Accusations about plagiarism have dogged Ann Coulter for weeks, but now it’s far more serious for the syndicated anti-American columnist and author.
Well, Ann Coulter may be “liberal” in one respect, anyway. The New York Post reported Sunday that author/columnist Coulter “cribbed liberally in her latest book” and also in several of her syndicated columns, according to a plagiarism expert.
John Barrie, creator of the iThenticate plagiarism-probing system, claimed he found at least three examples of what he called “textbook plagiarism” in the new Coulter book “Godless” after he ran its text through the program.
He also discovered verbatim copying in Coulter’s weekly column, which is syndicated to more than 100 newspapers by Universal.
Apparently, the theft was frequently blatant. In one instance, she plagiarized a 1991 Heritage Foundation about NEA-funded art. In another, Coulter stole a 48-word passage from an L.A. Times article. For that matter, in her most recent “book,” Coulter includes citations for some of the work that came from other sources, but according to Dr. Barrie, Coulter’s “sloppiness in failing to properly attribute many other passages strips it of nearly all its academic merits.”
I know; it is amusing to see the words “Coulter” and “academic merits” in the same sentence.
Regardless, I hate to get optimistic about such things, but this could be a career killer. News outlets don’t seem to mind giving a forum to far-right bombthrowers who recommend killing war heroes or joke about murdering Supreme Court justices, but editors and publishers tend to disapprove when writers steal other writers’ words. It’s usually a deal-breaker.