Last week, we ran a story on the top of our front page under the headline, "Schmidt accused of plagiarism," in which Second District Congresswoman Jean Schmidt was accused of copying a column previously published by Congresswoman Deborah Pryce (R-Columbus). The two columns in question were nearly identical, but contrary to what her opponents and many Internet bloggers will tell you, it was not plagiarism.
What it was, was a lot of mule fritters.
Did Jean Schmidt write the column in question? No. But neither did Deborah Pryce.
In point of fact, the vast majority of these columns that are supposedly written by our esteemed leaders (and I'm talking well above the 95 percent range here) are written either by their party agents, their own press secretaries or campaign managers or interns.
Granted, many of them do make some attempt at putting some form of personal spin on the columns, but that is the extent of their contribution.
Now, this makes it sound like it's OK to do this supposed wrong-doing because everyone is doing it.
No. What I am saying is that there was no wrong-doing.
It is no more plagiarism then the president giving a speech written by his speech writers.
The people elected to these posts were not elected for their ability to write a good speech or to write a decent column. They were elected for their perceived ability to lead us and to affect real change in our state and nation and even the world. They therefore hire people who can write these things for them, or they pay for a service to do it. Then, too, their own political parties will offer up columns for publication as well.
At no point does any of this constitute plagiarism except in the minds of their opponents and detractors. But, these very same people who are throwing around these accusations are just as guilty of this very same perceived "wrong-doing," and, if elected will submit the very same copy you've come to expect from these offices.
It's not just the politicians who are guilty either. The OSU Extension columns all originate - you guessed it - at OSU, and are distributed to the agents to use as their column. Now, again, many of these agents do try to put some personal or local spin on the columns, typically in the first few paragraphs, but it's the same thing.
Most professional or trade type columns are also guilty. When I worked at the Times-Gazette we ran a column from the president of the board of Realtors. These columns were downloaded every week from the National Board of Realtors web site who provided the columns to their members for this very purpose.
Flipping through our paper, I can show you, with a fair amount of accuracy, who is writing their columns and who is using a service.
But again, they are not guilty of anything even remotely resembling wrong-doing.
Is cheating wrong? Yes.
Is plagiarism against the law? Absolutely.
But let's make sure we're all quite clear on what constitutes plagiarism and cheating before we start throwing accusations around. The definition of plagiarism is "stealing the written work of another."
It is not stealing when the work in question has been paid for or has been freely given.
So lets put this whole plagiarism nonsense to rest. Instead, let's look at the issues confronting this district and question why every person in this particular race is more concerned with whether or not this column was plagiarized then what they intend to do about the subject matter contained therein.
