Plagiarize This

This is an interesting plagiarism case. 

The accused lifted other people's phraseology in his own work without attribution. At least nine times the accused borrowed a phrase from film critic Pauline Kael, 'self-glorifying masochistic mush.'

This is a no-no.

Readers will recall that here at William Stroock dot BlogSpot dot com we are prone to writing, 'as PJ O'Rourke' once said or 'as the great M Steyn has remarked'...and so on.

To explain further, if we wrote 'That's a euphemism for feeling lower than whale shit' without attributing it to PJ O'Rourke, we'd be plagiarizing.

That said we borrow dialogue from fiction from time to time. In The Final Storm a British officer says, 'Thank you, gentlemen. Thank you.' We bet reader(s) know exactly where we lifted it from. We're not plagiarizing we're saying hello.

We've also recreated scenes from movies in our work. Anyone else pick up on the bunker scene in ANZACs and from we're we got it?

Devotees will recall* that George Lucas lifted the Star Wars trench attack almost shot for shot from The Dam Busters.

That's not plagiarism that's pure salifist tribute and if that's a crime then we plead guilty.

*We've lifted this from Arrested Development. If that doesn't cause a flurry of quotes from the show in the comments we'll be disappointed in you people.