Obama Hits Back On Hillary Plagiarism
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in 2008 Election, Barack, Hillary, MediaTurnabout is fair play and so we have this. Does it matter? Nope. This won’t be nearly as widely reported as the Obama story, even though there are multiple instances where Hillary copied him.
Personally, I think the media just felt it was time to rough-up Obama, and this was an easy way to do it. Also, Drudge decided to feature it prominently and so he really drove the news cycle yesterday. And so a meme starts…”Obama is a liar and a cheat, pass it on…”
Amazing what bloggers can do, eh?
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February 19th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
The Obama campaign has lost its collective mind. Rather than addressing the matter, and letting it drop, they invite more debate on a subject that can only damage Sen. Obama’s authenticity. Do the Obama folks really want more scrutiny of his speeches? OK, here goes:
Senator Obama — In your speech on Super Tuesday, perhaps by coincidence, you used key phrases from a 1984 speech by Jesse Jackson (“Our time has come. Our time has come†DNC), a poem by June Jordan (“we are the ones we have been waiting for†— “Poem for South African Womenâ€), and a song by Norman Hutchins (“a change is comingâ€) – but you did not credit any of them for the key lines in your speech. Isn’t this the kind of speechwriting that doomed Joe Biden’s presidential campaign in the 1980s, and why should your speeches be held to a different standard?
February 19th, 2008 at 4:13 pm
Amazing what disreputable bloggers can do.
I don’t care how much anyone rails against the mythical “MSM,” I will not trust a former souvenir stand clerk, over a professional journalist… ever.
Babe Ruth, while being the “Home Run King,” struck out more times than he hit. Drudge is no different.
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/politics/national/features/9221/
February 19th, 2008 at 4:40 pm
Well, the Biden situation was FAR different because he basically lifted a passage from somebody else and claimed their life story as his own. The only addendum to put on that story is that Biden had actually cited the author of the passage numerous other times, but had simply failed in that one speech. Still, the competition jumped on it and the media hung him for it.
Obama could suffer the same fate, but let’s get a couple things straight here. Jordan didn’t come up with that line, that’s a Hopi Nation saying, so did she plagiarize it? And can we really hold our politicians up to the standard of never using a couple words strung together that somebody else at some other point in time may have said? Speechwriter after speechwriter have come out on this issues on the same side: not a big deal.
The biggest issue now is that Hillary’s camp keeps pushing this meme because they think it’s gaining traction, not because they think Obama has actually done anything wrong. And as the Obama camp has pointed out, she’s literally stolen lines from him during THIS election cycle. The whole thing is CRAZY, but we’re seeing what happens when dishonest spinmeisters get with lazy journalists and opportunistic bloggers…a meme is created. And so now we have one against Obama.
It’s all so depressing…
February 22nd, 2008 at 11:27 am
I don’t like like the way Obama brushed aside those charges of plagiarism as unimportant because that says a lot of the man. Plagiarism is theft. Any student knows that. Authors fight against plagiarism and their associations stress ethics and standards against it. So I don’t know what is more disturbing – that a presidencial candidate is too stupid to quote a source or that it doesn’t matter to him even if it is a theft, making his ethics suspect. Lets inspire our children to use the “Obama defense” when they get in trouble in college with charges of plagiarism. It’s okay to steal, especially if you can say your friend gave you permission. I have a son who was laughing about that, and I did not find it funny.
I know Obama walks on water. I know he is winning the popularity vote. Women scream and faint in his presence. They scream, “I love you” as if he were a rockstar, but even if Oprah offers a car, I need more of a president. I need to believe that he has some ethics and standards.