White House Official Caught in Plagiarism Scandal
By Rogers Cadenhead
Friday, February 29, 2008 at 01:07 PM
A White House official who serves as President Bush's liaison to the religious community has been caught plagiarizing a column that he writes for an Indiana newspaper. Tim Goeglein, deputy director of the White House Office of Public Liaison, admitted that portions of a column he wrote today for the Fort Wayne News-Sentinel were copied from an article written several years ago by Jeffrey Hart in the Dartmouth Review.
"It is true," Goeglein told Fort Wayne's Journal Gazette newspaper in an e-mail. "I am entirely at fault. It was wrong of me. There are no excuses."
Other columns by Goeglein also have contained plagiarized passages, News-Sentinel Editor Kerry Hubartt announced. "Goeglein has admitted that portions of the column were used from another source without attribution. We have found material in at least two other previous guest columns lifted from other sources without attribution and are continuing to check other previous submissions."
Goeglein's plagiarism was revealed this morning by blogger Nancy Nall, who identified close similarities in numerous paragraphs of Goeglein's commentary about college education to Hart's Dartmouth piece.
"Tim Goeglein ... is a plagiarist," announced Nall. "Not an accidental or delicate one, either."
Compare these passages in Goeglein's column to Hart's original:
Hart: It can scarcely be challenged that the United States is part of the narrative of European history.
Goeglein: It can hardly be challenged that the United States of America is part of the narrative of European history.
Hart: Our language, legal tradition, political arrangements derive, and demonstrably so, from England.
Goeglein: Our language, literature, legal tradition, political arrangements derive, demonstrably, from England.
Goeglein, a former TV news producer and communications director for Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.), is a graduate of the Ernie Pyle School of Journalism at Indiana University.
A 2004 New York Times profile described Goeglein as then-Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove's "legman on the right," a liaison between Christian conservatives and the administration.
"He listens well and he is able to synthesize what he hears, so he is a good guy for getting a lay of the land and hearing what people are saying," Rove told the Times. "For a movement that tends to be a little fractious at times, this is a guy who crosses all kinds of lines."
Nall, the blogger who caught Goeglein, is a former journalist at the News-Sentinel who has written about him before. "I've had a lot of fun at Tim Goeglein’s expense over the last few months," she writes. "In his columns for The News-Sentinel, my old newspaper, he personifies a certain sort of apple-cheeked Hoosier drippiness, which undoubtedly masks a core of white-hot ambition."
Comments
Goeglein, a former TV news producer and communications director for Sen. Dan Coats (R-Ind.), is a graduate of the Ernie Pyle School of Journalism at Indiana University
The Ernie Pyle School of Journalism? More like the Gomer Pyle school if'n ya asks me! Where did he find the stuff to plagarise? Prolly used the same resource that Nancy Nall, bogga gal extrodinaire, used to unmask his shameful ways. ie. Teh Google!
Now whenever Spud encounters this heir to Jayson Blair Spud's gonna refer to him as Tim Googlin', you know ...just fer giggles.
Spud luffs a good giggle. Laws yes.
Be Well.
/The goggles, they do nuthin'.
ummmm, umm, SCUZE ME!, pardon me, BUT,
Chimptitude McHolypants, let me get this straight, TALKS TO GOD DIRECTLY, and GOD TALKS BACK!, and THEN, DEAREST pRESIDENT needs a "liaison to the religious community"????!!!??
Is that a government official POSITION?
ARE WE PAYING FOR THAT?????
Doesn't that kind of miss the point of BEING IN a "religious community"????
Even GOD? can't do anything to help George The Lessor MAKE ANY FRICKING SENSE WHEN HE TALKS?????!!!??? to others, most especially the "religious community"????!!!!! I think I'm getting this straight, but it's sooooooo VERY Twilight Zone!
siri@legitgov.org
www.legitgov.org
Well, he's resigned now. Not that it matters--there's an endless line of these people waiting to break into the show biz that we call national politics.
This is a guy who met almost daily with Karl Rove, was assigned to go to both the Norquist breakfast and the Weyrich lunch, and came into apparently frequent contact with Our Feckless Leader HIMSELF.
He was praised highly by Ralph Reed ("Tim's just flat-out the best I've ever seen at this job, and I've seen them all") and Chuckie Colson ("My experience has been a lot of times when we have had serious questions and we needed administration backing to get them through...if we call Tim, all of a sudden things get through").
If you can be known by the company you keep....
The most absurd part of Goeglein's public persona, to me, was his professed admiration for Ernie Pyle and Edward R. Murrow, who he claimed to be his heroes in the world of journalism.
Edward R. Murrow? The famous journalist who said that "No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices" idolized by a PR shill in the administration of the president who has done his level best to terrorize a whole nation?
Maybe he lifted his statement about admiring Pyle and Murrow?