Elisabeth Hasselbeck’s Original Sin?

By Rachel Bunting

Despite the fact that I know the women of The View are, by and large, intelligent women individually, I have never been a fan of the show (although I confess to loving Whoopi and her vests). There's something about the coffee klatch format that lowers the cumulative IQ a notch or two. There's also something about that right-wing sock puppet Elizabeth Hasselbeck that does the same.

So imagine my terribly glorious sense of schadenfreude when I discovered this week that Hasselbeck has been accused of plagiarism by one Susan Hassett, author of "Living with Celiac Disease," a how-to-survive guide written for those living with a gluten allergy. 

According to Hassett, she sent Hasselbeck a complimentary copy of her book when she heard that Hasselbeck also had Celiac disease. Thirteen months later, Hasselbeck published her own guide, "The G-Free Diet: A Gluten Free Survival Guide," allegedly lifting multiple passages from (and closely mimicking the structure of)  Hassett’s book.

 

Hasselbeck insists she's done nothing wrong. But, come on, did this convince anyone?:

What might prove to be the best evidence of Hasselbeck's innocence, believe it or not, is the warning letter sent to her by Hassett’s attorney. The full text of the letter is available here, compliments of TMZ. And, boy, is it a disappointment!

Not only is the introduction in the letter bad, the excerpts from Hassett’s self-published book are worse — full of typos, misspellings, and grammatical nightmares. Not to mention that the plagiarism claims don’t quite hold up under closer examination.

Scott Adams over at Celiac.com has a great write-up on his blog detailing the claims of plagiarism and countering them himself with examples from the Celiac.com discussion forum:

Since I do not think that a reasonable person would believe that the language examples cited in the Warning Letter would rise to the level of plagiarism, perhaps Hassett feels that it is her ideas that were stolen? Let's examine the ideas that are presented in this letter and try to determine if any of them are original ideas created by Hassett ...

One example of Adams’ counter point is this:

6. Double check products with their manufacturer because their ingredients can change without notice.

It's hard to say how old this idea is ...I can remember knowing this in 1995, but here is a post from Celiac.com's forum from August 22, 2004, which contains the idea: "You can (and generally should) double check with the company, but I am pretty sure it is still gluten-free."

Adams also makes this interesting point with regard to the letter from Hassett's attorney:

The first thing that struck me when reading the Warning Letter was that Hassett seems to take too personally the fact that she never received a card or acknowledgment for sending Elisabeth Hasselbeck a sample copy of her own book.

Here it seems we’ve found the crux of the situation. Is Hassett just a little pissed-off because she got snubbed? Did she really expect Elisabeth Hasselbeck, 1/5 of one of the nation’s most-watched daytime TV shows, to personally respond with accolades and fawning gratefulness over her poorly written, self-published book?

 

So now I find myself in the personally distasteful position of actually supporting Hasselbeck, a woman who has made it clear on many occasions that she doesn’t support me, or members of my global family. I’m still not convinced that she has many original thoughts, but is it really plagiarism when an author is following the path of so many other self-help health guide writers, and ripping off free information from the internet?

Email Rachel: rebpoetry at yahoo dot com

Comments

[Nancy Lapid]

In my opinion the headlines should say: "Elisabeth Hasselbeck Victim of Preposterous Lawsuit"

Here's a link to my blog post:
http://tinyurl.com/lttt3n

[donne]

Why would anyone buy these diet and nutrition books written by people (and their handy ghostwriters) who do not even claim to have a background in diet, nutrition, medicine, etc.? It seems both of these books would require numerous citations to even get a grade in a college classroom.