As I predicted, the editors of the Obamagraph rejected my letter regarding Sarah Hunt’s cut-and-pasted form letter. And as I also predicted, they instead published a letter by one of their favorites, Frank Gadbois.
And I thank them for that. Really. They couldn’t have given me a better present.
You see, Frankie Boy’s been bad. It’s called PLAGIARISM and he’s GUILTY! His letter was taken directly from Sarah and Her Tribe by Jonathan Raban. Mr. Raban has been notified of the plagiarism, by the way.
I’m now going to go through Frank Gadbois’ letter of Sunday 14 February and compare it line by line to ‘Sarah and Her Tribe’.
Watching Sarah Palin on Saturday night, I heard her familiar, threadbare homilies about free enterprise, tax cuts, patriotism, the evil of government spending, (1) and all the accumulated grievances of the heartland and the West. (2) Her appeal to “real Americans” toward the “East Coast elites” (3) and the strong resistance of states’ rights proponents to “the feds.” (4)
Her nasal voice (5) was punctuated with “darn,” “heck,” “geez,” “bullcrap” and “bassackwards.” (6) Her voice is clearly unspoiled by much formal education but laden with tiresome truisms and cliches. (7) Sarah is painfully shallow despite the best efforts of her speech writers to produce hundreds of one-liners.
Sarah’s anti-tax rhetoric and hypocritical dislike of “federal dollars” can’t hide the fact that Alaska is No. 1 in per capita federal expenditures. (8)
Sarah fails to see her mythical hometown “Wasilla” as a sad eyesore and a big ugly strip mall that is known by state troopers as the crystal meth capital of Alaska. (9)
“Going Rogue” has been accurately described as a “four-hundred-page paean to virtuous ignorance.” (10)
Its author is a “bright, intensely willful, energetic, but academically mediocre housewife and salmon-fisher.”(11) Fact-checkers from the AP have uncovered scores of inaccuracies and “lies” in “Going Rogue.” (12)
Palin and her “commonsense conservatism” are a living testament to herself as the model pro-life mother. (13)
And now the corresponding portions of ‘Sarah and Her Tribe’ from which Frankie Boy stole his material:
(1) (2) (3) (4) She managed to endow her threadbare homilies about free enterprise, tax cuts, patriotism, and the evil of government spending with the novelty of her own sudden, fresh-faced presence on the national scene. Most of all, she seemed to embody in her person and her life story the accumulated grievances of the heartland and the West: the resentment in the countryside and the exurbs against the liberal tyranny of the big cities; the antipathy of those she calls “real Americans” toward the “East Coast elites”; the surly resistance of states’ rights proponents to “the Feds.”
(5) (6) (7) Her nasal voice, pitched in the upper register, with the upsy-downsy, singsong delivery of a kindergarten teacher, became, rather improbably, a great electoral asset. Her diction and accent were shaped more by class than region, and spiced with faux-genteel cuss words like “dang,” “heck,” “darn,” “geez,” “bullcrap,” and “bass-ackwards.” It was a voice unspoiled by overmuch formal education and boldly unafraid of truisms and clichés…
(8) (9) Her anti-tax rhetoric (private citizens spend their money more wisely than government does) and disdain for “federal dollars” were unembarrassed by the fact that Alaska tops the tables of both per capita federal expenditure, on which one in three jobs in the state depends, and congressional earmarks, or “pork.” So, too, she mythicized the straggling eyesore of Wasilla (described by a current councilwoman there as “like a big ugly strip mall from one end to the other”) as the bucolic small town of sentimental American memory. Listening to Palin talk about it, one was invited to inspect not the string of oceanic parking lots attached to Fred Meyer, Lowe’s, Target, Wal-Mart, and Home Depot, or the town’s reputation among state troopers as the crystal meth capital of Alaska…
(10) Going Rogue, in other words, is a four-hundred-page paean to virtuous ignorance.
(11) No wonder she found political elections irresistible, and basketball, with its multiple opportunities for tactical cheating, in the way of well-executed pushes, jersey-pullings, bumpings, and “flops,” supplies a fitting analogy for how the bright, intensely willful, energetic, but academically mediocre housewife and salmon-fisher gamed her way from the Wasilla city council to the gubernatorial mansion in Juneau.
(12) Fact-checkers from the Associated Press and several tireless bloggers have uncovered scores of inaccuracies and “lies” in Going Rogue.
(13) …and everywhere parading her Down’s syndrome son, Trig, along with her most photogenic daughter, Piper, as living testaments to herself as the model pro-life mother.
As my fellow pilgrim in an unholy land, Detcord, put it so eloquently: “Charlatan!”
Frank Gadbois should be ashamed! Plagiarism is stealing, plain and simple. It is taking the work of another without permission and, by signing his name to it, passing it off as his own.
***EDITED TO ADD THIS UPDATE***
I contacted George McCanless and he replied to my email. Mr. McCanless assured me that the Telegraph takes charges of plagiarism very seriously and will thoroughly investigate the charges I’ve made against Frank Gadbois.
So Frank Gadbois claims the fruits of someone else’s labor as his own and then used them to achieve his own selfish ends, and we are supposed to be surprised? This is what liberals do, you see. Lacking principle, the liberal has no compunction about doing this so long as it advances his agenda. Lacking shame, Gadbois will, I have no doubt, be heard from again. How many of his past letters have been rip-offs, too?
I’m embarrassed for Gadbois. Though he hailed from Bizarro World, I found him an educated and worthy (and misguided) adversary that often made me think. Truly a loss as there is now one more contributor to the volume level of the unintelligible background noise produced by the left.