Letters to the Editor

This letter is associated with the following article:
Examining the charge of plagiarism Hillary Clinton's campaign has leveled against Barack Obama.
  • That was a dumb thing to do.

    I was taught in college that I couldn't use the same paper for two classes, or quote even myself without a citation; that was considered plagiarism. So even with Deval's permission, using exact wording from a speech is still a questionable practice.

    On the other hand, I agree with Deval that there is a certain "transcendence" to the truth in the speech - and it sounded familiar to me as I watched the Deval clip, even though I had never heard him or Obama speak before. Personally, I would classify it more as a riff than a rip-off. A dumb thing to do, yes. But calling it plagiarism is a stretch. Kind of like trying somebody for perjury because he didn't own up to fellatio when asked if he'd had "sexual relations".... It disapoints me to see the Clintons pulling the same old Republican tricks out of their ... um, hats.