I can’t keep up with all the plagiarism-related allegations against the Obama campaign, but I did notice the headline on this story by John Dickerson, currently on the front page of Slate…
…bears unmistakable similarities to this recent clip by NBC’s Andrea Mitchell…
…from a week ago Tuesday night. Which leads me to ask… well, nothing really. However, when it comes to the charges against Barack Obama, I am inclined to agree with James Taranto of the Wall Street Journal. As he wrote yesterday,
isn’t it a bit heavy-handed to accuse Obama of plagiarism? This is a serious charge in academia and journalism, professions in which words are the final product. By contrast, language is a mere instrument for politicians. They hire speechwriters to put words in their mouths, something that would also be frowned upon in academia and journalism. Are voters really going to be dissuaded from backing Obama because as a politician he failed to adhere to the ethical standards that would have applied if he were a professor or a reporter? Not likely.
P.S. It’s fair to note, it isn’t Dickerson I am elbowing here — it’s Slate headline writers, who are notorious more for being misleading than for being copycats.
P.P.S. For what it’s worth, I see Crooks and Liars commenter lokmon beat me to the punch.
I just visited the http://delegatehub.com/ website claiming to teach us about the facts and myths of delegate count.
The disclaimer of the website reads like this:
Paid for by Hillary Clinton for President.
Hillary Clinton for President is not responsible for the content of any external websites.
I wonder how does that work!
I’m more impressed how attacks are spun out onto politicians. The actual logical steps from incident to accusation are brushed over impressively, leaving behind nothing but the stain. For instance: accusing Kerry of “flip-flopping” worked impressively, but what is really being attacked is changing your mind after seeing evidence to the contrary or being convinced by an opposing argument, and I can’t see why this isn’t a trait you’d want in a leader (rather than, say, dogmatically sticking to a terrible idea regardless of the circumstances).
In the same vein, here in the UK, there was a big plagiarism accusation against Brown (current PM) lifting Tory policies and implementing them. There was a large backlash, but the end result is: you were promoting these policies, they got implemented, why are you complaining?