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Monday, August 18, 2008
Did McCain plagiarize one of his POW stories?
Some are now claiming that John McCain plagiarized one of the stories he told during the Faith Forum at Saddleback. In particular, it's the story of how one of the guards at the POW camp marked a cross in the dirt on Christmas Day to secretly communicate to McCain that he was also a Christian. An admittedly bad quality video of that moment in the forum is posted below.
Andrew Sullivan and someone at Daily Kos are suggesting McCain lifted it from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. author of "The Gulag Archipelago" (does this mean some leftists are actually reading that stirring work of anti-communism?) The fact that McCain has written extensively on Solzhenitsyn (did you know that? I didn't!) has heightened suspicions.
Anyway, in the Solzhenitsyn story, it's a prisoner, not a guard, who draws the cross, so it's not a perfect match. More importantly, why is it so hard for people to believe that Christians might... you know... use the sign of a cross to identify each other in hostile environments? Are some so out of touch with Christianity and its history to not realize that Christians have drawn symbols to secretly identify each other in the past?
In response to the accusation that McCain stole the story, his campaign found someone who was held in a prison camp alongside the candidate to confirm that McCain's been telling this story for a long time.
Michael Goldfarb, one of McCain's staff, also had some disparaging remarks for the "the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd" (yes, he actually said that) who have fastened on to this issue.
Meanwhile, in certain corners, Democrats are convinced that the plagiarism accusations are going to bring down McCain's campaign. I kind of doubt it. In fact, if I were them, I'd drop this issue, unless they can come up with a lot more evidence for their position.
Posted by Terrence Watson on August 18, 2008 | Permalink
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Comments
This is a minor issue and I can accept that there has been more than one person who has drawn a cross in the sand to send a message. One of them may be the very person John McCain mentioned.
On the other hand, Obama is pretending he is a statesman and has what it takes to be the president. Now that's plagiarism.
Shades of "The Great Pretender".
Posted by: John V | 2008-08-18 5:16:47 PM
These allegations of plagiarism, like the ones that he had plagiarised Wikipedia are not just nonsense, they are nonsense upon stilts. They are also exactly the kind of thing that Adam Yoshida has come to specialize in here at the WS. But no serious people (including most voters) are paying any attention.
But I do wonder if Obama does pick Joe Biden to be his running mate whether this smear attempt will come back around. Biden, of course, was knocked out of the 1988 presidential race when he was accused of plagiarising then British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock. That accusation, too, ultimately proved to be nonsense upon stilts. But I am sure there are people ready to seriously claim that it is true if he is chosen for VP. Adam? This would be your cue....
Posted by: Fact Check | 2008-08-18 5:30:59 PM
Unfortunately, the so-called right has no claim to Solzhenitsyn and "The Gulag Archipelago."
Like Orwell, Huxley and Atwood, Solzhenitsyn was a great critic of totalitarianism but not an authentic voice of classical liberalism. He also had some troubling nationalist tendencies.
Posted by: Matthew Johnston | 2008-08-18 5:36:54 PM
Matthew,
I'd heard about some of that. At the same time, what I've read of "Gulag" (and no, I haven't read all of both volumes) should provoke sympathy for the victims of totalitarian regimes and rage against arrogant would-be totalitarians.
At least, I'd hope so :-).
Fact Check,
Nonsense upon stilts, indeed. Good question about Biden, though. I've heard rumors about him being the pick, and apparently he's received a top slot at the convention.
Best,
Terrence
Posted by: Terrence Watson | 2008-08-18 5:47:39 PM
McCain is not above borrowing from other sources as evidenced by his theft of Jackson Browne and John Mellencamp songs, and stealing his foreign policy speeches right off the pages of Wikipedia.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/08/jackson-browne.html
http://www.alternet.org/blogs/peek/94652/did_mccain_lift_his_russia-georgia_speech_from_wikipedia/
Regarding honor among POW, McCain lost his many years ago when he worked to shut down all further investigation of remaining MIA/POW in order to open up trade with Vietnam. His father-in-law immediately opened up a beer industry there.
www.aiipowmia.com/testimony/
Posted by: MsSwin | 2008-08-18 7:47:17 PM
The McCain website released a statement from Swindle saying he remembered McCain telling him the cross story in 1971.
Problem is Swindle is not telling the truth.
Get this Politco ran a story about McCain's cross story April the 4th 2008 and Swindle was specifically interviewed on the story.
“I don’t recall us talking specifically about our faith,” says Orson Swindle, one of McCain’s closest friends and a fellow POW. “We talked about our friends, families, our resistance posture, and that our country didn’t seem to have the will to win.”
Belief in a higher power helped them survive the routine torture and daily indignities, Swindle says.
“It would help us endure what we had to endure. But we knew God wasn’t going to come down and wave a magic wand.”
http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=1372E056-3048-5C12-00A06112B1C61A64
McCain is going to have to do better than Swindle on this one.
Posted by: Deward Bowles | 2008-08-18 9:04:40 PM
how about this article in the Washington Post...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120951606847454685.html?mod=opinion_main_commentaries
Posted by: kelly | 2008-08-18 10:42:55 PM
**blush** oops, that would be the Wall Street Journal, not the WaPo. my bad
Posted by: kelly | 2008-08-18 10:45:27 PM
This will be the tone of the campaign, when the anointed one gets his ass handed to him by the "old man", the Obamanite's will crawl out from under their rocks with the personal attacks and all the allegations of lying and cheating.
The whole time the stammering, bumbling Obama will get the free pass. Comical really.
Posted by: deepblue | 2008-08-18 10:57:48 PM
According to McCain himself on February 28, 2000 it was 'a scared American prisoner of war in Vietnam'. It did not appear that he was talking about himself in the third person. I guess he thought the anecdote would have more impact if it was about him rather than some unknown POW.
Posted by: Jesse | 2008-08-19 8:53:00 AM
Troubling nationalist tendencies?
Now that's philo-funny.
"Solzhenitsyn’s final act of courage in the written word, Two Hundred Years Together (2003), remains unpublished in the West. It examines in a critical way the nature of the Jewish engagement in Russian life from the partial annexation of Poland in 1795 to 1916. Whilst it finds that the Revolution was not a Jewish conspiracy, it does dwell on the culpability of Jews where Jewish culpability existed. For this, of course, Solzhenitsyn has received his due measure of reflexive semitic hatred inside Russia, and his book has been very effectively frozen out in the West."
“It is impossible to find the answer to the eternal question: who is to be blamed, who led us to our death? To explain the actions of the Kiev cheka only by the fact that two-thirds were Jews, is certainly incorrect.”
Posted by: DJ | 2008-08-19 1:11:45 PM
I don't quite see what all the hoopla is about. Politicians are liars. Once in awhile we catch them. So what?
Posted by: attitude | 2008-08-19 1:20:29 PM
Don’t vote for McCain, he has the same character flaws as John Edwards an egocentric elitist who cheated on his disabled wife to divorce her for a wealthy woman. He even lied to his wife about his age and that he is separated while he was still living with his wife. And there were rumors he even cheated on her with a lobbyist Vicki Iseman. Once a cheater always a cheater so not surprisingly he was involved in the Keating Five scandal.
Now ask yourself why was he not as he promised in cone of silence but in a limousine while driving to Rick Warren!? He is not a true republican look who his friends are: Lieberman the biggest Flip-Flopper. He tells the voters what they want to hear but wait once he is in the white house then he will sow his true face. You don’t need to vote for Obama, just don’t vote for him. You don’t want a pretender who tells heart-breaking POW stories no one can verify, we don’t want a rich over 25 year full time professional politician that is like a chameleon showing different colors just to stay afloat, we don’t need another rich man that has no clue what means to make enough money to pay bills.
If you don't like Obama than DON”T VOTE! DON’T VOTE for McCain!!! DON't vote!
Posted by: Mike | 2008-08-22 10:03:08 AM
I'm not a fan of McCain.
But Mike, you sound like an Obama kool-aid drinker. Wake up. Both of them will lie to obtain power. Obama has the same rhetoric as Marx or Lenin and you love him for it.
Posted by: attitude | 2008-08-22 10:24:08 AM
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