One of the most obvious and exquisite ironies in all this is that the particular webpage where our alleged plagiarism is documented has a homepage. That homepage has a bunch of places to go in order to get your tolerant juices flowing, and the seventh link down, inspirationally-placed, is Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech. The famous peroration of that speech was swiped (as in, plagiarized) from a gentleman named Archibald Carey.
This is not mentioned because the habitual plagiarism of Martin Luther King would ever justify anyone else doing the same. This is not a tu quoque argument, which is an argument that runs, “Oh, yeah? Well, you do it too!” Rather, it is mentioned to reveal that those attacking us have no interest in fighting plagiarism per se. We were guilty of embarrassing and inexcusable sloppiness in the citations of Time on the Cross. Inexcusable, and therefore no excuses. Now if the attack continues, unrelenting, because plagiarism is the “most serious of all academic offenses,” then why is a plagiarized work adorning the home page of our accusers? In other words, give me a break.