Comments on: The McCain Plagiarism Scandal

By: Mz Badu

Mz Badu — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 01:06:06 +0000

Comparison one and two I believe it is paraphrased, comparison 3 may have been patchwork plagiarism. The wording isn’t the same, it appears to be in his own words.

By: The George W. Bush Plagiarism Controversy | PlagiarismToday

The George W. Bush Plagiarism Controversy | PlagiarismToday — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 16:15:22 +0000

[...] has already left the limelight. For example, during the 2008 Presidential campaign, Barack Obama, John McCain and Joe Biden all faced allegations of plagiarism.However, Huffington Post author Ryan Grim [...]

By: Va1babygirl

Va1babygirl — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 12:48:00 +0000

Yes. I agree to what is being said here. Because in his speech it should have been said what he was quoting from (his sources) and then people would not be analyzing him. But McCain is not to blame, it's staff. They are the ones who do the reseach and should have known better. McCain should before going out there on his own read there work and if he feels like it sounds like a fraud then it probably is. He needs to try writing his speeches from scratch and at the end state where he got all his sources from and knowledge them. But really how we to judge anything about the next person cause everybody has "PLAGIARISED" something whether it's a small quote in a letter or even saying your vows in a wedding ceremony.

By: Some Quick Thoughts about the HuffPo Scandal - PlagiarismToday

Some Quick Thoughts about the HuffPo Scandal - PlagiarismToday — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 16:23:43 +0000

[...] regularly know that I have no political axe to grind. During the election, I wrote about the Obama, McCain and Biden plagiarism scandals. Of the three, the only one I found any merit in was the Biden one [...]

By: kathleen bell

kathleen bell — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 19:12:46 +0000

Interesting to hear McCain plagiarise what is, in Britain, a very famous speech from Winston Churchill in last night's debates. In 1942 Churchill spoke of the turning of the tide in World War II after the Battle of El Alamein: "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." The speech was given on 10 November 1942 at the Lord Mayor of London's banquet at the Mansion House.

see
http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/Endo...
and
http://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index...

By: kathleen bell

kathleen bell — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 15:12:46 +0000

Interesting to hear McCain plagiarise what is, in Britain, a very famous speech from Winston Churchill in last night's debates. In 1942 Churchill spoke of the turning of the tide in World War II after the Battle of El Alamein: "This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." The speech was given on 10 November 1942 at the Lord Mayor of London's banquet at the Mansion House.see http://www.churchill-society-london.org.uk/Endo.....andhttp://www.winstonchurchill.org/i4a/pages/index.....

By: The Politics of Plagiarism - PlagiarismToday

The Politics of Plagiarism - PlagiarismToday — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 17:07:31 +0000

[...] the opportunity to report on a series of plagiarism scandals. The first involved Obama, the second McCain and, finally a rehashing of the Biden Scandal from the [...]

By: zzazzeefrazzee

zzazzeefrazzee — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 20:19:16 +0000

What McCain did was to paraphrase these sources. Since he never credited them, that counts as plagiarism.

By: Jonathan Bailey

Jonathan Bailey — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 17:42:34 +0000

Comedy potential, yes. Unfortunately, not much else.

Of course, one could disprove the plagiarism by simply realizing that Wikipedia on the Web. McCain's never been there…

By: Conrad Dunkerson

Conrad Dunkerson — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 12:50:41 +0000

I still find it difficult to believe there is not some connection.

Consider the following sentence from McCain's speech;

"After a brief period of independence following the Russian revolution, the Red Army forced Georgia to join the Soviet Union in 1922."

Eighteen of the twenty-two words in that sentence (all but "following", "forced", and "to join") appear, with the same meaning, in the corresponding passage from the Wikipedia entry. To me that looks like minor condensing and copy-editing of the sort one would expect from a good speechwriter. Could it be a coincidence? It seems a stretch, but within the realm of possibility . Add in "one of the ... first ... to adopt Christianity as an official religion" appearing in both, and even 'Comparison 3' having the same facts in essentially the same order and it becomes difficult to believe that this was entirely an original work.

BTW, if you wanted to try those automated comparison tools;

McCain's speech is at:
http://www.johnmccain.com/Informing/News/PressR...

The state of the Wikipedia article on the day prior to his speech is at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Georg...

Of course, since the passages quoted above contain most of the Georgian history references in McCain's speech, there may still not be enough material on the subject for an automated analysis.