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February 18, 2008
Busted
One of the great things for researchers about the Internet is that it makes information and recordings easily and quickly available to a huge number of people.
That's not always a great thing for the people being researched, however.
It would have been so easy for Obama to preface this part of his speech with "As Deval Patrick noted when this same, baseless complaint was levied against him: 'Don't tell me that words don't matter'..." But he didn't. And it may be that Obama was reaching for something to say and latched onto this eloquent, forceful rhetorical bit.
But I don't believe that Senator Obama gives many extemporaneous speeches these days, so this possible explanation feels quite flat to me.
Yes, Senator, words do matter. So please don't try to pass off someone else's words as your own. The Internet has a loooong memory.
UPDATE: TPM has an update on Obama's plagiarism-gate. Here's the Senator:
"I was on the stump, and, you know, he had suggested that we use these lines," Obama said at a news conference a few minutes ago. "I thought they were good lines. I'm sure I should have [given him credit], didn't this time."
Which is nice, really. We've become far too used to politicians who can do (or at least, who can admit doing) no wrong.
UPDATE REDUX! Deval Patrick himself weighs in on the subject in a NYT article:
Mr. Patrick said he did not believe Mr. Obama should give him credit.
"Who knows who I am? The point is more important than whose argument it is," said Mr. Patrick, who telephoned The New York Times at the request of the Obama campaign. "It's a transcendent argument."
Which is nice, really. We've become far too used to politicians for whom everything really is about them. A little humility goes a long way.
On the other hand, citation is about respect and truth. It shows respect for the originator of the passage, and a commitment to the accurate representation of the past. In the age of Google, why not just do the right thing from the start?
Posted by reparent at February 18, 2008 4:47 PM