But Goodwin was also corrupt down to her tippy-toes.
First, Goodwin's The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys "used a number of phrases and sentences without quotation marks that had been drawn from three earlier works: Rose Kennedy's "Time to Remember," Hank Searls's "The Lost Prince," and Lynne McTaggart's "Kathleen Kennedy: Her Life and Times."
It wasn't bad enough that Goodwin was writing yet another useless book on the Kennedy's, but she couldn't even write her own book.
Then, Goodwin dug further into corruption by paying off Lynn McTaggert when McTaggert called her out on the passages taken from McTaggert's book.
According to McTaggert,
"I read her book and was shocked because there were many similarities. I contacted my publisher, combed the manuscripts side by side, and my lawyers contacted her at my behest with threat of a suit" for "serious copyright infringement" and "papers ready to be filed in court."
To top it off, Goodwin then had the gall to lie to the media and deny the plagiarism even after paying off McTaggert.
Personally, I don't see where Goodwin is any better than a fabulist like Stephen Glass who just made up the sensational stories he wrote for the New Republic.
But Goodwin didn't take being caught light. Her book Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln about Lincoln and his cabinet was a determined attempt to rehabilitate her reputation and get herself back in the good graces of polite liberal society.
And I'm sorry to say that the gambit was successful. Now that Barack Obama's considering Hillary Clinton for Secretary of State, the "team of rivals" idea is all over the media and Goodwin's being interviewed once again as an "expert" on the presidency.
And the fact that Goodwin is a cheat and a fraud has practically been forgotten.
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4 comments:
I don't condone plagiarism, but isn't it a gross exaggeration to call her a fraud? I've read some of her works and listened to her a ton of times on PBS. She seems very insightful in her interviews and her books.
Some of her work may be be corrupted, but do you really think her entire life's work a complete fraud? Your butcher knife seems a bit too much!
Plagiarism is a form of fraud. Goodwin committed a significant amount of plagiarism. Goodwin is a fraud.
I can't stand Doris Kearns Goodwin. I disliked her mile-a-minute, know-it-all commentary even before she was exposed as a plagiarist, and obviously nowadays I can't stand the sight of her. Her rehabilitation started before this latest round. She started re-appearing on the Sunday news shows like Meet The Press at least a couple of years ago. When I saw her face, I couldn't believe it. And I still can't believe it. It's favoritism pure and simple. She must have friends in high places.
See http://www.slate.com/id/2184338
The whole Doris Kearns Goodwin charade is sickening.
You linked a Slate article by Timothy Noah. Actually, I originally learned about the Kearns Goodwin scandal from Noah's Slate articles. One of my comments on Noah's original Kearns Goodwin piece for Slate's Fray is here (http://www.slate.com/id/2061056/).
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