You don't give up easily, do you?
Earlier this week, just before the primaries in Wisconsin and Washington, you charged Barack Obama with plagiarizing a passage from a speech given by Deval Patrick, the Governor of Massachusetts. Though your charge fizzled (Obama won both of those primaries), you tried it again last night in Texas while debating Senator Obama. "Lifting whole passages from someone else's speeches," you said, "is not change you can believe in. It's change you can Xerox."
A catchy phrase, Senator. And now perhaps you'll tell us which of your speechwriters coined it for you.
Or did you mint it yourself? And will you unequivocally declare that you never have and never will use speechwriters? Or that if you do, you will always acknowledge their contributions?
If you don't, of course, you will have plenty of precedents, including your husband Bill. To the best of my knowledge, no president has ever cited the name of a speechwriter while giving a speech. But strictly speaking, anyone who gives a speech that has been wholly or partly written by someone else and fails to acknowledge his or her contributions is committing plagiarism, which is "the practice of claiming or implying original authorship of (or incorporating material from) someone else's written or creative work, in whole or in part, into one's own without adequate acknowledgement." (Source: Wikipedia). By this definition, which makes no exceptions, every president who has ever used a speechwriter is a plagiarist. (Just like every TV talk show host who uses material furnished by his or her writers -- now back finally back on the job.)
If you don't agree, Senator, then you have to admit that not every case of unacknowledged borrowing in a speech can be considered plagiarism. And that is surely the case with what Barack Obama allegedly plagiarized from Deval Patrick.
Here are the facts.
In October 2006, when he was running for the governorship of Massachusetts, Deval Patrick responded as follows to his opponent's claim that he had nothing to offer but words:
"Just words," he said. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal -- just words. We have nothing to fear but fear itself. Just words. Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country. Just words. I have a dream -- just words."
Last weekend Senator Obama spoke as follows:
"Don't tell me that words don't matter. I have a dream -- just words. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal -- just words. We have nothing to fear but fear itself -- just words. Just speeches."
So what do these two passages have in common? By a strict definition of plagiarism, BOTH ARE PLAGIARIZED. Without even mentioning the names of Thomas Jefferson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, or Martin Luther King, Jr., Deval Patrick used their words, and Barack Obama did the same. But surely, you will say, no one needs to acknowledge such well-known statements.
Oh really? So now we must add another exception to the rule about plagiarism, which nicely complements the first. For we don't know -- and probably never will know -- whether or not it was JFK or Theodore Sorenson who came up with the famous line about what you can do for your country. (Sorenson won't say.) Even Jefferson probably deserves something less than full credit for the line about men being created equal. In drafting the Declaration of Independence, he not only drew on a rich tradition of Enlightenment thought but also -- as Pauline Maier has shown in AMERICAN SCRIPTURE (I'm happy to cite this source) -- on the language of similar declarations already made by several of the colonies. Why did Jefferson not cite the source of every idea and phrase that he used? And when Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg, why did he not say that our nation was "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the principle enunciated in the Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson (with hints from other sources too numerous to be identified here) that 'all men are created equal'"?
Once again, we could say that Lincoln did not need to cite the source of such a landmark principle. Speaking out of American history even as he took his place in making it, he made his speech unforgettable by giving new meaning to an old dictum, by intimating that "all men" might mean just exactly what it said -- unlike the rules against plagiarism. To judge Obama's speech as mere plagiarism is to miss its crucial point about the role of language in American life. Anyone who thinks that words have played no part in the building of this nation -- that they were not just as vital as all the blood shed by its soldiers -- simply does not know its history.
Right now, its history is being re-made by an inspiring new generation of African-American leaders such as Deval Patrick, Cory Booker (mayor of Newark), Adrian Fenty (mayor of Washington), and of course Barack Obama. A hundred years from now, historians may remember them as the founding fathers of a new America, conceived in the audacity of hope and dedicated to the principle that all the men and women of this country can thrive on common ground. What could the founding fathers have done without each other's help? Why should we grudge one African-American leader the right to borrow a rhetorical technique from another?
For that is virtually all he took. Apart from the two-word phrase, "just words," all the other "plagiarized" words that Obama used come from QUOTATIONS that Patrick himself used without acknowledgement. The act of quoting cannot be plagiarized. If you quote from Lincoln in a speech, book, or article, I can legitimately use the same quotation without mentioning you. And no one owns a rhetorical technique. If Deval Patrick can expose the fallacy of thinking that all words are "just words" by quoting words that resonate for all of us, so can Obama.
And so I ask you, Senator: do you really think "plagiarism" is a just word for what Obama did?
I just posted a new video on YouTube with a side-by-side comparison between Edwards' and Hillary's closing lines. Here's the
link: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhwQk8yhunw
Please check it out and spread the word.
Btw, I don't really care that Hillary borrowed Edwards' lines, but it's certainly pretty ironic that she ended up falling in her own campaign's trap...
For a woman who has never been accused of creativity or possessed an original thought this statement is truly ludicrous. Not only has she xeroxed* dialogue and ideas she has based her political life and campaign on the experience of another. No candidate for president has ever entered the race with more advantages and taken less advantage of them. The mistakes made under her command has morphed the Clinton machine into the Keystone Kops. yet in spite of all this duplicity, indecisiveness, and disingeniousness she would still be the nominee if she were running against anyone but Barack Obama.
* it looks as though the money spent for consultants/writers should be refundable. who in a 'cut and paste' culture xeroxes?
One of Obama's strongest voting blocks is the well educated, middle to upper middle class demographic. This fact has been analyzed repeatedly. Yet these are the people who are mesmerized.
Not so the stalwart supporters of HRC, who are somewhat less educated and make ubder $50,000 a year. These are the steely clear-eyed people, who can't be fooled by false promises.
The entire premise would be comical if people didn't parrot it so earnestly.
They were circulating press releases that MCCain and Hillary were using the words *change* and *fired up*. One memo went out before Hillary even finished her speech, because she said fired up.
The Clinton camp responded showing the Deval clips.
Now that he is so blatantly busted, he says it is no big deal, and *silly season*.
These stories came out before the Deval episode:
http://www.swamppolitics.com/news/politics/blog/2008/02/did_obama_plagiarize_clinton_t.html
http://thepage.time.com/obama-release-on-clintons-languge/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbYFKUsaKpY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qj_sApZ4Q9Y
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M6x1H08aFc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pqutz5ASDSA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuB_W8o_UsU
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/sleuth/2007/08/elizabeth_edwards_obama_is_a_c.html
Obama has also been accused of stealing Hillary's economic plan.
http://www.talkleft.com/story/2008/2/14/1329/28824
So, go ahead and think it is no big deal, but some of us do.
Then there's John Edwards, who has stolen two of the same lines from Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton himself!
As for memos, the Obama camp spread no such memos. We did. And we laughed at it. It wasn't an accusation, it was a joke representative of Hillary Clinton's inability to define herself by anyone except her competitors. Hillary Clinton turned combative on it.
John McCain accused Obama of stealing Hillary's economic plan, except he has had his economic plan on his website for over a year and Hillary Clinton JUST THIS WEEK created a "Blueprint for Change" (wow, that sounds familiar!) Hillary stole her economic plan from John Edwards, and Obama's economic plan is older than BOTH of them. If anyone was stolen from, it was Obama.
The reality is, Obama, Edwards, and Clinton have repeatedly taken lines from other people. Clinton has taken lines from both Obama and Edwards in heavy amounts, and neither of the other two have ever taken anything from her. Now Hillary is accusing Barack Obama of plagiarism even though she has taken liberally from him. It's outright hypocrisy.
So, yes, many of the candidates take lines. Only HILLARY takes lines OVER and OVER and OVER again from someone she is accusing of plagiarism. This is why Hillary Clinton can kiss her ass goodbye.
Does the question then become we can give a person a pass on Shakespeare level plagiarism--To be or not to be, President! But call them on the lesser known stuff? Ridiculous.
For something he dismisses as "silly", Obama's campaign is sending blastfaxes and emails every day pointing out Hillary's "plagiarism"--how is that anything new or different from politics as usual? It shows that he and his staff know this hits him where it counts.
At 8:37 in the youtube video of John Edwards' suspension speech in New Orleans on January 30, 2008, he says the following:
"…with all of your support, this son of a mill worker is going to be just FINE. Our job now is to make certain that America will be FINE."
That is jarringly like what Hillary said at the end of the last debate. About how she and Obama are going to be fine. But we must take care of the country. I don't remember exactly what she said, but the word "fine" kept coming out, and Edwards' message about worrying about the country.
Even if Hillary hadn't accused Obama of plagiarism, that certainly feels like taking the words, intonation, and message from John Edwards… a moment with John Edwards that his passionate followers such as myself listened to with a disappointed but respectful heart and will never forget. I am sure the mainstream media skimmed it easily, having given John Edwards so little air time. But we won't soon forget it.
I don't want to be petty about this, either, but it upset me to hear Hillary echo it as closely as she did!
NBA Star Shaquille O'Neal: ‘We'll be fine, no matter what happens.’ [AP, 10/8/03]
Actress Lindsay Lohan: ‘No matter what happens, we're going to be fine.’ [AP, 4/19/07]
Former Redskin Dexter Manley: 'Whatever happens, I'm going to be fine.' [Washington Post, 7/26/98]
Former Redskin Gus Frerotte: 'I look forward to whatever happens. We're going to be fine.' [Washington Times, 12/22/98]
Notre Dame football player Tom Zbikowski: 'Whatever happens, we're going to be fine back there.' [Notre Dame football player Tom Zbikowski, 4/22/07]
Angels GM Bill Stoneman: 'Whatever happens, I'm going to be fine.' [Los Angeles Times, 2/22/03]
Former Giant Christian Peter: 'And whatever happens, I'm going to be fine.' [Asbury Park Press, 1/29/01]
Chicago Cub Larry Rothschild: 'I'm not worried about that. Whatever happens, I'm going to be fine.' [St. Petersburg Times, 4/1/01]
Diamondback Edgar Gonzalez: 'Whatever happens, I’ll be fine because I’m in the big leagues.' [Edgar Gonzalez, Diamondbacks, 5/2/07]
Hockey player Richard Hamula: 'Whatever happens I'll be fine with but hopefully I can still stick around here.' [Richard Hamula, hockey player, 9/20/02]
Leonard Hamm, interim commissioner for the Baltimore City Police Department: ‘Whatever happens, I’m going to be fine.’ [Baltimore Afro-American, 11/19/04]
(from Taylor Marsh website)
Thank you, nevertheless.