WASHINGTON — Senator Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican who is among his party’s top 2016 presidential prospects, has found himself accused of plagiarism.
But this case has an odd twist. Mr. Paul appears to have lifted words for a speech this week from a Wikipedia entry about a futuristic movie, “Gattaca,” which imagines a world with a population that has been genetically engineered.
The senator was trying to make a point about eugenics, saying the United States was veering dangerously close to eliminating people whom society considered to be undesirable. In doing so, he made a reference to the movie and twice spoke lines that were virtually word for word from the Wikipedia description of the plot of “Gattaca,” which was released in 1997.
The speech — which he delivered Monday at Liberty University in Virginia on behalf of the Republican candidate for governor, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II — contained this line: “In the not-too-distant future, eugenics is common, and DNA plays a primary role in determining your social class.”
The Wikipedia entry reads: “In ‘the not-too-distant future,’ liberal eugenics is common, and DNA plays the primary role in determining social class.”
Mr. Paul’s office said in a statement on Thursday that the episode was being exaggerated by the senator’s enemies. “Only in Washington is something this trivial a source for liberal media angst,” it said.
The similarities came to light Monday night on “The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC. The website BuzzFeed followed up on Tuesday by reviewing other remarks by the senator and said it had found a speech from June in which he appeared to have taken the words to describe another film, “Stand and Deliver,” from Wikipedia.
Accusations of plagiarism are perennial in politics. Joseph R. Biden Jr., then a senator, ended his 1988 run for the presidency after he was accused of taking words from a speech by the British Labour Party leader, Neil Kinnock, without attribution and of plagiarizing an article while he was in law school.
And in 2008, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign accused Barack Obama, then a senator, of using language in his speeches that echoed Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts.
The Paul controversy has already been played out in the spirit of Wikipedia, whose content is generated and edited by the public. By Tuesday, the site’s entry on “Gattaca” had been updated with a reference to the accusations.
WASHINGTON — Senator Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican who is among his party’s top 2016 presidential prospects, has found himself accused of plagiarism.But this case has an odd twist. Mr. Paul appears to have lifted words for a speech this week from a Wikipedia entry about a futuristic movie, “Gattaca,” which imagines a world with a population that has been genetically engineered.The senator was trying to make a point about eugenics, saying the United States was veering dangerously close to eliminating people whom society considered to be undesirable. In doing so, he made a reference to the movie and twice spoke lines that were virtually word for word from the Wikipedia description of the plot of “Gattaca,” which was released in 1997.The speech — which he delivered Monday at Liberty University in Virginia on behalf of the Republican candidate for governor, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II — contained this line: “In the not-too-distant future, eugenics is common, and DNA plays a primary role in determining your social class.”The Wikipedia entry reads: “In ‘the not-too-distant future,’ liberal eugenics is common, and DNA plays the primary role in determining social class.”Mr. Paul’s office said in a statement on Thursday that the episode was being exaggerated by the senator’s enemies. “Only in Washington is something this trivial a source for liberal media angst,” it said. The similarities came to light Monday night on “The Rachel Maddow Show” on MSNBC. The website BuzzFeed followed up on Tuesday by reviewing other remarks by the senator and said it had found a speech from June in which he appeared to have taken the words to describe another film, “Stand and Deliver,” from Wikipedia.Accusations of plagiarism are perennial in politics. Joseph R. Biden Jr., then a senator, ended his 1988 run for the presidency after he was accused of taking words from a speech by the British Labour Party leader, Neil Kinnock, without attribution and of plagiarizing an article while he was in law school.And in 2008, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign accused Barack Obama, then a senator, of using language in his speeches that echoed Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts.The Paul controversy has already been played out in the spirit of Wikipedia, whose content is generated and edited by the public. By Tuesday, the site’s entry on “Gattaca” had been updated with a reference to the accusations.
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