Wednesday, June 24, 2009

An Excerpt from the Website of Sue Hassett, the Self Published Author Suing Elisabeth Hasselbeck

Here's an excerpt from a website that purports to be of Sue Hassett, the woman suing Elisabeth Hasselbeck for plagiarism.

I am 45 years old I am from Cape Cod Massachusetts. I am almost a hundred percent Irish. I have been a self employed floor installer for 25 years. For the past 5 years I have been unable to work because of such a servere case of Celiac Disease that left me struggling for my life. My struggle did have to be this hard, I was misdiagnose for almost 20 years. My reason for writing this book is to help other people so their struggle does not have to be so hard or go on so long. Gluten free living can be a very healthy way to live. Cooking is a big passion in my life and I want to help others with that as well. The most important thing of all about the Down sydrome, Epeleptic, Autistic and children with Celiac Disease who I can help through this book as well as through my cooking.

A gold star to the blogreader who accurately identifies the total number of spelling and grammar errors in the paragraph above.

UPDATE:

Sandra Robins offers her analysis of the plagiarism claims here. Her conclusions: items cited as examples of plagiarism look much more like facts "in common knowledge".

CURIOUS FACTS

The attorney representing Ms. Hassett contributed $1,000 to Senator John Kerry in 2004, according to a search done at the Huffington Post FEC Records search site.

I'm beginning to wonder if this suit is just a case of a lone opportunist, or might be part of the pattern of ongoing left wing attacks against conservative women.

ADDITIONAL CURIOUS FACTS


The ISBN Book Number of the edition of Ms. Hassett's book, the one she claims to have sent to Ms. Hasselbeck in April of 2008, is different from the ISBN Book Number of the edition of Ms. Hassett's book currently available at Amazon, which lists a publication date of April 2009. The publisher, Xlibris, is a pay for service printer and publisher used by self publishing authors.

It does not appear that Ms. Hassett marketed the April 2008 edition of her book.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Mr. Leahy, why don't you take the gold star and point out all of Sue Hassett's mistakes. Then, we can all share a good laugh at Ms. Hassett's stupidity.

BTW, it's Elisabeth Hasselbeck, not Elizabeth.

Laura Lee - Grace Explosion said...

I read that there were clear verbatim excerpts and the layout was similar.

So, I'm on the unknown author's team until her case is disproven. It sounds worthy of investigation - and it's not right to "write her off" quickly.

Anonymous said...

Mr. Leahy, If you spent time on Ms. Hassetts website (www.livingwithceliac.net) to objectively look for information as opposed to just focusing on typos and grammatical errors to formulate an attack piece, you would see there is a copy of an article from a Falmouth, Mass newspaper covering a booksigning Ms. Hassett participated in in 2008. Even if ISBN numbers changed between editions, you have deliberately used selective facts from Ms. Hassetts website to try and smear her. As an amateur blogger, you should be ashamed of yourself for attacking an amateur author who used her own funds to publish a book to help others and who has clearly been taken advantage of by a lazy celebrity whose only objective is to capitalize on a serious illness and add "author" to her post-Survivor reality TV-star CV.

Michael Patrick Leahy said...

Anonymous,

You might want to double check on the date of the local book signing.

I tried to ascertain if the signing was held in 2008 or 2009. The domain name for the website you reference wasn't acquired until December of 2008.

If you can ascertain the factual date of the book signing in question, happy to publish it here.

Linda Floyd said...

"You might want to double check on the date of the local book signing.

I tried to ascertain if the signing was held in 2008 or 2009. The domain name for the website you reference wasn't acquired until December of 2008.

If you can ascertain the factual date of the book signing in question, happy to publish it here. "


Since I was present at the book signing let me try to help, it was 2008...

Michael Patrick Leahy said...

pink,

You are correct.

I have confirmed that the book signing in question took place on March 30,2008.

I have also confirmed that at that time, the edition of the book presented and sold at that book signing did not have the ISBN number referenced in the letter Ms. Hassett's attorney sent to ABC on June 9, 2009.

The initial purported copy of the book, according to Ms. Hassett's attorney, was sent on April 4, 2008. Either an ISBN number was quickly obtained between March 30,2008 and April 4, 2008, or the book purportedly sent on April 4, 2008 did not have an ISBN number at that time.

Kevin Davidson said...

There are three things numbered "1" in the article. I'll ignore the first set, and suffix the second with "a" and the third set with "b".

1a. The question is silly. Hawaiian officials did not look at the document posted on the Internet, and would have no way of verifying its authenticity. What they did say is that Barack Obama is registered in Hawaii, and in 1961 the only legal registration was for infants born in the state

3b. This asks for violations of state law. The question should be withdrawn. The process could be disclosed, but not the records.

4b. The question asks for violations of both state and federal law. The question should be withdrawn.

6b. There is some confused terminology in this question. A hospital does not "issue" a birth certificate. The hospital initiates a document which when accepted by the State becomes a birth registration, and when issued by the State becomes a "birth certificate". It would be a violation of Hawaiian law for Dr. Chiyome to disclose the name of the hospital where Obama was born -- so the question should be withdrawn.

Further when a birth registration is changed (according to Hawaiian Law) the certificate issued must clearly be marked "altered", so this part of the question has already been answered.

8b. It is certainly false that Maya Soetoro-NG ever had a Hawaiian birth certificate. That "factoid" was created of necessity to legitimize the theory that Maya's birth certificate provided the base document upon which Obama's birth certificate could have been forged. The story persisted to create confusion over what a "Certification of Live Birth" means. The fact is that Hawaiian Law 338-17.8 imposes a residency requirement on the parents; in order for Maya to have qualified for a out of state Hawaiian birth certificate, her mother would have to have been a legal resident of Hawaii in the year immediately preceding Maya's birth, which was not the case. Also, an out of state registration would not be a "Certification of Live Birth" because that's not what is being certified. Since a birth certificate is a primary document for proof of citizenship, they are very clearly labeled as to what they are and what they are not.

The implication is that if Maya could get one, then Barack could get one. The only glaring flaw is that the Certificate, by law, has to say where the child was born, and Obama's COLB says he was born in Hawaii.

Kevin Davidson said...

There are three things numbered "1" in the article. I'll ignore the first set, and suffix the second with "a" and the third set with "b".

2a. Why ask a question which law prohibits Okubo from answering?

3a. Why ask a question which law prohibits Okubo from answering?

5a. This is a dumb question. Barack Obama's birth certificate shows his birth was registered 4 days after birth. The question is already answered by law, and should be dropped from the list. And the program is the "Hawaiian Birth Certificate", not the "Hawaii Birth Certificate", a program which only applies to persons of native Hawaiian descent (which Obama is not).

6a. August 8, 1961. It's on the birth certificate.

Kevin Davidson said...

I find myself intellectually offended by the list of questions because they seem to be questions designed for a propaganda purpose, and not to obtain actual information. Some of the questions, are legitimate ones, but others are definitely not. I detailed the problems with selected questions in previous comments.

The questions are posed in such a way as to suggest the possibility of things which are already discredited by law and fact.

When the discredited questions are removed, no remaining question could possibly have any bearing on where and when President Obama was born. So why ask the questions in the first place, unless it's a smear campaign, and not a legitimate inquiry.