Rachel Maddow mocked Rand Paul for plagiarism, but she’s been accused of it too

MSNBC host Rachel Maddow created headlines this week when she alleged that Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) had plagiarized a recent speech from Wikipedia, but it turns out the liberal cable news host has been accused of plagiarism herself.

In 2010 on his blog “Open Salon,” Michael Rodgers of North Port, Fla., wrote a blog post titled “Rachel Maddow Plagiarized My Blog!”

(Read Related: More accusations of Maddow plagiarism emerge after Rare report)

“Don’t get me wrong, I love Rachel Maddow,” Rodgers wrote. “Truth be told, I’m a huge fan. So, if she wanted something from my blog, all she had to do was ask. I would have given willingly because that’s the kind of guy I am.”

The plagiarism in question involves a comparison Rodgers made between the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010 with the often-forgot about 1979 Ixtoc I oil spill in the same area. The liberal blogger noted that “the oil industry hasn’t advanced their methods of plugging holes in the ocean floor or cleaning up their messes.”

Rodgers then became perturbed upon seeing his own unique angle being copied on Maddow’s program: “I’m sitting there Wednesday evening watching MSNBC and there is Rachel Maddow…TELLING THE SAME DAMN STORY!!”

Rodgers complained, “she stole my scoop of a lifetime and now it’s plastered all over MSNBC with Rachel getting all the credit. Granted, the segment she did Wednesday night covered more ground and was more professional than my little feature, but then she has more resources at her disposal than I do.”

Another blogger made a similar allegation against Maddow just this month. In a post titled “A Remarkable Coincidence,” an anonymous poster writes:

A friend of mine emailed me a link to a short video from the Rachel Maddow Show. He had just read my previous piece on the debt crisis, entitled “Nantucket Sleigh Ride.” Several days after I posted, Maddow and Co. had created a little skit about the debt crisis using an obscure metaphor from the days of whaling: the so-called “Nantucket Sleigh Ride.”

The author of the post notes,

I have to admit that they took the metaphor somewhere I did not, focusing on the axe available to cut the line between the boat and the whale. It’s all about the judgment of the captain and the crew. I focused on the whale as a combination of the wounded insurance industry and the wounded conservative worldview.

“Still, a remarkable coincidence,” he writes. 

Rare contacted MSNBC and Rachel Maddow for comment and have yet to receive a response.

On her program Monday night, Maddow pointed out similarities between a speech Sen. Rand Paul made during the day at a campaign event for Virginia gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli. During the speech, Paul discussed the plot of the 1997 movie “Gattaca” in a way that read similar to the language for the movie’s entry on Wikipedia, a crowd-sourced site.

“She’s been spreading hate on me for the last three years,” the Kentucky senator said to Fusion’s Jorge Ramos of Maddow’s attack.

Paul’s representatives note that Maddow limited the video portion of his speech, without sufficiently highlighting that Paul had indeed credited the primary sources. In a statement to Rare Thursday afternoon RAND PAC Executive Doug Stafford clarified what actually occurred.

“In the course of a 25-minute speech, Senator Paul described the plot of a movie attributed it to the primary sources – the movie – in no way insinuating they were his own thoughts or ideas,” Stafford said.

“If the text had been submitted for academic publication, of course it would have been footnoted. Only in Washington is something this trivial a source for liberal media angst.”

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