Letters to the Editor
maureenodonnell
Published Letters: 475 Editor's Choice: 5
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To plagiarise is to take and use the thoughts, writings, inventions etc. as one's own.
[Read the article: Quote of the day: Obama on Clinton ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That's one of the reasons people use inverted commas to signify quotation but this would be difficult in speech although some people use hand-motions to indicate quotation. If Senator Obama as cribed his scintillating words to Deval Patrick, it would be straightforward but there's something slippery about this. Maybe Patrick and Obama regularly make
speeches to each other while more mundane people just chat. Si (accent missing) se puede - yes, it is possible. What about Puck's speech from "A Midsummer Night's Dream"? Wouldn't this sound enchanting in one of the Senator's effusions: "I'll put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes" so that his siren-call could be heard in Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan, the Gaza Strip and everywhere else that comes to mind.
This friend of Senator Obama is Governor of Massachusetts, apparently, and is very fond of expensive drapes (full attribution to Wikipedia). Perhaps he's keen on amateur dramatics and that would explain the lavish expenditure on curtain material. Stage curtains are quite voluminous and, if there are many curtain-calls, that could cause a lot of wear and tear on the fabric. Words are important but they're even more important when they're your own. To cull them from others looks shabby, especially when no recognition is given to the original author. Good-night all!
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Correction: "thoughts, words, inventions etc. of another as one's own"
[Read the article: Quote of the day: Obama on Clinton ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I believe that there is such a thing as "intellectual property" although hackneyed phrases raising ghosts of long-dead men hardly comes within the ambit of anything "intellectual" or original.
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AnonyMOUSE, your cruddy language and the filthy verbiage of others of your ilk is enough
[Read the article: Quote of the day: Obama on Clinton ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]to sicken anyone. First of all you should learn some anatomy before commenting on priapism. Whether these two men were good friends or not is completely irrelevant if one was using the words of the other while conveying the impression that they were his own. AnonyMOUS don't even dare to think you have the mental equipment to understand me or to ascribe your phallic fantasies to me. Complexity is beyond the purlieus of your limited understanding. I'm reminded of the Duke of Kent's scathing comment to Oswald in "King Lear" -"A tailor made thee" which sums up yhe American expression an "empty suit", which, unfortunately, is all I see in your hero, Barack Obama. He's been processed for the mass market but some people study the goods more carefully. I don't know why I should bother trying to explain anything to the likes of you anyway since you are no more than a ventriloquist's mouthpiece. Now you can foam-at-th-mouth as much as you like and give your vile imagination free rein because I'm off to bed, AnonyMOUSE.
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Tom Payne, why don't you own up either?
[Read the article: Quote of the day: Obama on Clinton ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing" is from Shakespeare's Macbeth but you seem to be passing it off as your own. You resent the fact that I'm an educated woman? You resent the fact that I never descend to using scatalogical language as you do and that I'm not obsessed with the gaseous exhalations of the body such as you and others of your persuasion are? Nobody calls a London accent "Cockney" any more; it's called Estuary English. It really is irritating having to explain things to dolts who have the audacity to fancy themselves as debaters. Of one thing I'm sure, I've more of a resemblance to Scarlett O'Hara than you have to Rhett Butler. Nighty-night, little man.
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Are these the l8 year old daughters who order their "strong" mothers how to vote?
[Read the article: Quote of the day: Obama on Clinton ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Just a random thought in a new day. The sheer vacuity and venom of some of the Obama sycophants indicates childisness as they prevaricate and search for "wriggle-room" to explain the Senator's plagiarism. This is important in political life because so much has been made of his ability to "speak in tongues" and to perform the miracle of the loaves and fishes for the ravenous and enraptured. Tom Payne finds it difficult to write anything that does not allude to bowels so he must have had some difficulties with potty-training; perhaps Mom became impatient with him. One of the Anonymice thinks it's very clever and simultaneously demeaning to address an unknown woman as "Honey", although the accompanying words are far from honeyed.
Dem. Senator Claire McCaskill has announced, with foolish pride, that her l8 year old daughter influenced her to support Obama, telling her mother that she was a "slug" if she didn't obey McCaskill Junior's commands. Maria Shriver-Schwarzenegger also boasted that she was doing her bit for Obama because HER l8 year old daughter had made the decision for Mom. This information would have been received with roars of laughter anywhere else in the world, particularly in the case of a US Senator whose vote may be shaped by the wisdom of a teenager. I now wonder if all the pro-Obama anonymice, those who particularly rally to the call, are being led by a few l8 year od daughters, such is the callowness of their input and the reliance on expletives. Toodle-pip.