Misrepesentation

Thursday, May. 04, 2006 - 1:39 a.m.

I haven't said anything yet about yet about How Kaavya Viswanathan Got Famous, Got Caught Stealing From Other Authors, And Fucked Her Life Up yet, but here goes.

She claims to have 'unconsciously imitated' one of her favorite authors, Megan McCafferty. Now, people who have read Kaavya Viswanathan's book have also pointed out turns of phrase and specific sentences that have entirely too close a resemblance to authors Sophie Kinsella, Salman Rushdie, and Meg Cabot.

What an annoying person.

No, not Kaavya Viswanathan, who is merely a thief.

I'm talking about Meg Cabot.

Meg Cabot used to write a column for AOL called Ask Meg. It was light and funny and contained frequent references to chat rooms and areas of interest there on AOL.

However, one day in our Pagan chat room, there was something wrong. VERY wrong.

One memorable Valentine's Day, the Pagan Chat room was suddenly innundated by a bunch of users that the regular chat room residents had never ever seen before anywhere else -- not in Pagan Chat, not in the Pagan message board areas, nowhere. Teen and pre-teen girls were filling the chat room to capacity, asking for various forms of love spells and advice about boys and so on and so forth. We were startled and more than a little mystified, until I began asking some of the new visitors how they happened to have found the [usually quieter] Pagan Chat Room. At the time, it wasn't predominantly featured in the Religion and Lifestyles page; you really had to search for it, or have a flash of inspiration and have enough moxie to figure out to type the search keyword 'Pagan' into the AOL Keyword feature and see if it did anything or led anywhere.

It turns out the newbies had found their way to Pagan Chat via the Ask Meg column which had been written for Valentine's day.

Upon further questioning of the visitors how they found the chat room, they said that the Ask Meg column had featured a writeup that day about Meg's 'visit' to AOL's Pagan Chat Room to 'pick up a few love spells'. The room regulars asked among themselves in the chat room and in IM, and despite several days of detective work, none of us could recall seeing her or having been solicited by anybody for love spells.

Only one conclusion could be drawn from this: Meg had LIED. Not only that, she'd LIED about a form of worship. That's not something I would ever expect from a paid professional on the online service I was subscribed to.

Despite the numerous letters we sent to Meg, explaining to her why what she did was inaccurate and ill-informed and unkind -- she never responded. Never rescinded what she said, never apologized, never asked any Pagans how to address the 'love spell' misinformation in a future column, and never admitted she'd lied about being in Pagan Chat.

For several weeks after her column appeared, we had lots of problems with newbies attempting to just stop by and collect love spells as if they were bubblegum cards. It was a very disruptive time in that chat room, and it took us awhile to get back to what passed for normal there. In the Pagan realm, spells are an intimate form of communication with the universe, and no spell affects any two people the same way. Most of the time they cannot just be distributed to strangers who ask. They are ritualized visualizations akin to prayer, and frequently, they're very personal. This was something the writer of Ask Meg would have been told if she'd actually bothered to come to the chat and let her fingers do the asking.

I had no idea until recently that she was the author of The Princess Diaries. I had once seriously considering obtaining the movie due to being a Julie Andrews fan, but now I don't want anything to do with the franchise at all, because of how she maligned my faith and never made it right.

At least Kaavya Viswanathan apologized for her mistake.

In this way, despite the fact that she stole work, she is a bigger person than Meg Cabot.

---

In other news, Earl Woods, father of Tiger, passed away after a long illness. He was at every event he could attend, and was the foundation for his son's success.

---

Still waiting for word about the miners in Tasmania. I hope everything is going well there.

---

Okay, that's it. Have a good Thursday.

---

what you missed - what's next - leave a note
first post - cast page - diaryrings - top ten

THE LEGAL STUFF: All content on this site that was created by me is copyright 2003-infinity by Brin Marie McLaughlin. Steal my stuff and I'll squash you like a bug. All incoming email or any other form of communication with me is subject to publication or other distribution by me in whole or in part at my sole discretion. This diary features the sole opinions and experiences of one person, namely me, the person who is paying for this space. In the interest of safety and accountability, no anonymous input will ever be allowed here, ever, for any reason in the entire history of ever. Whenever there is a comments section appearing in this diary, it's to be considered part of my paid presence on the web, and shall be used by my readership to supplement the things I have written here with relevant information in a polite manner. Comments that do not fall in that category are subject to deletion at my whim. Your visit to my diary along with your use of my comments section constitutes the understanding of this statement. Anything else on these pages including any comments belongs to whoever created it. All external links are current as of the date of the entry in which they are first featured, but at no other time. News excerpts used here are for educational purposes and are permitted under the Fair Use Doctrine. Hold hands when you cross the street, and play nice.