Matt Wingard & Plagiarism 3: "Clearly unethical"

Kari Chisholm FacebookTwitterWebsite

I've been remiss in taking note of all the coverage of the Matt Wingard plagiarism story since my second post on Tuesday morning. Here's a roundup of all the news coverage of the incident over the last week:

On Tuesday, the O's Jeff Mapes reported on a conversation he had with Wingard directly - in which Wingard first proferred an explanation:

I talked to Wingard on the House floor Monday morning, and he said he had always intended to put out a press release making it clear where the material came from. He said he didn't put out the release on Friday because press releases tend to get ignored right before the weekend. And he said he was unaware of the Blue Oregon post from a few hours before.

In any event, he dismissed any plagiarism concerns, saying, "Who cares? Let's talk about the subject" of the editorial.

Later Tuesday, the national progressive site Raw Story picked up the story as well, on their front page.

On Friday, Nick Christensen from the Hillsboro Argus checked in with Wingard as well. Wingard's retort was priceless - and, as far as I can tell original:

"It's amazing to me that somebody blogging in their underwear from a basement of their mom's house can make a vicious personal smear on their Web site," he said.

Nice line. Maybe I'll get t-shirts printed! For the record, I own my home. I haven't lived with my mom since the last century. Yes, my computer is in my office, which is actually in my basement. But sorry, Matt, I was wearing pants at the time.

As for whether it's a "smear", it would only be a smear if it were untrue. I think any reasonable person looking at the transcript of Matt Wingard's plagiarized speech would notice the overwhelming similarity to the TWO original editorials -- but also notice the deliberate effort to obfuscate and hide the plagiarism.

Christensen also quotes a pair of outside observers on the ethics:

The delay in citation makes Jim Moore, an instructor of political science at Pacific University, think it qualifies as plagiarism.

"It's clearly unethical," he said. "When you don't cite somebody else's ideas, you're passing it off as your own argument. By not doing so, you're basically denigrating the people who wrote the arguments." ...

"It's fair to call a politician on the fact that he or she is using somebody else's material without attribution," [Tim Gleason, dean of communications and journalism at the University of Oregon] said. "When called on it, the politician should acknowledge it and move on."

On Sunday, the Bend Source Weekly's Bruce Miller noted the absurdity of Wingard's claims after the fact:

Uh, Matt, you didn’t have to put out a press release – all you had to do was say at the opening of your speech something along the lines of: “I would like to share with my colleagues a recent editorial from the Washington Times.”

But you didn’t. You tried to pass off somebody else’s writing as your own. That’s plagiarism in anybody’s book.

And finally, also on Sunday, Randy Stapilus at the Ridenbaugh Press has his take:

Reading from someone else’s article or publication is okay, and nothing unusual. But in this case, Wingard didn’t bother to attribute any of it: To listen to his floor speech, he seemed to have created it all himself. After Chisholm called him on it, Wingard acknowledged the source in a press release and elsewhere. But not until he was called on it. ...

Wingard hasn’t yet come up with a decent explanation. He said that he meant to attribute – but he didn’t until after he was publicly challenge on it. He said he didn’t have time for an attribution – but the speech lasted several minutes, and attribution would have taken seconds.

The only explanation that seems to make sense is that Wingard just didn’t know any better or wasn’t thinking.

I don't think I could have said it better myself.

  • Abby NORML (unverified)
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    It couldn't possibly be that he, like all hacks, believes that the ends justify the means? But, if he wants to talk about the "substance", fine. There isn't any; you're an idiot. That was quick.

    OK. Feeding time now, here at Troll Haven.

  • (Show?)

    Kari - I'm starting to feel like you're barking up the wrong dead horse.

    Yeah, the schoolboy plagiarism is hella embarrassing. But far more embarrassing, not just for Wingard but for the party and movement that embraces him, is that at a time when Oregon and the country as a whole need to do way more to catch up to the rest of the world in development and production of new energy, transportation and communication technologies, they've staked their positions on a repudiation of science altogether.

    Point is: if Wingard had fully footnoted his speech it would have been outrageous/laughable enough.

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    As the arbiter of ethics, Kari, I'm sure your selective quotation of the opinion of UO Dean of Journalism Tim Gleasan as cited in the Hillsboro Argus article was inadvertent. So let's see what the article really said:

    But Tim Gleason, dean of communications and journalism at the University of Oregon, questioned whether such an instance of plagiarism is important.

    "There have been a number of times that a public official makes a public speech from something else without carefully disclosing it," he said. "If we started monitoring that and calling every instance plagiarism, we'd be doing little else."

    He added that it is fair to raise the issue when those instances are caught.

    "It's fair to call a politician on the fact that he or she is using somebody else's material without attribution," Gleason said. "When called on it, the politician should acknowledge it and move on."

    Gleason added that technically, many speeches are written by somebody else - speechwriters.

    So the question is, if what Wingard did is called plagiarism, what word describes what you did to Tim Gleason?

  • Bob Baldwin (unverified)
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    Jack Roberts So the question is, if what Wingard did is called plagiarism, what word describes what you did to Tim Gleason?

    Quoting? Attributing? Reporting?

  • Careful Reader (unverified)
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    Kari, point to the mental midgets of the local press like Mapes, Christensen, Miller, and Stapilus doesn't exactly make your argument. Despite what these legends in their own minds may believe, J-School is not exactly the training ground for much except how to write an inflammatory lede. Oh, and how to sleaze your way into making the right contacts to sell that book. That you think they provide fuel for your fire is truly pathetic.

    The first thing that clearly is beyond the intellectual reach of you and these four provincial jerkweeds is that "plagiarism" is a very specifically defined act, and the rules of what constitutes plagiarism differ significantly in the masturbatory blog world, journalism, academia, politics, and legislation.

    You and Wingard are just two sides of the same coin and the concept of plagiarism is as meaningless in politics as it is in the blog world. Nobody expects there to be any standard of ethical, intellectual, or moral integrity in anything a politician says or your average self-gratifying blogger writes, much less what most political bloggers like the crowd of true trolls you have gathered at Blue Oregon.

    Journalism has become a charade of pretty much anything resembling moral or ethical integrity, or of an actual public watchdog on politicians. They actually have become much closer to what the Founder's envisioned the press would be, and didn't have all that much respect for. Frankly, you self-marginalize by pointing to them for support, so thanks for making it easy to discredit you by throwing that spotlight on yourself.

    Academia is it's own psychotic world when it comes to notions of intellectual honesty and only fools dare venture there in a discussions of such matters.

    Legislation is yet another unique world where plagiarism is how business is done. (And make no mistake, Wingard was doing politics where there is NO meaningful concept of plagiarism). Particularly in the NW and Oregon, where we absolutely pride ourselves on electing the dumbest, most pandering, most incompetent, most intrinsically corrupt, most banal individuals to represent us. And actually take pride in advancing them all the way to DC when we can. I point to Wyden, Merkley, Blumenauer, Walden as People's Exhibits one, two, three, and four. Our legislature is based on letting special interests from all sides write the legislation and then dress it up with puffery so they look like they are doing something. And obviously no one wants any attribution in the text of the special interests that originated it.

    Which gets to the final reason you are truly an idiot Kari: Outside of the formal context of journalism and academia, the author of a work can make a blanket authorization anyone can quote their work without attribution. Which is pretty much how it works with the political special interests and the politicians that you oppose, and even more so with the drek that have polluted the Democratic party in Oregon and sullied the good name of "liberalism" that you so enthusiastically support. The pols and their parasites like you want the ego strokes, the special interests just want what they paid for, and neither benefits when the grimy fingerprints of the latter show up on the self-aggrandizing legislative "work" of the former.

  • Joshua Welch (unverified)
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    Wingard is a perfect example of the pathetic state of the Republican Party. Morally and ideologically bankrupt. Just watch a few minutes of CPAC coverage for more of the same.

  • Scott in Damascus (unverified)
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    As a service to the regular readers of BO, I will summarize Careful Reader's comments so you won't was 3 minutes of your life that you will never get back:

    1. Reader is mucher smarter than Kari, Mapes, Christensen, Miller, and Stapilus.

    2. Reader proves he is smarter by calling them names.

    3. Reader then defends the act of plagiarism because everyone does it.

    4. Reader uses "" alot because you can't actually see him doing air quotes with his fingers.

    5. And then Reader ends with everyone here is stupid.

  • (Show?)

    Wingard's behavior is inexcusable and stupid. The plagiarism part is bad enough, but then lying and trying to cover it up with that inane "press release" BS just adds insult to injury.

    If he's willing to be so dishonest in a public forum--imagine how easy it is for him in private.

  • Richard (unverified)
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    Kari and Carla and their three thread crafting of scandal where none exists.

    Carla is now insulted and injured?

    How profound. You must imagine people being impressed with your silly rhetoric.

  • Careful Reader (unverified)
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    As a service to the regular readers of BO, I will summarize Careful Reader's comments so you won't was 3 minutes of your life that you will never get back:

    And "SID" provides fine example of the juvenile whining that is the defining characteristic of the BO "regular reader" crowd, who just can't stand being outed for what they aren't.

  • H Bruce Miller (unverified)
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    "The only explanation that seems to make sense is that Wingard just didn’t know any better or wasn’t thinking."

    "Just didn't know any better" is bogus; as a former journalist himself (after a fashion) Wingard certainly should know what plagiarism is.

    BTW thanks for plugging my blog.

  • (Show?)

    Oh, no, here we go again.

    Kari, let me take back my previous snide comment and approach this from a different angle.

    If you read the entire section from the Argus representing Tim Gleason's view on this, I'd say he got it exactly right. Contrary to the impression created by your "excerpted" quote, he was not agreeing with Bill Lunch. He was saying this is no big deal, but it is appropriate for Wingard to be called on this (as you did) and for him to acknowledge that these were not his words and identify the source (which he did) and move on (which we all should do).

    The real point here is that no one in their right mind thought or cared whether Wingard wrote these words. The fact that they had been published elsewhere rather than ghostwritten by a staffer was a slight to the authors but surely not to his audience.

    As Dan points out above, the real issue is that Wingard believes this stuff, whoever wrote it. That was the point of Carla's original post on this subject (before she went off her meds again). Failing to attribute the source (actually sources) when a politician reads a remonstrance on the floor of the house really is inconsequential.

  • theresa Kohlhoff (unverified)
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    Careful Reader, if Blue Oregon and its readers are stupid, stop coming to this site.

    I may be an old dog, but plagiarism is big in my book.

    The bigger issue is Wingard's further comment that he had run his work by other scientists. What that says to me is that he though you can spread lies if you never get called on backing them up. This is becoming a serious societal problem.

  • Joshua Welch (unverified)
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    Jack:

    Since we're discussing terminology, what word describes consistently defending the nation's trash?

  • Joshua Welch (unverified)
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    Bzzzzzzzzzzzzz, try again.

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    "Yeah, I was going to send in a dollar for that candy bar I took from the store, officer. I don't know how it got in my pocket! And I'm mortally offended that those Koreans or wherever they came from who runs that store accused me of shoplifting!"

    Meanwhile, in Great Britain, Prime Minister Gordon Brown is struggling with his own problems that stem from just retreads of speeches by one of his advisors.

    Danny Finkelstein, the paper's comment editor, a former speech-writer to John Major and a keen student of American politics, had been struck by the familiarity of many phrases in Brown's speech. Finkelstein confirmed his suspicions by Googling any line that sounded like a speech-writer's phrase. Brown said: "Sometimes people say I am too serious." That was awfully similar to a sentence used by Al Gore in 2000 when he accepted the Democratic nomination: "I know that sometimes people say I'm too serious." Finkelstein identified several examples of phrases recycled from speeches by Gore and Bill Clinton, both former clients of Bob Shrum, adviser and speech-writer for Brown. When Finkelstein posted it on his blog that afternoon, the deputy editor of the Times, Ben Preston, thought it would make "a great splash" for the next morning's paper. When Brown learnt that the Times planned to lead its front page with how he had rehashed American phrases, he was "incandescent", says a member of his inner circle. From his suite at the Highcliff, he rang complaining to Preston and Robert Thomson, the editor of the Times. "It's a Tory plot," he raged, trying to bludgeon them into pulling the story. "This won't be forgotten." He was maddest of all with his own team. Brown went berserk with Bob Shrum, whose long friendship did not protect the American from a ferocious blast of Brown's temper. "How could you do this to me, Bob?" Brown screamed at a shaking Shrum. "How could you fucking do this to me?" Then the Prime Minister started yelling at the other aides present: "Just get out! Just get out of the fucking room!" Sue Nye became so alarmed that she felt compelled to come into the room to protect the unfortunate Shrum.

    And that was just the result of legitimate re-use by the albatross-around-the-Democratic-neck known as Bob Shrum. Didn't really affect the elections, but it was a lesser offense than Wingard's. Joe BIden's cross-pond plagiarism (the plague that unleashed Maureen Dowd on us for lo these many years) did help torpedo his chances for the presidential nomination in 1988, leaving the field wide open for Dukakis.

    Plagiarism of another's work is theft, pure and simple. I'm surprised to see someone like Jack Roberts standing up for a thief. Sure, it's just intellectual theft, it's not like stealing a car or a purse — and in the case of the climate change deniers Wingard was thieving from, they might prefer to have people spreading their lies far and wide with or without attribution — but the same stunt would have gotten him in serious trouble if he'd been caught doing the same thing in a term paper at high school or college.

    That's the saddest, most pathetic part about this. What Wingard did is pretty common: among lazy high school students and undergraduates. Apparently, the dog ate Wingard's attribution before he gave the speech.

  • (Show?)

    That was supposed to be a link

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/feb/21/gordon-brown-rage-despair

  • (Show?)

    Oh, really?

    Historically, at least going back to Andrew Jackson, I thought that was what the Democratic Party was, i.e., the party that protected the folks that other people thought were trash. (True, in Jackson's days, that didn't include blacks and native Americans, but I would think today's Democrats would be inclusive.)

    Certainly I never thought Democrats referred to any group of people as "trash" in a pejorative sense. Of course, in the new Rahm Emanuel Democratic Party, maybe I'm wrong.

  • Richard (unverified)
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    Teresa,

    Have you applied your concern for the "spreading lies if you never get called on backing them up becoming a serious societal problem" to Bill Bradbury who tells school children Global Warming is causing ocean dead zones off the coast of Oregon?

    That claim is far worse than this thread's ridiculous example of lying. With Bill Bradbury he is knowingly contradicting the very OSU research which then OSU professor Jane Lubchenco conducted. Research which resulted in the OSU researchers themselves "cautioning they were unable to establish the extent of the link, if any, to global warming".

    But for some reason all of the regular BO conritbutors do not care how egregious a fabrication is when it fits a blue agenda.

    Are you at all offended by Lubchenco's fabrication and distribution of the Dead Zone link to AGW? You should be. Atter all you're sensitive to lying becoming a societal problem, right?

  • Joshua Welch (unverified)
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    Jack:

    Let me be perfectly clear. When I say trash, I mean Republican's like Wingard and others like him who we saw at the CPAC circus and who make up a huge portion of the GOP.

    Do you really want to talk about inclusiveness coming from the party of mostly old white homophobic men? I heard CPAC doubled their attendance of African Americans this year to six. If you want to know what inclusiveness looks like you will need to attend some Democratic events.

    Speaking of inclusiveness, did you hear the new Republican Governor from Virginia made an executive order allowing the state to fire people for being gay? You see what I mean Jack..........trash, garbage, scum, choose your expletive.

  • (Show?)

    Ding! Ding! Ding! What Jack Roberts said.

    Wingard's public meltdown under the pressure from the "blogger in the basement" is, of course, a nice treat, and is clearly enticing to anyone on the left. I suppose that's the reason people overplay their hands on stuff like this -- hoping the target will come out swinging wild, calling names and lying to cover up their alleged misdeed.

    But overplaying your hand comes with a very real cost. There are lots of people out there whose general impression is that politics is just dirty, a bunch of people pointing fingers and making speeches over a bunch of inside baseball, inconsequential crap. This should not be news to anybody.

    Raking a Wingard over the coals for something that really just isn't a big deal is not a way to score political points with the general public; it just makes you (and your blog, and whatever you're associated with -- liberalism, progressivism, Democratic Party) look bad.

  • Admiral Naismith (unverified)
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    Wait...Wingard blogs in his underwear from his mom's house?

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    Joshua, I don't want to enable your hijacking of this thread, but while I'm not a CPAC Republican, I'm proud that they invited GOProud (a gay conservative group) and booed the speaker who criticized them for doing so.

    Labeling those folks trash reflects on you, not them.

  • Glen Geller (unverified)
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    I received an email from the husband of a Sherwood School District staffer saying that the Sherwood Town Hall with Sen George & Rep Wingard (now canceled) was promoted via the School District email to district employees. I think that if that's actually true, that it's pretty unethical, and I wonder how legal it is. Sounds like a great topic for the investigative journalists at Blue Oregon to examine, and scoop those guys at WW.

  • Bronch O'Humphrey (unverified)
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    Richard, Theresa is a lawyer. FYI.

    Scott, thank you so much. My eyes glazed over and I scrolled down until I found your wonderfully concise synopsis.

    Finally, I still don't know what Jack Roberts is driving at. It's like after 8 years not running for office and actually being rational, he's now ready to just jump on the GOP line and tip his hat to Bob Tiernan. Fascinating. Roberts-Huffman GOP senatorial primary? Pass the popcorn.

  • Joshua Welch (unverified)
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    Jack:

    I just remembered where I first saw you. Around 2003 I attended a debate at the U of O about the movement to buy local. One gentleman discussed all great benefits of supporting local biz.......more money stays in the community, you know the facts. And surprise, you were there arguing how awesome it is to support national box-store chains. You Republicans, always looking out for the little guy.

    I'm guilty of painting w/ too broad of a brush sometimes. That said, I know Conservatives....I grew up w/ them and worked w/ them for many years. What exactly do you call people who champion discrimination and environmental devastation, and who almost always take the side of corporate America over the common good?

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    Joshua, you obviously didn't understand what I was saying at the sustainability conference at the UO in 2003, why should I think you'd understand any reply I posted to you now?

  • Joshua Welch (unverified)
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    "Joshua, you obviously didn't understand what I was saying at the sustainability conference at the UO in 2003, why should I think you'd understand any reply I posted to you now?

    You're right, the problem is we just don't understand Republicans.

    Let me see if I understood this. When the bigot CPAC invited to speak made a bigoted comment, some people booed and some people didn't.

    When war criminal Dick Cheney came to the stage they cheered wildly.

    When Glenn Beck spoke and talked about progressivism being a cancer, they cheered.

    Did I understand that correctly Jack?

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    Josh, does all your blah blah have any sort of a point to it?

  • RDurig (unverified)
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    Why do you endlessly attach Matt, he is try to reduce Government waste, to help our society why do you treat him as an enemy, why don't we try to solve problems first, put science before solutions, put in high standards, no it arrears the people on this site like to attack like a junk yard dog.

  • RDurig (unverified)
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    sorry for incorrectly spelling appears

  • Nick Christensen (unverified)
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    I never went to J-school, so anu inflammatory ledes (kudos on spelling it right!!!) are completely organic.

    I've been bragging all morning about being a provincial jerkweed. Wonder if I can get that on my business cards.

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    Apparently Jack Roberts is reduced to an "I'm rubber and you're glue" moment. And here I thought that was only for the Fourth Grade.

    That's quite a playground monitor role you're sporting.

  • Dylan (unverified)
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    How empty must Jack Roberts life be that he is able to post several hundred comments every day on Blue Oregon? Jack, if you are not earning a paycheck I feel really bad for you, but not too bad because I am tired of seeing your blatherings fill up the comment threads. So tired in fact that I wish I had voted for you for Oregon Supreme Court.

    I couldn't imagine spending my golden years reading and responding to conservatives on some conservative blog. Go out and by an RV or something.

    I don't mind diversity of thought but there is nothing diverse about reading dozens of comments by the same person. No one is that interesting.

  • Betsy O (unverified)
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    Wingard is a plagiarist, and a global warming denier and facilitator. He's setting us up to cost the economy 5-20% of our GDP by helping stall a response to the climate crisis.

    Caught in his moment of plagiarism, he resorts to childhood name-calling, making up lies about Kari - one of the nation's leading professionals in political web work.

    I guess he couldn't hit Kari over the head with a screwdriver.

  • Ms Mel Harmon (unverified)
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    Reader: "Nobody expects there to be any standard of ethical, intellectual, or moral integrity in anything a politician says"

    Maybe YOU don't, but I certainly expect it. I may not GET IT sometimes, but I damn well expect it. The fact that you don't says a lot about your opinion of politics...and why you'd spend your time on a political blog.

  • Ms Mel Harmon (unverified)
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    Sorry, meant to say "....and MAKES ME WONDER why you'd spend your time on a political blog."

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    Yet he also has not yet accounted for the minor changes he made in a couple of spots. So he either plagiarized and lied about it, or was lying about what the Washington Times article actually said and lying about failure to attribute the source. Which is it?

    Because he wasn't just reading into the record the Washington Times piece and failed to make an attribution, since he wasn't accurately reading what the Times piece said either. He injected some other stuff, and basically passing it off as his own.

    His after-the-fact excuses expose the lies over his plagiarism.

  • mp97303 (unverified)
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    an ultimately meaningless yet easy to take shot at the right garners 243 comments while other more important matters barely garner a peep.

    Sad commentary on us!

  • Patrick Story (unverified)
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    The fury in the rant of careful reader is alarming. Reminds me of recent news stories in which people recall--too late--that there were warning signs.

  • Ed Bickford (unverified)
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    Some have called these posts ultimately meaningless, but the shallowness is held more by those commenters, I'd say. Considering the scientific nature of the subject of Rep. Wingard's speech, the lack of attribution and fidelity to the original text looms large.

    When addressing matters such as Global Climate Change the Republicans have repeatedly sought to deny valid scientific fact via citation of the work of unqualified or politically compromised authorities, and therefore have earned a healthy skepticism from audiences and increased scrutiny of their sources.

    The instances attending Rep. Wingard's recent speech mark him out as an unethical hack, unable to cope with the demands of making policy regarding complex scientific matters.

    I'd like to remind those discouraging people like Jack Roberts to contribute comments that trying to make BlueOregon into a liberal echo-chamber will result in a stale and uncritical site that will interest no one.

  • Pedro (unverified)
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    Matt Wingard is painted into a corner. He is a victim of his own lies. Let's count:

    Lie #1: Somebody, either an energy industry lobbyist or the Cascade Policy Institute hands Wingard a document that slams climate change science. Wingard reads the copy into the House record with no attribution.

    Kari applies a new technology named Google to Wingard's speech and quickly determines that a plagiarism has occured.

    Lie #2: When asked about the plagiarism, Wingard states he was just reading from one of the two plagiarised columns.

    Matt - Stop lying. Just come clean. Tell the truth. Who really wrote the speech?

  • Zarathustra (unverified)
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    It's hard to pick the most nauseating camp on this; arbiters of selective ethics, career liars or the dittoheads. mp's comment could apply to every discussion on this blog. As often noted there is an inverse relationship between the merit of discussing the issue and number of responses.

    Are any willing to consider that what is in contention is a valid difference about expectations? I'm just talking about the initial plagiarism claim, not all the knock on jockeying. Plagiarism only exists where there is an expectation that the individual is to produce original material. If, as an instructor, I ask a student to produce an essay to demonstrate their understanding of some concept, I clearly expect that to be their own work. When a PR spokesperson reads a press release, one doesn't have any such expectation, and it's not called plagiarism, even though it's unattributed and read as if it were their own statements. Some of the posters expect original content from reps, others don't, expecting that ghost writers and staffers do most the hard work anyway. If it is plagiarism, then he's failing to meet standards that he may not accept, and that may reflect the feelings of his constituency.

    I think this is a like a lot of the "look at what the idiot did" posts, that are right that something outrageous has happened, but don't seem to nail exactly what was outrageous about it. Rewind to Paula's bakery, where the only valid point was about using an out of state production company, not that video was shot in California, instead of on location.

    In this case my take is that the scummy bit about what he did was actively hiding the attribution, because it was not up to spec. It seemed very, very much like an exchange between a lawyer and a witness that we've all seen on the telly, that goes something like, "You never liked him, you did what you could to destroy him and when he died I'm sure you partied all night long". "Objection...", and before the judge can even say "sustained" the lawyer volunteers, "I withdraw the question". Is the lawyer ignorant of the rules of evidence? Not know what badgering the witness is? Making an error a newbie paralegal wouldn't make? Of course not. It's a cheap trick to get some verbiage in front of the jury.

    That's what Wingard did. He had a cheap shot that, if presented with attribution, would never have gotten a hearing. You read his retort and it has been echoed here by all his little dittoheads, "deal with the content". That was the plan. Skip right over the fact that it's no better than a senile crazy shouting warnings, and get right on with the debate. Let all his dittoheads think that debate was squelched by bringing up a technicality. Totally different than if they had to say, "yeah, he tried to bring up some good data, but the pointy headed intellectuals wouldn't let him speak". The average person hears that as "what he was going to say was crap". Which is the case. He didn't give attribution so he could get it in the record first.

    Sound familiar? A bit like TEA protesters going to town halls so they can shout some line and be edified that it was heard at the meeting? That's what he was doing. Shouting something inane before anyone could regain control of the debate. In TEA circles that probably makes you a patriot. Of course in the real world, their tactics are just rude.

    What we don't need, as rebuttal is stuff like:

    Posted by: Betsy O | Feb 23, 2010 12:49:21 PM

    Wingard is a plagiarist

    The noun heresy. A favorite since the Norman invasion. I propose that intellectual integrity means never using a noun were a verb construction will suffice. "He committed plagiarism" (by your expectations), doesn't carry the same weight, does it? That extra weight the noun carries is fraudulent, and just as much a verbal trick as not giving attribution.

    Quoting? Attributing? Reporting?

    Posted by: Kari Chisholm | Feb 23, 2010 8:06:00 AM

    Excerpting?

    All those phrases connote summarizing, which implies leaving the basic meaning unchanged. "Clearly unethical". Pretty clear. Says that he did something a rep shouldn't do. Not accepted practice. "There have been a number of times that a public official makes a public speech from something else without carefully disclosing it...If we started monitoring that and calling every instance plagiarism, we'd be doing little else." That says "not atypical", and "not a basis for reprimand". Personally I don't find it any more acceptable to take words out of context or twist them than to fail to attribute a direct quote. They're opposite approaches to the same goal, namely, to make a statement not supported by the facts.

    It has nothing to do with pulling punches. "What would Bill Maher do"? He would have lambasted the content, applauded the rebuttal, and said, "by the way, maybe it's just me, but he didn't attribute it, and I call that plagiarism, and it's the reason I want to see his enemies dancing on his political grave until they get leg cramps". Makes the same points, pushes back just as hard, and doesn't have to render him as an inhuman noun, conveniently available for future linguistic abuse. After all, a blog is supposed to be your personal web log. The posting was. All the brew-ha-ha been of trying to make that personal experience objective.

    Oh, it, and critique of the Oregonian, have garnered some first class publicity for Blueoregon. That's not a cut. I think it's stupid when people try to interpret friggin' Shakespeare, even, as pure art, without commercial considerations. It's just friendly advice to note the number of very creative individuals that have degenerated into cranking out boring clones of their big breakthrough, never recapturing the original thunder.

    Posted by: Jack Roberts | Feb 23, 2010 11:13:54 AM

    Joshua, you obviously didn't understand what I was saying at the sustainability conference at the UO in 2003, why should I think you'd understand any reply I posted to you now?

    You just did. Does anyone care about making their case, or just scoring points?

    I have a new UD entry. "mal de blog" (borrowing from "mal de mer", or seasickness). It is that nauseated, there-is-no-hope feeling, that comes on after reading blogging that doesn't exactly cover the medium in glory.

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    Wow, Zarathustra. You totally and completely nailed exactly my perspective on this entire thing. Wouldn't change a word. Nice job.

    If I hadn't already given all my "dings" to Jack, they'd be yours.

  • Careful Reader (unverified)
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    Theresa Kohlhoff:

    Careful Reader, if Blue Oregon and its readers are stupid, stop coming to this site.

    I may be an old dog, but plagiarism is big in my book.

    Look missy (or should I say "obnoxiously white, self-entitled, upper-middle-class, putz"), these people are engaged in advocacy to affect governance in Oregon. And they are devaluing what it means to be liberal/progressive/Democratic party in the process. Exposing them (and you when you write this kind of juvenile idiocy) for the embarrassment that they are is part of our role as citizens in an representative democracy.

    Somebody else indicates you are a lawyer, well clearly you aren't a lawyer that deals with IP or ethics in domains like journalism and academia where the term "plagiarism" has an actual definition, as I noted and Zarathustra also pointed out. You need to spend more time cleaning up your own profession, as we see with the Bybee, Yoo, Margolis situation, not that you have the chops to do that. Kari's at least rationalizes his deficiencies that he's not been to J-school, indicating that we shouldn't give undue weight to his arguments, what's yours?

    Reader: "Nobody expects there to be any standard of ethical, intellectual, or moral integrity in anything a politician says"

    Maybe YOU don't, but I certainly expect it. I may not GET IT sometimes, but I damn well expect it. The fact that you don't says a lot about your opinion of politics...and why you'd spend your time on a political blog.

    And you missy, are a typical ignorant, self-entitled BO fool. What makes you think you have the right "to expect" anything, which here generally translates into that everybody is supposed to comply with your self-centered expectations? Particularly in our representative democracy where the Founders gave us the First Amendment precisely because there is no right of you or anybody else to presume to impose your standard of ethics on political discourse? (In fact, they recognized the dangers of the pseudo-educated as much or more than the dangers of the uneducated mob or the aristocracy - many of whom were pseudo-educated.) As far as your dumb comment about a political blog, read the previous paragraph.

    Zarathustra -

    Plagiarism only exists where there is an expectation that the individual is to produce original material.

    You're 95% of the way there, that's why I made the distinction of academia and journalism. You left out a few critical point, that even in contexts where there is an informally accepted concept of "plagiarism", even that depends on whether:

    1) The material has passed into popular culture (e.g. "quotable quotes" where attribution no longer is relevant).

    2) The original author, if known, has given the right to be quoted without attribution. In academia the intended audience may or may not accept that license, they claim to themselves they have a secondary goal, enforced through a paycheck, of holding the original authors intellectually accountable. The public has no such right, the above two self-entitled, privileged, commenters aside.

    3) Work-for-hire where attribution is a negotiated right.

    "Plagiarism" only exists in contexts where it has been defined and, as already noted, that's pretty much just academia and journalism. Our legislators steal like thieves from the suggestions of the special interests who own them, and that includes the Democratic majority these days.

  • Careful Reader (unverified)
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    And by the way, artists plagiarize all the time as part of passing on our culture. It's only when the lawyers and money got involved (are you paying attention Theresa) that issues of copyrights and plagiarism became the corrupt mess that they are.

  • Humphrey (unverified)
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    Not sure if anyone will make it to this post... certainly wouldn't be worth it to wade all the way down here...

    I just wanted to point out that it is entirely possible Wingard didn't intentionally commit plagiarism. As many here have noted, politicians routinely give speeches written by speechwriters. Maybe Wingard's staffer plagiarized the speech and passed it off to Wingard as original. So, it could be Wingard's only lapse was hiring a lazy, unethical staffer, and of course lying to cover up the whole embarrassing mess.

  • Ed Bickford (unverified)
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    Humphrey it's not hard to wade down here; just skip the comments that start with name-calling or describing how nauseating the blog is to them, and you're here in no time!

    <h2>I maintain that Rep. Wingard's unethical means of making his contribution, however paltry, to the debate on Global Climate Change conforms to the modus operandi of his party when confronted with scientific facts detrimental to their partisan agenda. That makes this very unlikely to be inadvertent.</h2>

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