Further non-plagiarism, this time about plagiarism

    I read through John D. MacDonald's "No Deadly Drug" about the Carl Coppolino case. I was surprised that it ended with his acquittal in New Jersey. Since I didn't look up the history until after I finished, I was even more surprised that he was then convicted in Florida. (F. Lee Bailey had considered the New Jersey case the tougher one. But the dingbat wouldn't testify in his own defense in the second trial and got 12 1/2 years in Raiford to think about that mistake.) Of course in 1968 when the book came out, this had been all over the headlines only a year or so before so any reader would have known how the case turned out. It was kind of neat not knowing, really, as was this, a commentary on network TV news of the mid-'60s:
    p. 649: "One evidence of how inadequately the television news programs prepare themselves for this kind of news is their willingness to move in, with lights and camera, when a principal in one of these trial dramas is being interviewed by the press. As the TV-men do not know what questions should be asked, and the newspaper people do, they let the newspaper people ask the questions, and in that sense they hitchhike on the interview and, more often than not, are on the air before the newspapers containing the interview hit the streets.
    "As the pictures and the sound are both going onto the film strip, it becomes a curious kind of plagiarism. Today one does not see anywhere near as much of this on network time as was possible a year or so ago. The reason is that the hard-nosed newspaper people, realizing that they were being unfairly used by another media (sic) in competition with theirs, came up with a curiously effective defense.
    "They merely began to salt their questions here and there with a few earthy expressions, of Anglo-Saxon derivation, unsuitable for television broadcast. 'Mr. Bailey, is Dr. Sheppard -------ed off at the treatment he got in the papers this time?' 'What the ------ does Dr. Sam plan to do now that it's all over?' 'Is he going to sue the Cleveland papers, or doesn't he give a --------?'
    "The roars of indignation from the television crew have been ample proof of the effectiveness of the device. Of late the television people have had to conduct their own interviews, and find out in advance what questions to ask."

    See? You don't get that in "Mad Men"!:)