Comments on: Does integrity require the breaking of promises?

By: JR

JR — Tue, 09 May 2006 18:51:13 +0000

Kennedy and Sorenson expressly denied that Sorensen wrote the book. Kennedy, not Sorenson, won the Pulitzer. On the strength of it, Kennedy became the darling of the New York media elite (which in those days counted for a great deal), someone on a par with Stevenson for intellectual firepower. Undoubtedly Kennedy hatched the scheme to have this book written in his name in order to attach himself to the great pillars of integrity of American history. So, in Kennedy’s case, apparently “integrity” means “lying to the public for political advantage.”

By: Mark Kleiman

Mark Kleiman — Tue, 09 May 2006 01:19:34 +0000

I’m not sure why a book is different from a speech. Indeed, by giving a speech a politician claims the words in that speech in a more directly personal way than he does by putting his name on the title page of a book. No American President since Lincoln has written his own speeches; Peggy Noonan openly boasts about having written Reagan’s, and no one thinks the less of Reagan as a result.
As to books, I’ve always assumed that politicians’ books are mostly ghostwritten. Most of them aren’t worth claiming credit for. Profiles in Courage was an exception.

By: Tony

Tony — Tue, 09 May 2006 00:42:00 +0000

Would you be offering the same defense if a prominent conservative had “written” a widely-praised book? Or would you be arguing that this is one more piece of evidence of intellectual fraud on the part of the Republican Party?
I’m a Democrat, but I think ghostwriting is abhorrent no matter who does it. The problem with plagarism is not just that the real author is denied credit. Harm is also done to the reader, who wrongly gives credit to the plagarizer for the language and ideas in the book. This injury is no less real when the plagarized author consents to the plagarism.

By: JR

JR — Mon, 08 May 2006 23:01:22 +0000

Keeping one’s word is praiseworthy? What about perpetuating a fraud on the entire American public, a fraud that convinced voters that this lazy, callow boy was a sophisticated historian and philosopher?
But then, I think that Cyrano played a really disgusting dirty trick on Roxanne when he conned her into letting Christian fuck her.

By: eponymous coward

eponymous coward — Mon, 08 May 2006 02:20:19 +0000

Also, Sorenson’s credited in the book (and got paid from royalties for his work)- so “uncredited” is a bit of a stretch.
The reason why it was a big to-do is Kennedy could have lost his Pulitzer, and the scandal would have likely torpedoed his presidential ambitions.

By: eponymous coward

eponymous coward — Mon, 08 May 2006 02:16:23 +0000

Actually, there was a threatened lawsuit about this, because Drew Pearson alleged during an interview with Mike Wallace that JFK did not write the book.
The story’s recounted in Clark Clifford’s autobiography (as Clifford was Kennedy’s attorney during the negotiations with ABC, Wallace’s employer), but the net effect was Pearson retracted his statements, and ABC apologized on air.