Now That’s Plagiarism
After allegations and counter allegations of plagiarism flew between the Clinton and Obama campaigns earlier this month, an actual case of plagiarism hit the news cycle today that makes questions about Barack Obama lifting words from one of his campaign co-chairs and Hillary Clinton borrowing phrases from her husband seem like small potatoes.
Tim Goeglein, a senior White House aide, admitted copying from a ten-year-old essay by Jeffrey Hart. Goeglein’s plagiarized article appeared in The Fort Wayne News-Sentinel.
In an email to The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette, Goeglein came clean, writing, “I am entirely at fault. It was wrong of me. There are no excuses.” Goeglein also said that he wrote to Hart and apologized.
So far, no word on whether Goeglein will resign his post, director of the White House office of public liaison. Paul Kiel of Talking Points Memo describes what Goeglein does at the White House. “[H]e’s tasked with serving as the “pipeline” to the president for the administration’s ‘most conservative supporters,’ as New York Times and Washington Post profiles put it,” Kiel wrote.
Blogger Mitch Harper of Fort Wayne, Observed says his blog is a “friend” to both Goeglein and the blogger who caught Goeglein by googling his work (well, actually not really his work), blogger Nancy Nall. Harper sums up how it went down.
UPDATE: Goeglein’s resigning.