bush/McCain know this was coming, and isn’t this a huge blunder on their part, because we have been shown to be of no use in this situation.As usual this happens when Bush is out of the country (remember the Palestinian/Israeili conflict when he was away at a summit? Could be I’m getting paranoid.

  • Tharms

    says:

    “4. On August 11th, 2008 at 4:39 pm, Noah said:
    Don’t the Wikipedias have a known liberal bias? Why is John McCain liberal now?”

    Since when hasn’t John McCain been a liberal?