The Cross in the Dirt.

I have not got involved in the "cross in the dirt" debacle. The notion that McCain lifted that story clean from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is at the centre of the charge. What amuses me is Michael Goldfarb's ridiculous defence:

In the least credible and most vicious corner of the internet, liberal bloggers at the Daily Kos are accusing John McCain of plagiarizing from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The story Solzhenitsyn told was of a prisoner who drew a cross in the dirt in a Soviet Gulag. McCain's story is of a guard who drew a cross in the dirt in a Vietnamese prisoner of war camp.

The only similarity between the two stories is a cross in the dirt.

The "only similarity" in the two stories is "a cross in the dirt!?" I'm sorry? Remove the "cross in the dirt" and you don't have a story at all.

So Goldfarb's defence that the stories have few similarities is simply ludicrous. It is the EXACT same story. That's not to say it didn't happen to McCain as well as to Solzhenitsyn, but to pretend that there are few similarities between the two stories is to push credibility too far.

Hat tip to Balloon Juice.

Click title for Goldfarb's hilarious defence.