Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Lifting Words-Big Deal? Or No Deal?

Jim Taricani

So here’s Barack Obama, back-peddling and babbling, trying to explain why he lifted some nifty words first spoken by Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick.
And of course, it didn’t take more than a nano-second for the Obama camp to claim that Hillary Clinton had stolen some of his words on occasion.
The national media jumped all over this latest round of the Obama-Clinton bash contest and continues to report on it. They should-but to what degree?
Is it a big issue? Or is it-to lift some words-much ado about nothing?“
No doubt Obama, who no doubt like hearing himself talk, should have credited the words he used to Governor Patrick. But the words he lifted, for the most part, were well-known and often used quotes from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and FDR.
But Clinton’s spokesman, Howard Wolfson does have a point when he says “if you’re asking the electorate to judge you on your rhetoric( which Obama is) and you lift it, you’ve broken a promise.“
The unfortunate thing about Obama’s plagiarizing is the national media will spend way too much time reporting on it, while stories about where these two candidates stand on issues takes a back seat.
And coverage of the McCain campaign will also take a back seat, and that’s not good for the electorate.