Sunday, October 19, 2008

That Ol' Plagiarism Thingie

Since maybe just three or four people from the other place read this blog I can post on the plagiarism without a ridiculous pissing contest ensuing. And believe me...my first thought was to bust them and make a big deal in a vindictive way because the perpetrator is an obnoxious ass.

There are two actually...they have a couple's profile but the male half also has his own. The offending blog is in the couple's name (look up Baby Girl in Grubby and VA daddy Dom 64). They showed up in the blogs about a week ago and immediately began being total trolls. They began telling people what and what not to post in blogs, attacking views belligerently, making personal attacks, making threats of violence, etc, etc, etc. You know the drill.

At first I thought they were the "agent provocateur" type of troll who only pretend to be dim and angry to stir up reactions...like Andy Kaufman used to do with his wrestling shtick. Their posts were just so...well, nearly illiterate. You really had to focus to make sense of what they were attempting to say. And they took any answer to their comments as a challenge and made threats. And then the racism started.

Yeah...both sides of the couple are proud and vocal racists. A typical comment went along the lines of Obama will never be elected because "it's called the White House!"

They were so ridiculous I was certain they couldn't be for real. They seemed to be forcing a severe stereotype...I was sure it had to be a character.

Now I'm not so sure.

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This is from their blog:


"There are 107 "Historically Black" colleges whose fundamental blackness must be preserved in the name of diversity, but all historically white colleges must be forcibly integrated, to resist being labeled racism."

And this:


"More & more the Obama campaign is using violence,vandalism and intimidation as its unofficial standard operating procedure. Violence and corruption seem to go hand-in-hand with african American politics. Stories of massive vote fraud by the liberal activists group ACORN have made the news this week,and now Obama's followers seem to be getting increasingly intolerant of free speech and in some cases violent as election day nears."

This first is just one section of several take from an article...

WHAT IS RACISM? by Thomas Jackson {Originally Published in American Renaissance, Vol 2, No. 8}

Which can be found in whole....on David Duke's website. Yeah, that David Duke...former Grand Wizard of the KKK. Did I mention that the male half of this couple has said on several blogs that he's writing in Duke for President this year?

The second bit of text is one of several paragraphs taken word for word and dropped into the middle of another of their blog posts...again no quotes, no citation, no different font or text color...none of the usual things that demonstrate that something is not your own writing....taken from an article on extremely right wing, anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, white supremacy site altermedia.info:

http://us.altermedia.info/news-of-interest-to-white-people/obama-campaign-using-violence-and-intimidation_3839.html

==============

And so on.

In none of these instances do they mention they are using outside sources. They just cut and paste and weave them into their own racist rants. Most of what they've written so far is plagiarized.

It's obvious as well. When they comment on blogs they really are hard to follow...and amusing in a way some insanely, aggressively maniacal people are. For example...this is typical of their commenting:

"Stay in yankee land loser,& BTW get a real tattoo. Racist,fail to see the problem there guy. Its the WHITE HOUSE & allways will be. Guess you & all the loudmouth Leftest assholes who NEVER serverved a day in your life are allways the ones who run your mouths. Go figure there KEYBOARD RAMBO,BTW My invitatation still stands in real time there sunshine KEYBOARD RAMBO.Barack Hussein Obama a black muslim name,BTW a muslim mole to infiltrate? Go watch CNN ya asshole loser."

It's becoming more difficult to find these choice nuggets since so many people are deleting and/or banning this couple. I guess that's why they started their own blog...to combat alt's "Leftest agenda." (sic) Which is funny because their earliest comments were telling people to stop posting about politics....and to stop censoring the right wing (I guess they knew they'd be so obnoxious as to get banned time and again? Because they made the accusations, obviously, before anyone banned them) while in their own blog they have it set to approve comments...which they don't and leave them hidden in pending.

When their own blog thoughts became coherent...my bullshit RADAR turned on. So I checked in Google...and sure enough...cut and paste idiocy.

So you can see why I wanted to but them...just out of spite for their sheer obnoxiousness.

But I have to admit....they are kinda fun to watch. I wouldn't think so if they were in any way in danger of making a valid and coherent albeit wrong-headed point. But they are just so confused (that's another thing...they can't seem to remember who've they tussled with and keep mixing people up...and belligerently insisting they have the right person...hilarious) and aggressive and vile and comically inept.

5 comments:

trin said...

Wow. That's all I can think of to say - wow. And an ugh that starts down somewhere deep.

Dean said...

Yeah...they are a pretty grotesque couple.

I just noticed that all their original posts are gone. Maybe they saw themselves in my posts...or maybe someone else called bullshit on them. I doubt their own integrity spurred them to remove the theft.

They have several new posts up as of today. I only spot checked one...it's it's more possible plagiarism.

The post is a total cut and paste of comment left on a blog post an another White Power type website. It's possible that they just took their own comment from there and moved it to use a a new post on alt...but I doubt it. It's too concise and coherent.

Spring, Ph.D. said...

That's how I find my student plagiarizers -- a sentence typed into google gets me to where they found their info. It's so easy to tell when most people plagiarize, because their own writing isn't up to the level of what they've copied.

With my students,I give them the benefit of the doubt the first time only. They get their paper back with no grade, and a deadline by which they must submit a re-write if they want credit. The second time, they get no grade at all, which pretty much guarantees near-failure of the course.

It's hard to uphold standards in academia when even well known authors are plagiarizers. The Chronicle of Higher Education did an article a few years ago about major published academic scholars who seriously plagiarized others' work. The article called them out by name, literally, but in no case were there any repercussions for the plagiarists even after it was made public. They are still churning out plagiarized material.

I am not only sick of the plagiarizing (not even specifically on alt, but everywhere), I'm just as sick of the people who make it out to be unimportant, even excusing it and branding the person who calls out the plagiarist as the 'bad one.' Some of the comments on your post over there made me so angry.

Ugh.

Just Me said...

Is it wrong for me to say that I am so glad I no longer have to deal with stuff from there?

Along the lines of Spring's comment...I give a couple of projects a year (biography report, state report, etc.), and some of my students have plagiarized. I don't give a benefit of the doubt because I want to make a strong impression concerning plagiarism.

I usually send the report back home with a zero, a copy of the Code of Conduct (with the plagiarism section highlighted), and a copy of the student and parent's signature where they signed the Code of Conduct at the beginning of the year.

I've never had any parents contest the grade.

Blythe said...

So don't miss it.

Though plagiarism does seem to be more and more problematic (and oddly accepted as Spring noted) everywhere. Ugh.