I'm not the only person who found Bellesiles's publisher's press release bizarre. From the May 19, 2010 Inside Higher Education:
These sentences have absorbed and rewarded my attention for days on end. They are a masterpiece of evasion. The paragraph is, in its way, quite impressive. Every word of it is misleading, including “and” and “the.”
Uh-oh. Mary McCarthy, speaking of Lilian Hellman: "Every word [Hellman] writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'".
ReplyDeleteI guess this put-down is now so well-known that you can just repeat it ... but it seems funny to hear it said about plagiarism.
You know, I would have found Scott Lemee's article really good, in spite of its clear anti-gun stance, if he didn't turn around and cite a criticism of Lott published in the Pot-rag Mother Jones.
ReplyDeleteWriting this must have hurt Lemee severely, although it did give him the opportunity to gratuitously insult Charlton Heston, the NRA, John Lott, and of course the ubiquitous "gun nuts".
ReplyDeleteNo doubt he was bitterly disappointed when "Arming America" was debunked, which accounts for his bitterness.