Bullet Points: 10 Outrageous Plagiarists

Helen Keller - Most everyone knows the remarkable story of Helen Keller. A blind-deaf-mute who somehow learned how to communicate. I think my sister played Helen in the play. She was good... tears were had by all.

But in addition to being fodder for an inspiring story, Helen Keller is also, apparently, a plagiarist. That dirty little cheat!

Okay, but here are the details... Helen was accused and nearly found guilty of plagiarizing Margaret Canby's "The Frost Fairies" for her story "The Frost King" (I mean, judging from the title, the accusations probably had solid ground).

But Helen was only 11-years-old at the time. What the fuck did they expect? Why were you publishing a story by an 11-year-old blind-deaf-mute?

The accusation apparently haunted Helen all her life and, subsequently, inspired her to write her autobiography (the rather creatively titled "The Story of My Life"), in which appears a chapter dedicated to her continued anguish at the plagiarism. Writes Ms. Keller: '"There is no way to become original, except to be born so," says Stevenson, and although I may not be original, I hope sometime to outgrow my artificial, periwigged compositions. Then, perhaps, my own thoughts and experiences will come to the surface. Meanwhile I trust and hope and persevere, and try not to let the bitter memory of "The Frost King" trammel my efforts.' Aww.

Carlos Castaneda - To some, he's known as the father of the New Age religious movement of the 60s.  To others, he's a swindling huckster on the level of L. Ron Hubbard in his religious-themed deceits.  To Richard De Millle, psychology professor and author, he was just a liar and a plagiarist.  De Mille, the nephew of famed filmmaker Cecil B. Demille, wrote two separate books detailing both his investigation into Castaneda's "Don Juan" series of books and the results (plagiarism from numerous and variegated sources) of that investigation.

For the uninitiated, Castaneda's work is fiction masquerading as an anthropological case study of the "sorcery" of the Yaqui Indians of Mexico.  Early in the series, this study focuses mainly on the various psychedelic plants Castaneda maintains they used as spiritual divining rods, but as the books progress, Castaneda's fictional mentor, Don Juan Matus, teaches him what comes to be a way of life and ultimately a religion.

This is mainly noteworthy for two reasons:  for one, somebody went to the trouble of writing two entire books simply to prove that another person was a fraud, ostensibly as a service to Castaneda's devout followers.  The second reason is that Richard De Mille was, at one time, a close friend of L. Ron Hubbard and a Scientologist himself, until he did something that drew the ire of Captain Dianetics, at which point his name was stricken from the record of the cult, including a personal thanks to him for preparing one of their manuscripts.

Lyle Menendez - Remember the Menendez brothers, Lyle and Erik? Those douches who killed their parents so they could receive the insurance money (a plan that NEVER works)?

Well several years before doing away with mama and papa Menendez, Lyle was busted for plagiarism at Princeton, according to court documents. Now the details of his plagiarism aren't really known.

So why is he on this list? Because he's a fucking dick who killed his parents.

Kevin Kopelson - You can read Kopelson's hilariously self-reverential confession here.  He, a professor of English at the University of Iowa, has been a lifelong plagiarist.  This in and of itself is fairly funny, but nothing really out of the ordinary.  Lots of people cheat, and lots of those people start young.  What's really funny is that, even in the baring of his complete lack of ethics, he vigorously self-defends and rationalizes.  In several cases, he attempts to convince the reader that he'd have played fair if his classes weren't "contemptible," or that he essentially deserved to get away with it because his teachers and professors were so much dumber and more careless than he.  Throughout his essay, Kopelson reveals himself to be one of the most self-important douchebags in the history of writing, which is quite an accomplishment when you think about it.  Amusingly, his essay is actually pretty fun to read.  It's well-written -- or it's at least well-copied.

George Harrison - George Harrison's album "All Things Must Pass" outsold outings from John Lennon and Paul McCartney from the same year. It defied all expectations. Why is that? Because the songs were a step forward for Harrison (rather than a step backward, like McCartney's first solo record or a step sideways like Lennon's).

Well for one of those great, classic songs, Mr. Harrison had some unsolicited help. His song "My Sweet Lord" was vocally, musically, melodically and, in some instances, lyrically ripped off from The Chiffons' "He's So Fine."

Harrison's defense was that he unintentionally ripped off a song that was deeply embedded in his consciousness which could've maybe, possibly worked. But the case was exacerbated when Allen Klein, Harrison's former manager, bought The Chiffons' catalogue and decided to make the case a personal vendetta.

But no matter what his intention, the song is a complete and utter rip off.

Here's Harrison's: 

And here's the Chiffons': 

Blair Hornstine - You may remember this name.  I didn't.

In 2003, Ms. Hornstine sued her school district for 2.7 million dollars in damages for raising the possibility that she might have to share the valedictorianship of her high school with another student.  I am not sure on what ground those kinds of damages could be claimed for being a shared valedictorian, but as her father was a Superior Court judge, I'll assume that the monetary figure had a solid basis, or was at least ludicrous, either of which I would find acceptable.

Eventually, Hornstine won the court decision to become the sole valedictorian of her high school.  Now, I'd probably argue that she was unfairly demonized in spite of her douchiness -- the grounds for making her co-valedictorian were that she had a disability (she really did) and thus took many of her classes as home instruction.  And, ultimately, since she wasn't stripped of being valedictorian, she didn't seek or collect damages from the school district.  Moreover, both she and the salutatorian were both accepted to Harvard.  All's well that ends well, right?

Well, amazingly, Hornstine was busted for publishing a number of articles with uncited sources in her local newspaper.  Apparently that's frowned upon at Harvard (see below), and her admission was revoked.  I assume the salutatorian, who didn't plagiarize anybody, is doing just fine.

Kaavya Viswanathan - A few years ago, while I was still answering phones and transcribing tapes for a living, a friend of mine who's a few years younger than me started going to Harvard. He called me up one day with some annoying news. "Hey, you know how you're a struggling writer who can't find any work?"

"Sure," I said. "I know that."

"Well, some chick who just got in here for next year is getting her novel published."

"What, like a high school kid is self publishing her book?"

"Naw, man. She's getting published by Little, Brown. That's big time, I think."

It was, in fact, big time. Great. Another over-privileged Harvard student doing better than me.

Which is why news that that student, then 19-year-old Kaavya Viswanathan, plagiarized much of her debut novel from MULTIPLE authors gives me such a fit of schadenfreude. FUCK YOU, you ivy league cunt.

H.G. Wells - When unknown Canadian writer Florence Deeks first accused H.G. Wells, then among the world's most prominent and popular writers, she was essentially laughed out of court.  This was in spite of the fact that Wells' book The Outline of Human History contained many of the same ideas and even factual errors as Deeks' manuscript for "The Web of the World's Romance."  Putting aside the fact that Wells picked a much better and less fruity title, it should be noted that Weeks' manuscript sat around in the offices of Wells' publisher for eight months before it was finally rejected, and Wells' book was subsequently quickly assembled and published the following year.  Finally, in 2001, some 74 years after the original lawsuit, A.B. McKillop, the chair of the history department for Carleton University, published The Spinster and the Prophet, which closely examined the circumstances surrounding the case and the cast of characters involved.  His conclusion?  In line with the unusual circumstantial evidence I've referenced here, it is now most often supposed that -- in my words, not McKillop's -- Wells stole the shit out of her shit.

Alex Haley - Alex Haley is one of the most important black writers of the 20th century. Fuck, he's the most important. I mean, c'mon... he wrote "Roots," which garnered Haley a Pulitzer Prize and a Levar Burton-starring made-for-TV  movie.

"Roots" has always been, according to Hayley, based on his own family tree, stretching back from Africa through slave times. Which then makes it weird that he plagiarized another book for passages in his lauded tome.

Part of the popularity of "Roots" was Hayley's claim that he spent 10 years steadily researching. Through a combination of genealogy studies, reading records and, again according to Hayley, several trips to Africa, Hayley came to the conclusion that he was the long lost relative of someone named Kunta Kinte, the character who went on to be the protagonist of "Roots."

Unfortunately, looks like dude didn't do much research at all. Though the whole controversial incident was solved out of court, details have leaked and we now know that at least 80 passages were plagiarized from Harold Courlander novel "The African." Experts went on to claim the entire story of "Roots" was lifted from "The African" as well. Then, after mofo was basically humiliated and had to pay Courlander $650,000 and thought the whole thing was put to bed, experts continued to unravel Hayley's book.

When they were done, they found out Kunta Kinte (aka the slave Toby) was in fact real but was not at all related to Hayley. So those 19 thousand hours you spent watching "Roots"? They were all for nothing... and you'll never get those back.

There IS a silver lining to the whole story, though... without Alex Hayley, there'd be no Geordi La Forge. And a life without Geordi is a life not worth living.

Joseph Smith - You have to have titanic balls to plagiarize the most widely owned and read book in the world, but that's what Joseph Smith proved he was swinging when he apparently plagiarized the Bible while writing the book of Mormon.  Um, I mean, while translating the Book of Mormon from Golden Tablets.  To distill what seems to have happened with Joseph Smith:  he wanted to write a religious text, but he wanted it to have all the pomp and flowery Elizabethan language of the King James Bible.  Therefore, he appropriated the King James Bible, changed some things around, added others, and generally left his fingerprints all over what was supposed to have been written by a divine pen or chisel or some such instrument of record.  He was apparently confused enough to think that the King James Bible was the original text and not an early 17th century translation, and thus that all divinely inspired religious texts had to contain that same type of language.  Smith also made a ton of errors that could be traced back to the Bible and generally made up whatever he needed to fill the gaps, leaving being a number of extremely loose threads that cause his entire project to unravel when pulled.  But hey, at least they're not Scientologists.