Did Daddy Rush Plagiarize T.R. Fehrenbach?
  By Timothy Noah     Originally from
 

                             Chatterbox earlier questioned whether the urban legend about
                             the fates of the signers of the Declaration of
                             Independence--whose publication-without-attribution by
                             Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby led to Jacoby's
                             suspension--passed from radio's Paul Harvey (who published
                             it in a 1956 book) to Rush Limbaugh Jr. (father of radio's
                             Rush Limbaugh III), or from Limbaugh to Harvey. (Click here
                             and here and here to read Chatterbox's previous entries about
                             this.) But that now appears to have been the wrong question.

                             Jim Elbrecht, who maintains the Signer's Index Web page
                             (which is dedicated to tracking down every version of the
                             legend), has been pursuing a new angle focused on T.R.
                             Fehrenbach, author of the much-admired Texas history Lone
                             Star. (Fehrenbach is now a columnist for the San Antonio
                             Express-News.) It seems that a 1965 magazine article by
                             Fehrenbach about the fate of the signers was recycled into the
                             Congressional Record on June 30 by Sen. Strom Thurmond,
                             "as a reminder of the sacrifices made for our freedom."
                             Having surveyed Fehrenbach's text (and also a book
                             Fehrenbach originally published in 1968 titled Greatness To
                             Spare, which Elbrecht says contains most of what's in the
                             article), Elbrecht concludes that about 60 percent of it is
                             identical to Daddy Rush's version!

                             Did Daddy Rush swipe from Fehrenbach, or did Fehrenbach
                             swipe from Daddy Rush? Fehrenbach says in no uncertain
                             terms: "I did not take anything from Rush Limbaugh [III], and
                             I never heard of his father. ... As far as Paul Harvey, the same
                             way. I didn't listen to Paul Harvey in them days." Fehrenbach
                             says that when his 1965 article was published in American
                             Legion magazine, the editors were swamped with requests
                             for reprints. "Some student somewhere in Missouri plagiarized
                             whole sections," he recalls, "and won a prize with it."

                             Fehrenbach's version repeats some of the errors found in
                             other versions, including the destruction of Thomas Nelson's
                             house. (For Elbrecht's line-by-line analysis, click here.)
                             Chatterbox now believes that Fehrenbach and Harvey were
                             working off the same faulty source material, and that Daddy
                             Rush helped himself to Fehrenbach's article. (Fehrenbach told
                             Chatterbox that he didn't use anything that post-dated 1900.)
                             "I can't defend absolutely every fact stated," Fehrenbach says,
                             "but they were all sourced." He says he used "the old
                             insurance claim system--if it's 51 percent true, it is accepted
                             as true, and if it's 49 percent true and 51 percent false, I don't
                             use it."

                             Chatterbox has promised his editor he won't write about this
                             anymore.