Ann Coulter and plagiarism
One of the stories that has continued in the background as the Mideast blows up has been the investigation of alleged plagiarism by rightwing opinionator Ann Coulter. According to Media Matters for America, which seeks to find out if there is any truth in what the wingnuts tell us, even the footnotes of Coulter's book "Godless: The Church of Liberalism" are suspect.
As I learned myself when my book on the Centralia mine fire was plagiarized by a writer for Harper's Magazine in 2004, plagiarism is a sin that is only punished by Big Publishing if the victim has the means to bring a lawsuit. Most don't, and I certainly didn't, so Harper's told me to go pound sand. The people allegedly plagiarized by Coulter appear to be either fellow wingnuts or people who can't bring legal actions. Her publisher, Random House, has already pretty much made clear it values the profits of publishing Coulter's books more than the truth of what she writes.
It's worth pointing out again that the sort of plagiarism that is winked at by Harper's and Random House would get a newspaper reporter fired or an academic disgraced. Plagiarism continues because it is easy to get away with and downright profitable if you have no morals.