Glenn Beck - Plagiarist?

[Richard]

I'm shocked to find out there really is no Wizard of Oz...

Here's the book he claims he wrote - https://premierecollectibles.com/cat...overton_window

And below is the challenge to his claims.

And so it goes...

Richard

Glenn Beck Says I Say He's a Plagiarist
Chris Kelly, HuffPo, 7 July 2010

I've been living in a fool's paradise. I've been walking around for three weeks unaware that Glenn Beck says I say he's a plagiarist. He's mistaken. I said he was a sucker.

Back in June, I posted something here about a novel with Glenn Beck's name on the cover called The Overton Window. I pointed out that it shared a lot of pretty tired plotting with a sad, self-published piece of jerk-off fan-fiction called Circumference of Darkness. And I pointed out that the similarities were hardly surprising, since a man named Jack Henderson was both the author of Circumference and the ghostwriter of Overstock, or Overweight, or whatever Beck's awful book was called.

You don't even have to look it up. Here's what my post said: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-..._b_613861.html

So why -- except for the completely inverted politics -- does The Overton Window read so much like Circumference of Darkness? Because they were written by the same guy, a 52-year-old computer programmer named Jack Henderson.

He gets sole credit on Circumference. (And why shouldn't he? He published it himself.) On Overton, he gets thanked by Beck for "pouring his heart and soul into this project."

And, apparently, his leftover plot.

My point was that Beck, a lazy chiseler, had done the literary equivalent of buying a term paper online, and that the bottom feeder who'd sold it to him had sold it elsewhere before. I don't know how much clearer I could have been.

It wasn't, as it turns out, clear enough for Glenn Beck. He says I've accused him of plagiarism.

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha... ahh... ha-ha-ha-ha. I'm sorry (gasp) I am sorry (gasp) Media Matters is reporting today, uh, and the Huffington Post is reporting today that "Beck's book..." I'm quoting from the Washington Post... "Beck's book.... the ah, uhm, ah, Overton Window, resembles a 2005 techno-thriller by a 52-year-old computer programmer named Jack Henderson. Chris Kelly points out that Beck's book is very much like Henderson's Circumference of Darkness...

Why the laughter? The Washington Post had panned Overdone, and that, for the purpose of the Beck program, makes the very mention of its name ipso facto hilarious.

That's weird.

Uh-oh. Sarcasm.

They're saying that I plagiarized Jack Henderson's book, because it's very similar. Stu, could you do me a favor. Could you o... (wheeze... heh-heh...) could you open the ah, the ah Overton Window for me... (babble from fluffers) No, I think it's right under my name... whose name is there? (unintelligible sycophancy) Jack Henderson! I selected Jack Henderson to help write this book because I read Circumference of Darkness!

Your guess is as good as mine about what point he thinks he's proving. But it's killing his employees.

Only about four people read it and it was BRILLIANT. IT WAS BRILLIANT.

No, Smiley's People was brilliant. Circumference of Darkness is so sad it gives you Contact Loser.

I wrote it...

He means "I read it," but I swear he says "I wrote it."

.. and I called Kevin while I was on tour and I said, "Kevin, uhm, I need someone to help me write this story... and I told him the story over like a three day period and he said, "Ach, I know who can help." He said, "I'm going to send you a book."

If you've lost the thread of this narrative, it's because Beck has jumped back in time, not unlike Martin Amis's Time's Arrow. Another book Beck didn't write.

While I was on tour I started to read Jack Henderson's book. And I said, "Well let's see if we can get him to write." Jack has been working on this... it's pretty hard to steal from someone you employ.
Tell that to Rush Limbaugh's maid.

I'm in genuine awe of Beck's ability to get self-righteous about paying someone else to do his work, so he can put his own name on it and foist it on rubes. But the problem is I never said Beck stole anything. I said Henderson stole from him. By selling him a used book.

You know (wheeze) and who helped write and who you credit, but there. There's the Huffington Post... GOOD JOB.

Thanks?

You could have figured that out by reading his name underneath mine.
But I did figure it out by reading his name underneath yours. That's what I wrote.

Yer smart. Unbelievable.

Oh for heaven's sake.

I don't want to get in a pissing match with Glenn Beck, but I also resent being pissed on by Glenn Beck. So let me be as clear as I can possibly be:

I never said Glenn Beck stole The Overbite Window. He is just as much its author as Sarah Ferguson is the author of Budgie the Helicopter. He bought it, fair and square.

The only people from whom he's stolen anything are his readers.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-..._b_637440.html

[ZonieDiver]

I'm not saying that I agree with this, but I do think it is funny. Stewart
claims to be a comedian. Beck does not.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebexx89yohE&sns=em

[alright4u]

Originally Posted by Richard

I'm shocked to find out there really is no Wizard of Oz...

Here's the book he claims he wrote - https://premierecollectibles.com/cat...overton_window

And below is the challenge to his claims.

And so it goes...

Richard

Glenn Beck Says I Say He's a Plagiarist
Chris Kelly, HuffPo, 7 July 2010

I've been living in a fool's paradise. I've been walking around for three weeks unaware that Glenn Beck says I say he's a plagiarist. He's mistaken. I said he was a sucker.

Back in June, I posted something here about a novel with Glenn Beck's name on the cover called The Overton Window. I pointed out that it shared a lot of pretty tired plotting with a sad, self-published piece of jerk-off fan-fiction called Circumference of Darkness. And I pointed out that the similarities were hardly surprising, since a man named Jack Henderson was both the author of Circumference and the ghostwriter of Overstock, or Overweight, or whatever Beck's awful book was called.

You don't even have to look it up. Here's what my post said: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-..._b_613861.html

So why -- except for the completely inverted politics -- does The Overton Window read so much like Circumference of Darkness? Because they were written by the same guy, a 52-year-old computer programmer named Jack Henderson.

He gets sole credit on Circumference. (And why shouldn't he? He published it himself.) On Overton, he gets thanked by Beck for "pouring his heart and soul into this project."

And, apparently, his leftover plot.

My point was that Beck, a lazy chiseler, had done the literary equivalent of buying a term paper online, and that the bottom feeder who'd sold it to him had sold it elsewhere before. I don't know how much clearer I could have been.

It wasn't, as it turns out, clear enough for Glenn Beck. He says I've accused him of plagiarism.

Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha... ahh... ha-ha-ha-ha. I'm sorry (gasp) I am sorry (gasp) Media Matters is reporting today, uh, and the Huffington Post is reporting today that "Beck's book..." I'm quoting from the Washington Post... "Beck's book.... the ah, uhm, ah, Overton Window, resembles a 2005 techno-thriller by a 52-year-old computer programmer named Jack Henderson. Chris Kelly points out that Beck's book is very much like Henderson's Circumference of Darkness...

Why the laughter? The Washington Post had panned Overdone, and that, for the purpose of the Beck program, makes the very mention of its name ipso facto hilarious.

That's weird.

Uh-oh. Sarcasm.

They're saying that I plagiarized Jack Henderson's book, because it's very similar. Stu, could you do me a favor. Could you o... (wheeze... heh-heh...) could you open the ah, the ah Overton Window for me... (babble from fluffers) No, I think it's right under my name... whose name is there? (unintelligible sycophancy) Jack Henderson! I selected Jack Henderson to help write this book because I read Circumference of Darkness!

Your guess is as good as mine about what point he thinks he's proving. But it's killing his employees.

Only about four people read it and it was BRILLIANT. IT WAS BRILLIANT.

No, Smiley's People was brilliant. Circumference of Darkness is so sad it gives you Contact Loser.

I wrote it...

He means "I read it," but I swear he says "I wrote it."

.. and I called Kevin while I was on tour and I said, "Kevin, uhm, I need someone to help me write this story... and I told him the story over like a three day period and he said, "Ach, I know who can help." He said, "I'm going to send you a book."

If you've lost the thread of this narrative, it's because Beck has jumped back in time, not unlike Martin Amis's Time's Arrow. Another book Beck didn't write.

While I was on tour I started to read Jack Henderson's book. And I said, "Well let's see if we can get him to write." Jack has been working on this... it's pretty hard to steal from someone you employ.
Tell that to Rush Limbaugh's maid.

I'm in genuine awe of Beck's ability to get self-righteous about paying someone else to do his work, so he can put his own name on it and foist it on rubes. But the problem is I never said Beck stole anything. I said Henderson stole from him. By selling him a used book.

You know (wheeze) and who helped write and who you credit, but there. There's the Huffington Post... GOOD JOB.

Thanks?

You could have figured that out by reading his name underneath mine.
But I did figure it out by reading his name underneath yours. That's what I wrote.

Yer smart. Unbelievable.

Oh for heaven's sake.

I don't want to get in a pissing match with Glenn Beck, but I also resent being pissed on by Glenn Beck. So let me be as clear as I can possibly be:

I never said Glenn Beck stole The Overbite Window. He is just as much its author as Sarah Ferguson is the author of Budgie the Helicopter. He bought it, fair and square.

The only people from whom he's stolen anything are his readers.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/chris-..._b_637440.html

The Huffington Post is nothing I would quote or refer to.

[Green Light]

The Huff Po raked Beck over the coals for the poetry on the book's trailer. They said how amaturish it was, horrible it was, etc. What the blisterheads didn't realize that the poem was written by Kipling. I guess they don't read much.

They make the claim that Beck lifted the plot, etc from another work and gave the name of the author. What they didn't do is look at the title page of the book that lists that author as a contributor.

"A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies."--- Alfred Lord Tennyson. " This is what the Huff Po deals in.

[Richard]

Compare the following - this is how honest authors give full credit for such a collaboratory work - Beck would have gone before an academic review board for such a claim if he had been an academic or student.

Indeed..."A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of lies."--- Alfred Lord Tennyson

And so it goes...

Richard

[Razor]

Originally Posted by Richard

Compare the following - this is how honest authors give full credit for such a collaboratory work...

Odd, I don't see covers from the solo works of James Carville, Hillary Clinton, BJ Clinton, Madeleine Albright, President Obama or other notables in that line up, either.

[Warrior-Mentor]

There are WRITERS and there are AUTHORS. Note that AUTHOR is the root word of AUTHORize. Something I suspect many prominent people have done. No surprise. Profiles in Courage anyone?

[JAGO]

Originally Posted by Warrior-Mentor

Profiles in Courage anyone?

WM,

Damn! You're good.
v/r
phil

[Richard]

FWIW - the Usage Problem examples and following Usage Panel discussion notes under author are interesting.

pla·gia·rize (plj-rz) pla·gia·rized, pla·gia·riz·ing, pla·gia·riz·es

• To use and pass off (the ideas or writings of another) as one's own.
• To appropriate for use as one's own passages or ideas from (another).
• To put forth as original to oneself the ideas or words of another.

Author

au·thor (ôthr)

ETYMOLOGY: Middle English auctour, from Old French autor, from Latin auctor, creator, from auctus, past participle of augre, to create; see aug- in Indo-European roots.

• The writer of a book, article, or other text.
• One who practices writing as a profession.
• One who writes or constructs an electronic document or system, such as a website.
• An originator or creator, as of a theory or plan

Usage Problem - To assume responsibility for the content of (a published text); to write or construct (an electronic document or system): authored the company's website.

Usage Note - The verb author, which had been out of use for a long period, has been rejuvenated in recent years with the sense "to assume responsibility for the content of a published text." As such it is not quite synonymous with the verb write; one can write, but not author, a love letter or an unpublished manuscript, and the writer who ghostwrites a book for a celebrity cannot be said to have "authored" the creation. The sentence He has authored a dozen books on the subject was unacceptable to 74 percent of the Usage Panel, probably because it implies that having a book published is worthy of special lexical distinction, a notion that sits poorly with conventional literary sensibilities and seems to smack of press agentry. The sentence The Senator authored a bill limiting uses of desert lands in California was similarly rejected by 64 percent of the Panel, though here the usage is common journalistic practice and is perhaps justified by the observation that we do not expect that legislators will actually write the bills to which they attach their names.·The use of author as a verb in computer-related contexts is well established and unexceptionable.

Source: American Heritage Dictionary
http://education.yahoo.com/reference...y/entry/author

So...nobody has a problem with a book Beck claims to have written and has sold with his signature on a page imprinted with his name and the sentence "This limited edition book was personally signed by the author"???

https://premierecollectibles.com/cat...overton_window

I see...and so it goes...

Richard

[Sigaba]

Clearly, I was wrong last fall. (Self referential link.)

Correction: Nothing says "buy my book" like "I didn't actually write it."

[SF-TX]

On page iii of the book (using the "Look Inside!" feature on Amazon), it reads:

The Overton Window

Glenn Beck

with contributions from
Kevin Balfe, Emily Bestler, and Jack Henderson

[Richard]

Based on the evidence, it should read:

The Overton Window

Jack Henderson (again)

with contributions from Kevin Balfe, Emily Bestler, and Glen Beck

Which is the point of the issue.

Richard's $.02

[fng13]

IMO Beck, while he does present some information which is largely cast over by other major news personalities, does so in a way which always implies conspiracy. While some things may or may not actually be a conspiracy constantly presenting information in this way is going to damage your credibility. The fact that he himself has controversy in his own business dealings furthers to weaken his credibility.

It also just reiterates my standard that all people who have the spotlight on them be it Gov't official, Actor, etc are in some way a hypocrite.

[dr. mabuse]

*

[SF-TX]

Originally Posted by Richard

...Which is the point of the issue.

Richard's $.02

Is it?