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TheHype All those sessions in university about plagiarism... sigh, I could've just announced by bid to be prez. -
Robyn74 I am so curious to see how this plays out. I have a feeling no major news outlet will "hear" about it.
McCain's "Cross In Dirt" Story Questioned
Seeing the Forest —
... In his campaign ad in December, he adds mention of "the true light of Christmas": "We stood wordlessly looking at the cross, remembering the true light of Christmas. I will never forget that no matter where you are, no matter how difficult the circumstances, there will always be someone who will pick you up." At the Saddleback Civil Forum: "For a minute there, it was just two Christians worshipping together." Well guess what, a Kos diarist has come up with something interesting: Cross in the Dirt" story stolen from Solzhenitsyn , A story about Alexander Solzhenitsyn from his ...
McCain's "Cross In Dirt" Story Questioned
Seeing the Forest —
... In his campaign ad in December, he adds mention of "the true light of Christmas": "We stood wordlessly looking at the cross, remembering the true light of Christmas. I will never forget that no matter where you are, no matter how difficult the circumstances, there will always be someone who will pick you up." At the Saddleback Civil Forum: "For a minute there, it was just two Christians worshipping together." Well guess what, a Kos diarist has come up with something interesting: Cross in the Dirt" story stolen from Solzhenitsyn , A story about Alexander Solzhenitsyn from his ...
Is McCain Now Copying Solzhenitsyn?
Political Insider —
... Now it seems McCain may have lifted another story last night at megachurch pastor Rick Warren's Faith Forum. According to a very persuasive Daily Kos diary, the anecdote McCain told about a North Vietnamese prison guard making a cross in the dirt as a sign of solidarity -- or as he ...
Just Another One of Those Coincidences
Suburban Guerrilla —
Funny, huh?
Just Another One of Those Coincidences
Suburban Guerrilla —
Funny, huh?
Saddlegate?
The Moderate Voice —
... Does this mean John McCain essentially pulled a Hillary-at-Tuzla and fabricated a heartwarming story to appeal to evangelicals at Saddleback? Several Kos ...
Saddlegate?
The Moderate Voice —
... Does this mean John McCain essentially pulled a Hillary-at-Tuzla and fabricated a heartwarming story to appeal to evangelicals at Saddleback? Several Kos ...
Drawing In The Dirt
Obsidian Wings —
... I mention this because I think people should be very wary of leaping to conclusions about what it means that John McCain's story of a guard who scraped a cross in the dirt on Christmas is (reportedly) similar to an anecdote from Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. It's not a gesture so unusual that it could not have happened twice. Christianity is not unknown in Vietnam. To my mind, it means next to nothing that the details varied slightly from one version to the next: that happens all the time in normal life, especially forty years after the fact. The only odd thing is ...
Drawing In The Dirt
Obsidian Wings —
... I mention this because I think people should be very wary of leaping to conclusions about what it means that John McCain's story of a guard who scraped a cross in the dirt on Christmas is (reportedly) similar to an anecdote from Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago. It's not a gesture so unusual that it could not have happened twice. Christianity is not unknown in Vietnam. To my mind, it means next to nothing that the details varied slightly from one version to the next: that happens all the time in normal life, especially forty years after the fact. The only odd thing is ...
McCain Cross Story Raises Eyebrows
Truthdig: Drilling Beneath the Headlines —
... Now it seems McCain may have lifted another story last night at megachurch pastor Rick Warren’s Faith Forum. According to a very persuasive Daily Kos diary, the anecdote McCain told about a North Vietnamese prison guard making a cross in the dirt as a sign of solidarity—or as he ...
That Cross Story
Shakesville —
Via rickrocket at Daily Kos, John McCain's legendary tale of meeting a Christian guard while he was being held prisoner in Vietnam sounds a lot like a story from The Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. ...
No More Mister Nice Blog — MORE EVIDENCE THAT McCAIN'S "CROSS IN THE DIRT" STORY ISN'T TRUE A Daily Kos diarist named rickrocket has determined that a story John McCain tells repeatedly, about a prison guard in Hanoi who drew a cross in the dirt one Christmas, bears a striking resemblance to an anecdote from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's writings. It's been noted that McCain made no mention of this incident in a detailed account of his POW years that U.S. News published in 1973, and no one, so far, has found evidence of McCain telling the story before 1999 -- when his most ...
Stolen from Solzhenitsyn?
The Corner on National Review Online —
... ] Daily Kos and others are buzzing that John McCain's cross-in-the-sand story is not his own, that he lifted it from a Solzhenitsyn novel. We're supposed to be shocked that there would be a similarity between a fiction character based on real-life horrors, living in circumstances similar to a prisoner of war? A friend e-mails: How would they suggest a Christian communicate with another Christian in a North Vietnamese prison camp? Wear a WWJD bracelet? Put a FISH bumper sticker on his rifle? Maybe a discreet gold cross on a necklace worn inside the uniform shirt would do. Men ...
Opening the Day: McCain Cheated at Saddleback, Lied About POW Story?
Open Left - Front Page —
The lightning strikes tonight in Bellevue are amazingly beautiful, I wish I could have caught them on camera.
So McCain might have heard the questions prior to speaking at Rick Warren's forum, a clear violation of the rules of the forum. He was not in the 'cone of silence', as Rick Warren said he would be.
"The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous," Ms. Wallace said.
Oh, and that moving story about a prison guard in Vietnam who drew a cross in the sand? Yeah, that might have been lifted from Solzhenitsyn.
Obama has ...
John McCain’s Cross In the Dirt: Faith Of Someone Else’s Father
Firedoglake —
... hauled before the brass by Rick Davis today.
But the more interesting McCain story du jour comes regards a moving McCain told at the Saddleback event about the time he spent in North Vietnam, the "turning moment" in his captivity where a prison guard wordlessly drew a cross in the dirt.
Yes, I'm touched too. But as Andrew Sullivan notes this morning, McCain managed to leave this pivotal emotional moment out of his 1973 biography.
A hauntingly similar story was told by Solzhenitsyn in his 1973 Gulag Archapelago: ...
McCain tells a tall tale?
Political Animal —
... According to a very persuasive Daily Kos diary, the anecdote McCain told about a North Vietnamese prison guard making a cross in the dirt as a sign of solidarity — or as he ...
Excuse me, Senator McCain, but your pants on fire -- and your having been a POW is immaterial
Brilliant at Breakfast —
... Perhaps you're a touch hypersensitive because your guy has already been busted for plagiarizing Alexander Solzhenytsin, in addition to his various lies about his record. ...
Obama and the netroots: looking a tad desperate these days
Megan McArdle —
... What's peculiar about this story is that, as a DailyKos commentor noticed, it precisely echoes a tale from Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago: ...
8/18: Back In The Saddle
Blogometer —
... about Daily Kos diarist rickrocket 's suggestion that McCain's anecdote about his secretly Christian prison guard was modeled after a story told by Russian author Alexander Solzhenitsyn : ...
How Dare You
WTF Is It Now?!? —
... Because POWs are, my friends, by definition, incapable of lying about crosses in the sand for example, or cheating on anything, which is a trait that would likely be a huge surprise to McCain's first wife. ...
Signs of the Cross
COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us —
There has been much hoo-hah over the last couple of days over John McCain's story of a guard who had loostened his bonds overnight, and who later, on Christmas day, stood alongside McCain outside of his cell and wordlessly drew a cross in the dirt with his foot, stood alongside McCain for several minutes, before erasing it to avoid punishment from his own superiors in the Communist Vietnamese hierarchy. ...
Solzhenitsyn Biographer: Cross-In-Dirt Gulag Story Never Happened
TPM Election Central —
There's been a ton of buzz on the web for the last day or so -- beginning with this Daily Kos diary -- suggesting that John McCain patterned his story about a Vietamese captor drawing a cross in the dirt before him on a similar episode from Russian novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn's time in the Soviet gulags.
But it turns out that this episode probably never happened to Solzhenitsyn at all, and according to a Solzhenitsyn biographer it appears nowhere in his published writing. Columbia University professor Michael Scammell, the author of Solzhenitsyn: A Biography, says the episode "never happened," and didn't appear in ...
What Say You Now, Nutroots? 'Solzhenitsyn Biographer: Cross-In-Dirt Gulag Story Never Happened'
JammieWearingFool —
Talk about jumping the shark. After John McCain told this story Saturday evening, the frothing psychopaths that call themselves the netroots feverishly pecked out blogposts by the dozens questioning the veracity of John McCain's story, as if these geniuses knew what happened to him at the Hanoi Hilton. Their favorite theme was McCain ripped off the story from Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Oops ...
Oooh, Greg Sargent's in trouble again!
Corrente —
Since, according to his biographer, Solzhenitsyn never told the cross in the dirt story, McCain can hardly have stolen it from him,* as, to pick a not entirely random example, the Jed Report maintains, along with the Cheetopians.
