Letters to the Editor
Dana Runs
Published Letters: 161 Editor's Choice: 15
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What a poor argument!
[Read the article: John F. Kennedy, plagiarist?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Even assuming this sophistry to land somewhere near truth, it's a matter of degree. While it may be tolerable for me to plagiarize this...
Virtually all writing is plagiarism anyway, whether the writer knows it or not.
...into my Salon piece, without attribution, it is an entirely different notion for me to plagiarize this...
The awful truth is that speechwriters have a secret, unwritten code. In obedience to it, the first thing we do on finding ourselves in the White House is to rummage through the papers of past presidents in search of things to pilfer.
Here's one such thing, from Warren G. Harding's keynote address at the 1916 Republican Convention: "We must have a citizenship less concerned about what the government can do for it, and more anxious about what it can do for the nation."
With the subtraction of a few syllables and the addition of a soupçon of affectation ("Ask not?"), Harding's piffle could be and was recycled for John F. Kennedy's inaugural address -- just as Harding himself had swiped it from a speech Oliver Wendell Holmes gave in 1884. Nor was Holmes likely to have been the first to come up with the general idea, which after all basically reduces to nothing more than, "Don't expect me to do everything around this house, young lady."
And nor was I the first to come up with that business about rising yachts. I can't find any earlier evidence of it on the Internet, but that means nothing. All us monkeys pounding on all those typewriters for all those years? Somebody wrote it before.
Virtually all writing is plagiarism anyway, whether the writer knows it or not. Very few ideas, except out at the cutting edge of science, have not occurred to somebody before and been written down in one form or other. The only function remaining for the writer is to repeat in today's idiom what has already been written, somewhat differently, for readers in the past. This is particularly true in political prose, which tends to be light on facts and innocent of all but a few childish ideas.
...without attribution.
Obama is guilty of the latter.
Signed,
A Rational Obama Supporter
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Still...
[Read the article: John F. Kennedy, plagiarist?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]..even if the recitation was technically permissible, it was a really bonehead political move. Amateur hour. Bush-league. And definitely not ready for primetime.
He'd better get a LOT better, in a hurry, if he's going into The Show.
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Morris is right, and Obama has to take his advice.
[Read the article: The expertise of Dick Morris]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The Condi bit is a strage non sequitur and should be ignored. The real issue is responding to Hillary effectively, and Morris is exactly right. Obama does have to respond -- ask John Kerry what happens when these kinds of things are allowed to stand unchallenged -- but how he does it is critical. And doing it through surrogates is the only way. But which surrogates? It would have to be someone pretty heavy to have the desire effect.
Enter John Edwards?
Back before the Iowa Caucus, Edwards repeatedly slammed Clinton on everything from lobbyists to how wrong her "experience" is for America. I don't know if Obama can swing it, but he should use Edwards or someone of such weight and popular support in this election cycle to answer the charges in a strong, merciless, direct-through-the-heart fashion.
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Is it true?
[Read the article: No revote in Florida]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Seriously, is it true that the Republicans picked the date and the Dems had to go along with it?
If so, that sheds a whole new light on things.