There’s absolutely no reason to believe otherwise. But no, I haven’t actually talked with the people who worked on this 15 years ago.
In your fevered imagination.
Thanks, PRR. It was a worthy effort on your part to try to get some discussion going here. But I think our best bet is to wait and see where we are after the election.
If an impartial third party such as frank or tomndeb were to back you up and say that my request for something better than a secondhand (at best) summarization on a timeline from a tv show is unreasonable, than I would concede provided you would concede if they feel I am correct and either retract or substantiate your cite.
Provided either is willing, would you accept their conclusion as final?
{Twirls mustache}[Snidely Whiplash voice]
In your dreams, liberal do-gooder!
{Turns to Nell} Please, honey, not now! You know I love you equal to life itself, and I’m crazy about the way you come sit on my lap, but not when I’m posting.
[/voice]
-“Jack” 
(Edited to extend “voice” down to include aside to Nell. Sheeesh!)
If you want to toss that to Frank or tom~ or whoever, go right ahead. But frankly, I don’t care.
What we’re debating is a throwaway line on the end of a post of mine from two pages back. For some reason, it’s mattered intensely to you. I’ve long since stopped caring about it, except to call bullshit on your bullshit. Having done that, I’m taking this as a MP&HG-style “All right, we’ll call it a draw.” Cue coconuts.
The subject has been blatantly apparent to everyone else in this thread, Whether your incomprehension, and yours alone, is the result of your refusal or merely your inability is no one’s problem but your own.
*Do *try a bit harder to keep up in the future, will you? There’s a good lad.
Mmmm… nope. No, I have no friggin’ clue what you’re on about either. Your “subject” smells like bullshit to me.
A real cite would be useful, had you one available.
That works for me.
*::: sigh ::: *
Scylla is correct that the synopsis of a timeline presented in a TV presentation is not a primary source.
I have no idea what Mr. Kristol circulated on December 3, 1993.
His January Op-Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal might be pretty much exactly what he said in December.
Alternatively, he might have taken his December memo, added some genuine talking points (about the destructive nature of the plan from his POV) and discarded some of the deliberately partisan instructions regarding how and why to savage the plan.
In either case, I see no reason to believe that Mr. Kristol did not actually believe the talking points in the WSJ piece, so even if he was much more cynical in his December letter, it would not quite indicate that the sole reason he (or the Republicans) wanted to kill the plan was to take over Congress–OTOH, a memo from Mr. Kristol suggesting that defeating the plan would be a great political victory for the GOP is very much in keeping with his rhetoric over the last 20+ years.
So…he’s a witch?
Checks in the mail to Tomndeb 
I await RTFs gracious capitulation.
Ditto.
Indeed - I concurred with that back at post 214. I’d hate to have anyone think I didn’t know the difference between primary and secondary sources.
Having cleared that up, I think it’s bedtime. Thanks for stopping by, tom.
:coconut sound effects receding:
Kristol?
Absolutely. Burn him!
Why don’t you and Tomndebb both take Haynes Johnson & David Broder’s 1997 book The System and jam pages 233 and 234 up your asses.
From page 233:
Bolding mine to highlight that you are fucking ignorant of this “celebrated strategy document.” Dumbass.
From page 234:
This kind of bullshit nitpickery aimed solely at distraction is just another reason why there’s no point whatsoever at being nicer to tighty-righties.
From page 234:This kind of bullshit nitpickery aimed solely at distraction is just another reason why there’s no point whatsoever at being nicer to tighty-righties.
[/QUOTE]
I haven’t denied the existence of any document. I’ve merely asked to read it.
I suppose congratulations are in order though. You’ve uncovered plagiarism. This appears to be the uncited source which is quoted verbatim in wikipedia without proper attribution. Since you found it, the honor goes to you to correct it, if you wish to take it.
You may not have noticed but you’ve done a great job of making my case for me. By asking to view the text rather than accepting a synopsis we’ve uncovered a truly circular cite.
Rtf posted a link to a timeline. That timeline is based on a tv show. That Tv show is apparently based on a book. Somebody copied a piece of the book into wikipedia.
While it may seem like we have several cites, what we actually have is the same one being repeated.
If your book or something displayed a copy of the document, or even the text of it, that would be something. All that we have, all that we ever had was somebody’s impression of what it said. This is why it’s important to seek primary sources.
Haynes Johnson is also the author of “Sleepwalking through History: America in the Reagan Years,” so it’s not exactly a nonpartisan author were dealing with.
You’ve demonstrated that I was right not to trust it simply because it was on PBS. This was not PBS reporting facts, but PBS airing a show based on this book.
If say, Ann Coulter were to get a TV show made out of one of her books wherein she summarizes a document without giving the full text, and I was to link to a synopsis of this show, would you accept what that link said as fact?
Johnson is no Coulter, to be sure, but that is what you are in essence asking me to do.
You’ve done a great job. You’ve found what appears to be the original source, here. All the other cites seem to be referencing this. There appears to be no evidence that this “celebrated strategy document” exists outside of this one reference, which is kind of interesting, don’t you think?
I would never have seen this or been able to tie it up so neatly were it not for you finding the wikipedia quote and this book. You’ve done a great job, and you deserve the credit.
Thank you.
Weren’t there two authors, shit for brains? Oh yeah, that uber liberal … David Broder. I’m sure he participated in making up stuff from this memo to smear a conservative.
I also realize that you must not know what plagiarism means. All of the quotes and discussion of the material properly cite its author - Bill Kristol. That fact is easily understood in at least one of the instances you cite because it’s on the Bill Kristol wikipedia page.
Broder is not an “uber liberal,” but I think you will find few that would say he’s not a liberal. Most cites consider him liberal. Do I need to produce them for you?
The “quotes” are sentence fragments. They are the same in the Wikipedia article and in the Amazon outtake from the book you provided. The nonquoted language proceeding and following the quoted sentence fragments is virtually identical. It is a large enough piece that we are talking about that it should be attributed.
If you pull the wikipedia article up in one window, and what you quoted from Amazon in another you will see that they are for all intents and purposes, the same.
Try it. You see?
Now, since the book predates the wikipedia article, we can one of two assumptions.
-
The book and Wikipedia represent an astounding coincidence wherein they both independantly chose the same sentence fragments from the strategy memo, and the exact same language to describe that memo i.e. “celebrated (“legendary” in Wikipedia) strategy document,” etc.
-
One is copied without attribution from the other.
No. no. no Don’t hit reply yet. Look them both up. You’re not going to, are you. Ok. I’ll do it for you.
Here’s what you quoted from amazon:
"On December 2, just a few days before that conversation in Rockefeller’s office, William Kristol, a leading conservative operative whose opinions carried great weight, had privately circulated to Republicans in Congress what came to be a celebrated strategy document. Barely forty, Kristol had carved out a remarkable role for himself as a staff man who could marshal support from elected officials simply by the power of his ideas…
…Operating now from a conservative think tank, the Project for the Republican Future, Kristol wrote that congressional Republicans should work to “kill” – not amend – the Clinton plan. His resaons were Machiavellian. Clinton’s health plan presented a clear danger to the Republican future; its passage would (as Democrats had earlier advised Clinton) give the Democrats a lock on the crucial middle-class vote. “It will re-legitimize middle-class dependence for ‘security’ on government spending and regulation,” Kristol wrote. “It will revive the reputation of the party that spends and regulates, the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class by restraining government.”
Here’s what’s in Wikipedia:
"Kristol first made his mark as leader of the Project for the Republican Future, a conservative think tank, and rose to fame as a conservative opinion maker during the battle over the Clinton health care plan.
In the first of what would become legendary strategy memos circulated among Republican policymakers, Kristol said the party should “kill,” not amend or compromise on, the Clinton health care plan. The success of the Clinton proposal, he warned, would “re-legitimize middle-class dependence for ‘security’ on government spending and regulation,” and “revive … the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests.”
Do you see?
So, your argument has been that the timeline on PBS was wrong, then it was that it was not a primary source (or “provenance”, i.e. that RTFirefly didn’t produce his copy of the memo), then that it may not even have existed (because you found a different memo on the internet that said different things), and now that there is plagiarism going on.
If Johnson and Broder made up the quotes from a nonexistent memo, then you might have a point about the PBS timeline and its characterization of the memo. If they didn’t, you’ve got no point. Are you claiming they did?
So what was your point again (timeline, provenance, existence, plagiarism)? Did you ever have one? Do you ever have one?
Hostile, insulting and stupid isn’t a winning combination. I’ve been patient and answered your previous questions and issues at length. It’s tedious doing so over and over and over again, when most people would just get it the first time.
If you’re just playing stupid, and seeing how much of a jerk you can be while stringing me along, then congratulations, you win. The jokes on me. You’ve succeeded and you can be proud of your accomplishment.
If you really are this stupid, it’s not my fault and you have no right to ask me to go to all the effort of explaining this to you in such a way that you can get it if you are going to be hostile and insulting while I do it. You should be nice and appreciative of the effort.
Either way, that’s enough.
Yes, I’m the one leading a merry chase around the internet, talking about provenance and demanding original copies of 15 year old documents, finding random Kristol articles to cast doubt on the existence of another one (when Kristol himself apparently never has) and talking fatuously about plagiarism.
I’d forgotten that I used to refer to this kind of nonsense as a Scylla-jism. Thanks for reminding me.