In preparing for this really, really lucrative gig as a Hartford Business Journal columnist, I amassed a great fortune as a corporate speechwriter, for two large capitalist enterprises in Connecticut and a variety of clients hither and yon.
Through it all, speech writing, column writing, love-letter writing, grocery store shopping-list writing, no one ever told me about this “plagiarism” thing.
I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I won’t do it anymore. I’ve learned from my experience. As I would have written in the old days, without attribution to Oscar Wilde, “Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes.”
I first got an inkling that I was in trouble when Barack Obama was slapped around for “borrowing” some language from a speech by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, who, it seemed to me, had already borrowed much of the same language from Martin Luther King, the Declaration of Independence, and several stanzas of that old-time hit, “It Takes a Worried Man to Sing a Worried Song.”
You can see how complicated this all gets. How were Obama and I supposed to know that third-person, twice-removed borrowing of language is some sort of sin or something?
I think we both deserve a break. Come mothers and fathers throughout the land, and don’t criticize what you don’t understand.
I was still reeling from the Obama scandal when an aide to President George W. Bush was fired for 20 incidents of plagiarism in columns that he wrote for a newspaper in Indiana. This was really hitting close to home, as I, too, am a successful, popular, high-profile columnist who once worked for a politician (Gov. John Rowland).
President Bush said he was “disappointed” that his aide had plagiarized, which really stunned me, because, as well all know, the president plagiarized that comment from current Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell, who, on 598 different occasions, said she was “disappointed” in John Rowland for his ethics sins, real and imagined.
This really gets complicated. After all, it’s not like we could pass a law against plagiarism, although we do have a duty to curb really, really, bad, destructive, dangerous speech. The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man from falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.
The plagiarism virus is spreading. In a bit of irony that I am borrowing, in a non-plagiaristic kind of way, from writer Sean Cavanagh in Education Week newspaper, isn’t it a hoot that there are resources on the Internet services that allow you to both plagiarize with ease, while at the same time, detect plagiarism?
This kind of mistrust and cheating and inadvertent plagiarism and purposeful copying and occasional dipping is going to lead to unsolvable tension that must be addressed. A nation divided against itself cannot stand.
I think it’s important for all of us to understand that in a free and open society, we are inclined to borrow a bit from each other. As philosopher Eric Hoffer would have said, if I hadn’t said it first, when people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.
When I wrote in those CEO speeches that “employees are our most important asset,” and that the noblest purpose of any public company is to “increase shareholder value,” I had no idea that other people had already said that stuff. Who would have known?
In the newspaper business, professionals tend to protect themselves by lots of “he said-she said” kind of attribution that protects you from charges that you stole stuff. Writing techniques are often designed to protect the writer. As distinguished diplomat Dean Acheson would have said if I hadn’t already said it, a memorandum is written not to inform the reader, but to protect the writer.
But columnists are different. It is our pretty pictures attached to the articles — and every observation is expected to be fresh as a daisy. We have nothing to fear but fear itself. Cohen has learned his lesson.
I will not plagiarize. Honest. Although, there’s one way to find out if a man is honest: ask him; if he says yes, you know he is crooked. That might sound like Mark Twain, formerly of Hartford, Conn. I wouldn’t know about that. Honest.
Laurence D. Cohen is a freelance writer.
