Owen Lippert

I’ve cornered three plagiarists in my time, and each defended him or herself very differently. The first denied any malfeasance had occurred despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary; the second reacted quite politely, resignedly; and the third went completely mental, threatening to sue me and leaving long recitations about defamation law on my answering machine. The only generalization I can offer is that plagiarists are prone to bizarre, self-defeating arguments, including the following:

John, like the rational veteran of Parliament Hill that he is, asks the most rational question of the day. Several more questions that are hopefully almost as rational.

Tory spokesman Yaroslav Baran, this morning: “We’re not going to get drawn into which staffer wrote which speech five years ago. This is nothing but desperation from the Liberal campaign, and it’s completely irrelevant to the real concerns of voters in this election.”

STATEMENT BY OWEN LIPPERT