{"id":3863,"date":"2008-08-18T15:05:25","date_gmt":"2008-08-18T20:05:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=3863"},"modified":"2008-08-21T21:02:50","modified_gmt":"2008-08-22T02:02:50","slug":"mark-nickolas-did-mccain-steal-his-cross-in-the-dirt-story-at-the-saddleback-forum-from-solzhenitsyn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=3863","title":{"rendered":"Mark Nickolas: Did McCain Steal His &#8220;Cross in the Dirt&#8221; Story at the Saddleback Forum From Solzhenitsyn?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Mark Nickolas, Political Base, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.politicalbase.com\/profile\/Mark%20Nickolas\/blog\/&amp;blogId=3133\">17 October 2008<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The blogosphere is abuzz right now over the discovery that a POW story told by <strong>John McCain (R) <\/strong>at Saturday night\u2019s presidential forum is eerily similar to one told by <strong>Alexander Solzhenitsyn<\/strong> in his famous book <em>The Gulag Archipelago<\/em> which <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Gulag_Archipelago\"><strong>chronicled his time<\/strong><\/a> in a Soviet labor camp in the 1950s and 1960s.<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s what McCain told Saddleback Church\u2019s <strong>Pastor Rick Warren<\/strong> last night &#8212; according to the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rickwarrennews.com\/transcript\/civil_forum_transcript-05.txt\"><strong>unofficial transcript<\/strong><\/a> released by the church:<\/p>\n<p><strong>[<a href=\"http:\/\/www.politicalbase.com\/profile\/Mark%20Nickolas\/blog\/&amp;blogId=3133\">Read the article<\/a>]<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><em>Updated 21 August<\/em>:<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>McCain&#8217;s &#8220;cross-in-the-dirt&#8221; story couldn&#8217;t have been plagiarised from Alexander Solzhenitsyn&#8217;s work since according to his biographer, Michael Scammell, the episode &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com\/2008\/08\/solzhenitsyn_biographer_crossi.php\">appears nowhere in his published writing.<\/a>&#8220;<\/p>\n<p>Andrew Sullivan investigated: parts <a href=\"http:\/\/andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com\/the_daily_dish\/2008\/08\/mccains-cross-i.html\">one<\/a> | <a href=\"http:\/\/andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com\/the_daily_dish\/2008\/08\/the-dirt-in-the.html#more\">two<\/a><\/p>\n<p>McCain seems to have dodged intense mainstream scrutiny of this POW tale.  Another story he told <a href=\"http:\/\/thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com\/2008\/08\/18\/who-knew-what-when\/\">during his rehearsed performance for Saddleback Church<\/a> may finally cause him trouble. <\/p>\n<p>John Hawkins: <a href=\"http:\/\/rightwingnews.com\/mt331\/2008\/08\/cindy_mccain_should_know_bette.php\">Cindy McCain Should Know Better<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mark Nickolas, Political Base, 17 October 2008 The blogosphere is abuzz right now over the discovery that a POW story told by John McCain (R) at Saturday night\u2019s presidential forum is eerily similar to one told by Alexander Solzhenitsyn in &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/?p=3863\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3863","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdXTf-10j","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3863","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3863"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3863\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3912,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3863\/revisions\/3912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3863"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3863"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/karmalised.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3863"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}