Plagiarism and Counting Footnotes

I want to highlight the first Daily Howler that I ever read (albeit I’ve gone back and read a lot about what Bob Somerby has written about the awful press coverage of the Social Security debate):

Footnotes don’t prove that claims are accurate until the footnotes are actually checked! And, starting on page one of her book, Coulter’s citations frequently show that her claims have been simply made up. Indeed, by the time Malcolm penned his recent review, it was perfectly clear that Coulter’s book was packed with factual howlers … Counting footnotes! Who would believe that such PlaySkool procedures could drive the American public discourse?

Ms. Coulter’s publisher answered the recent charges about alleged plagiarism with this:

We have reviewed the allegations of plagiarism surrounding Godless and found them to be as trivial and meritless as they are irresponsible. Any author is entitled to do what Ann Coulter has done in the three snippets cited: research and report facts. The number of words used by our author in these snippets is so minimal that there is no requirement for attribution. As an experienced author and attorney, Ms. Coulter knows when attribution is appropriate, as underscored by the nineteen pages of hundreds of endnotes contained in Godless.

Nineteen pages with hundreds of endnotes! I just hope Crown Publishing has done a better job of insuring the author is reporting facts.