“Words! Words! Words! I’m So Sick Of Words!”Liza Doolittle, My Fair Lady.
Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama met last night at perhaps their next to last debate. The Texas and Ohio primaries on March 4th are the make-it-or-break-it contests for Clinton who hasn’t won a primary or caucus since February 5. If she doesn’t pull out a stunning victory in either of those states, it would be safe to say that the long tedious fight for the Democratic Party nomination will finally be drawn to a close.
Last night’s debate was mostly civil but it was far from the love-fest we saw at the last debate prior to Tsunami Tuesday, the Potomac Primaries, and all those other contests that never got a clever name.
One of Obama’s memorable moments came when Hillary was booed by the audience for calling his campaign “change you can Xerox” – alluding to the plagiarism allegations she’s been waging on the campaign trail. Obama cleared up the confusion saying that the words were those of his campaign co-chairman, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick, who had given the candidate his blessing to use the lines. Obama called this “silly” campaigning.
Now it looks like Hillary is the one who may have photocopied a few lines. Her shining moment of the debate was at the very end when she said “you know, the hits I’ve taken in life are nothing compared to what goes on every single day in the lives of people across the country.” These words are strikingly similar to a few lines used by her husband in a 1992 speech in which he said “The hits that I took in this election are nothing compared to the hits the people of this state and this country have been taking for a long time.”
Neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton was actually plagiarizing. Plagiarism is a harsh allegation and, to be honest, campaign rhetoric is so tired and prepared that it doesn’t exactly seem like lifting words is that ridiculous – particularly from people the candidates are involved with like a husband or a campaign co-chair.
Plagiarism accusations lead to the end of Joe Biden’s 1988 bid for the White House when whole passages of his speeches were found to be almost identical to British politician Neil Kinnock. Of course most time Biden gave the speech he properly identified the original author but one occasion he did not and of course that one occasion was caught on tape.
“Plagiarism” is a fighting word. It should only be leveled at those who actually claim the words they read are their own. In a campaign season we’re not stupid enough to believe that every word a candidate utters is original – otherwise there wouldn’t be speechwriters.
2 Comments
February 22, 2008 at 5:32 pm
Excellent posting. I particularly liked your commentary on “plagiarism.” Re your post-Texas and Ohio primaries predictions, I think Obama will win Texas and Ohio, but am not so sure that Clinton will surrender at that point…
Keep up the good work!
February 22, 2008 at 10:40 pm
Hey Julia! Don’t forget the “celeb” and “Hollywood” stuff…even if you didn’t take the class!! What do you think about the comments that Obama and Clinton are “Rock Stars”? Is “celebrity” overcoming ideas?