Second Helpings...Of Plagiarism Allegations.

So, in the news of late there has been much talk about this. First of all, this is what you get for giving an 18 year old a book deal. Second of all, why didn't her agents and/or the publishers realize this before the media blitz promotion?

But, it also kind of got me to thinking (I do that, sometimes) about something kind of random. How often can you put a group of words together in a sentence in a way that is completely new to the world? I mean, has anyone else in the world ever written this sentence? The one that you're reading right now? And is that plagiarism? Or is plagiarism taking ideas and not simply words?

The"author" was on the Today show recently and Katie let her have it. Per Bandit, "katie asked her why she came on the show and she was like "because i want to explain myself." katie busted her by saying "many people watching this interview would argue that you did not explain yourself at all." FACE. all the girl said was "at the time i wrote it, i thought it was a new thought." there is NO WAY that could be true - you can't copy an entire paragraph word for word and think for one second that it's original thought."

Wish I could've seen that.

Maybe she just thought she wouldn't get caught. Guess we've all been there.

But wait, there's more! I just read a previous article that quotes the author's high school English teacher:

One of Viswanathan's high school teachers, Richard Weems, expressed surprise over her misfortunes. Weems, who taught literature to Viswanathan when she was a junior at Bergen County Academies in New Jersey, remembered her as a gifted student and as the winner of a number of writing contests. "Kaavya did not strike me as the kind of student who would deliberately take material from others. Nor do I recall her talking about Megan McCafferty's books -- the most contemporary book we did for her junior-year world literature class was Shakespeare's 'Hamlet,' " he said.

Okay. This teacher is dumb.

1. She is obviously a gifted writer if she got a book deal almost right out of high school.
2. She went to an exclusive college prep school and was in an honors English class. Of course she's not going to mention really liking Megan McCafferty books (whose titles are such as Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings).
3. How about Sophie Kinsella? Did she talk about her? Yeah, saying she liked the Shopaholic books would look really great to her English teacher, too.
4. What kid, who wants you to write her a glowing recommendation to Harvard, is going to deliberately come across as being a cheater?
5. Just because she's not talking about other authors doesn't mean she's not reading them. Geez, dude. Let's have a discussion about Hamlet. Why would anything else come up--it's not like teen fiction is in any way related to or comparable to the works of Shakespeare.