Why does Obama continue to get away with plagiarism?

[RobMoney$]

In February Obama ripped off the speech of Gov. Patrick of Mass. Now, he's taken a political cartoon WORD for WORD and passed it off on as own.

http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=173473

The whole lipstick on a pig thing...yeah, not even his AT ALL.

[mikizee]

Everyone rips off everyone.

[DroppinScience]

Well, if you even watched that un-professional brutal video you linked, you'd know they weren't claiming he plagiarized the "lipstick on a pig" line. That phrase has been in existence for quite some time, and you can find footage of your best friend John McCain saying that too.

The video is claiming Obama stole lines of "except for education policy, foreign policy, tax-policy, etc. we're gonna change things up!" from a political cartoon. I dunno, is this stuff copyrighted? It could be coincidence. Either way, this is another silly issue you're bringing up.

[RobMoney$]

I know you always try to find a way to dismiss any criticism against your almighty Obama, but stealing and lying are still important issues to me in a President.
Plagiarism is stealing and lying.

[ToucanSpam]

Originally Posted by RobMoney$

In February Obama ripped off the speech of Gov. Patrick of Mass. Now, he's taken a political cartoon WORD for WORD and passed it off on as own.

http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=173473

The whole lipstick on a pig thing...yeah, not even his AT ALL.

To be fair, this podcast/internet news report is pretty unprofessional. That being said, they bring up an important point. Obama has been known to use lines similar to other speeches/quotes/political cartoons. I don't know if this is particularly a new idea or if it really matters. I think of it this way: Dane Cook takes some of his material from other places and he doesn't have a reputation for being the most original comedian. But he delivers the shit out of the material he uses and he's got a reputation for being one of the funniest comedians around.


You're right about Obama ripping other people off, RobMoney. He does that; it's irrefutable. But is that a serious enough issue that it completely taints his reputation as one of the best speakers, or maybe the best Presidential candidate? I'm not really sure either way.

[Bob]

http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/09...ampaign-trail/

Obama delivered the same applause line during speeches in Terre Haute, Ind., on Saturday and Farmington Hills, Mich., on Monday. Only during the Monday event did he attribute the line to a cartoonist.

“You know, there was a cartoon the other day, it’s true,” he said before repeating the line. “So this is just a bunch of empty talk.”

Asked about the lifting of Toles’ line, Obama campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said that the candidate did not initially know the source of the line, which he had gotten from a friend.

“This came to Senator Obama from a friend who didn’t indicate where he had gotten it from, but the questions it raises certainly continue to ring true,” LaBolt told FOXNews.com.

“He did not know it was from a cartoon and when he was informed that it was, he credited the cartoonist.” LaBolt said.

Toles told FOXNews.com that after the first use, Post editors got in touch with the campaign and Obama made sure to credit Toles when he used the line on Monday. But in Tuesday’s speech, he again used the line without referencing the cartoon.

Toles said he is OK with Obama’s use of his line now that it has gotten credit.

“Of course, I don’t do cartoons for this purpose,” Toles said. “But if they’re cited with attribution, I think I’m all right with it.”

He added that he was unsure how he felt about Obama using his line without citation the first time.

“I thought about it, but didn’t come to a conclusion,” he said.

even fox news is giving him the benefit of the doubt

how many ways are there to say you want to change washington anyway?

[RobMoney$]

Yeah, Lambert is just trying to muddy the issue of the plagiarism charge by attacking the production of the podcast I linked.
Try sticking to the issue at hand Brett, he stole other people's ideas on several occassions and attempted to pass them off as his own without giving credit.

Is that a serious enough issue that it completely taints his reputation as one of the best speakers, or maybe the best Presidential candidate?

That's a question that each individual voter will have to decide for themselves. What I do know is that it's relevant and shold be brought to everyone's attention so they can use that when making that decision on whether it taints Obama enough or not.

Dane Cook takes some of his material from other places and he doesn't have a reputation for being the most original comedian. But he delivers the shit out of the material he uses and he's got a reputation for being one of the funniest comedians around.

The President of the United States is trying to gain my trust, Dane Cook is just trying to make me laugh. There's a bit of a difference there. Being influenced by someone, paying homage to someone, or even doing a cover of someone else's song or art is NOT plagiarizing them.

BTW, I could care less what kind of a Public speaker you are. Just because someone may have good public speaking skills in no way correlates to them being a good President.

[Bob]

Originally Posted by RobMoney$

Yeah, Lambert is just trying to muddy the issue of the plagiarism charge by attacking the production of the podcast I linked.
Try sticking to the issue at hand Brett, he stole other people's ideas on several occassions and attempted to pass them off as his own without giving credit.

by "several" did you mean "two"? or are you saving some other ones for later?

[RobMoney$]

Originally Posted by Bob

http://elections.foxnews.com/2008/09...ampaign-trail/



even fox news is giving him the benefit of the doubt

how many ways are there to say you want to change washington anyway?

Yeah, they raised the issue that Obama said he first heard the line from a "friend" in the original video I linked.

As if Obama writes his own speeches and wrote that into this speech after he heard it from this "friend" who shall remain nameless.

And even if that entire scenerio were true, you'd think SOMEONE on his staff would have pointed out the fact that it was plagiarized.

When you take into account that he's done this before, it's pretty obvious that he plagiarized it.

SHAME, OBAMA,...SHAME!

[RobMoney$]

Originally Posted by Bob

by "several" did you mean "two"? or are you saving some other ones for later?

Once a liar, always a liar.

I'll bet dollars to doughnuts he's done it before this campaign.

[Bob]

Originally Posted by RobMoney$

Once a liar, always a liar.

I'll bet dollars to doughnuts he's done it before this campaign.

so "two". got it.

i'm kind of having trouble with the whole stealing theory, though. i mean i agree that there's really no way he came up with that line on his own, it's too similar to be coincidence, i'm not saying he came up with it on his own, but i don't understand why he'd want to steal.

i mean was he sitting around in his living room one day, reading the washington post, and then he sees this cartoon and he says to himself "oh man, that's good stuff, i think i'm going to steal this and not give credit and, you know, hope nobody notices. it would be a big scandal if someone noticed and certainly a scandal is the last thing i need right now and i mean i have a whole bunch of speech writers so i probably don't really need to steal it, but.....no it's cool, nobody will notice. when's the soonest i can use it? 4 days? great! let's go plagiarize some cartoons!"

i'm just having some trouble believing that. i think it's far more plausible that a friend or some other associate gave him the line without telling him where he got it from, obama liked it, didn't go out of his way to make sure it wasn't stolen, and then used it. dude's got speechwriters, his lines come from a bunch of people.

before you ask, no, i can't prove this (neither can you btw) and yes, i am biased, but that said, i just can't fathom why obama (or any politician) would run the political risk of stealing material and then using it a short four days later (particularly given the clean image that he's running on). is he that hard up for material? it just doesn't seem reasonable to me.

[King PSYZ]

Rob these slam threads against Obama would be hillarious if I didn't think you actually belived them...

I love how a lifelong democrat has transformed into a swiftboat GOPer since Obama started running. Amazing no?

And plagiarism is a bit strong of a term, and frankly could be considered as libel. I wouldn't fuck with an ex lawyer on shit like that if I was you, but your choice. Plagiarism would be if Obama submitted a cartoon to TIME or CNN that copied the content of the other cartoon as his own. This is taking something in the news and presenting it as his "case" against McCain as all stump speaches are supposed to.

That's like saying Dave Letterman, John Stewart, Jay Leno, Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, et al are plagiarist of the highest order because they use pieces of the daily news and current events in their humor.

Plagiarsim would be if he gave the "I have a dream" speach and said "Yup, I wrote it, all mine".

But continue with the sensationalist threads, I hope you're being well paid for the GOP spam. At least you know you could get a job blogging for FOX news if this whole McCain thing doesn't work out.

[ToucanSpam]

Not to be a douche, but printed word is libel, slander is spoken. I think? Sorry Psyz, no harm meant.


Anyways, plagiarism might be too harsh a word, but can we all agree his words are in some cases not not his own? And this 'oh well whose words are their own' question is a logical fallacy (suppressed correlative?). The point RobMoney is trying to make is Obama seems to rip other people off without giving credit. I don't know exactly what he is doing but I don't think it is particularly harmful. It is interesting though to see the tactics he employs in his speeches, which may be simply making allusions to other material that in one way or another support whatever point he is making.

[RobMoney$]

Originally Posted by Bob

i just can't fathom why obama (or any politician) would run the political risk of stealing material and then using it a short four days later (particularly given the clean image that he's running on). is he that hard up for material? it just doesn't seem reasonable to me.

Why would he do it? Perhaps because he just reads what is written for him by his army of speechwriters thus exposing him as an empty suit.
Isn't it better to try to explain the gaffe away as something Obama conciously did, than for him to admit that he just reads whatever his writers throw infront of him, and now this is the second time these hacks have gotten caught with their hand in someone else's cookie jar?
I'd like to see this "friend" come foward.

The fact that this isn't the first time leads me to believe it was absolutely intentional by either him, or SOMEONE on his staff, which is basically an extension of himself.

[Bob]

Originally Posted by RobMoney$

The fact that this isn't the first time leads me to believe it was absolutely intentional by either him, or SOMEONE on his staff, which is basically an extension of himself.

again, why? why would a politician intentionally steal something and pass it off as their own 4 days after it was originally printed? it's pointlessly dangerous, there are always other speeches to write.

[kaiser soze]

Maybe Obama is taking notes from mccain

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews...from_Wikipedia

http://blog.prospect.org/blog/ezrakl...mccaincrop.jpg

[RobMoney$]

Originally Posted by Bob

again, why? why would a politician intentionally steal something and pass it off as their own 4 days after it was originally printed? it's pointlessly dangerous, there are always other speeches to write.

Because obviously Obama made a mistake.
Because he's done it before and gotten away with it.
Because he's too stupid to know he was doing it in the first palce, he was reading what some other hack wrote for him.

take your pick. It happened though, obviously. Why it happened, there could be a million reasons. The real reason is one we'll probably never know.

[Documad]

Originally Posted by King PSYZ

Rob these slam threads against Obama would be hillarious if I didn't think you actually belived them...

I love how a lifelong democrat has transformed into a swiftboat GOPer since Obama started running. Amazing no?

Yeah, it's awfully odd. I can't imagine anyone I know having such a dramatic turn around, especially given how flawed McCain is. I could understand someone getting his head turned by a new charismatic republican, but not a George W. Bush retread when we all agree that W has been an utter disaster.

This story is ridiculous. I guess that's because where I work we all trade ideas and work on concepts together and you sort of distill it all and come up with a speech or argument. There are only so many ways to say the same thing, and we all borrow phrasing from other people naturally. I haven't seen anything that troubles me with regard to stealing.

I am truly troubled by the daily lies in this campaign. I know it's how Republicans won last time, and I'm glad that McCain is getting called on the lies on a more regular basis than Bush was in 2004. There is a difference between spin and a lie. McCain is sponsoring a lot of lies. That's particularly troubling when McCain used to known for so called straight talk. He also used to stand for clean campaigning. He's someone I admired and he is permanently tarnished as a man (in my eyes).

By the way, I saw Obama on Letterman the other night and he was terrific. He was self deprecating and charming. I understand why people might not like his policies because they are opposed to subsidizing health care for their fellow americans who are less fortunate than they are, but I can't understand the personal animus directed towards this man. I really can't. He's a class act. I would LOVE to have a man who is a class act in command. I think the first Bush had some class, but it's been a rare quality in presidents. That's not why I'm voting for Obama, but it's a nice side benefit.

[travesty]

Seems to me that both campaigns have completely plagiarized the last 20 years from both parties. What does it really matter what words actually come out of their mouths? Once in office, you are going to see the exact same shit that has gone on for decades in Washington. For either one of them to even try and tell me they are going to "change" things....psssshw spare me. The only change will be that Bush and Chenney are gone, which is great, but the root of the problems we are having will not even be touched. Can't either of these tools come up with something new, dare I say innovative to REALLY help America? Why haven't we heard any insight about the corporate bailouts from these guys, or immigration/ border policy, or real tax reform, or the erosion of our civil liberties, or real universal healthcare, or arggggh fuck it, I'm going back to bed.

[Documad]

I'm not sure I even know what plagiarism is supposed to mean in this context. I was once a victim of plagiarism when a student copied most of one of my papers and submitted it to a teacher as her own.

I'm a big person for giving credit where credit is due so I think I'm pretty sensitive to giving credit. When I work on a group project and report the results to my boss, if the boss says, what I particular like was "XYZ" I always say "that part was Jeff's idea."

I have been known to adapt Molly Ivins' joke about Pat Buchanan's convention speech "sounding better in the original German" and I always give her credit because as far as I know she coined that.

If a blogger said that Politician X was "counting his chickens before they are hatched," I suppose it's possible that I would say that Politician X or Politician Y was counting his chickens before they were hatched without saying that I read it on a blog. I'm not even sure I'd remember reading it.

Then there are the things you're exposed to in the 100 plus sources we are exposed to every day. I get ideas out there, but they spin around in my brain and I might repeat something I heard from someplace else without knowing it or without thinking I need to credit it to someone even if I know that I heard it someplace else. For instance, if i ever defend a criminal in a jury trial, I'm going to paraphrase the explanation Beth posted here re what reasonable doubt means because it was common sense and fucking brilliant, and I won't tell the jury that I got the idea from a message board because that would detract from my argument.

[RobMoney$]

Originally Posted by Documad

Yeah, it's awfully odd. I can't imagine anyone I know having such a dramatic turn around, especially given how flawed McCain is. I could understand someone getting his head turned by a new charismatic republican, but not a George W. Bush retread when we all agree that W has been an utter disaster.

This story is ridiculous. I guess that's because where I work we all trade ideas and work on concepts together and you sort of distill it all and come up with a speech or argument. There are only so many ways to say the same thing, and we all borrow phrasing from other people naturally. I haven't seen anything that troubles me with regard to stealing.

I am truly troubled by the daily lies in this campaign. I know it's how Republicans won last time, and I'm glad that McCain is getting called on the lies on a more regular basis than Bush was in 2004. There is a difference between spin and a lie. McCain is sponsoring a lot of lies. That's particularly troubling when McCain used to known for so called straight talk. He also used to stand for clean campaigning. He's someone I admired and he is permanently tarnished as a man (in my eyes).

By the way, I saw Obama on Letterman the other night and he was terrific. He was self deprecating and charming. I understand why people might not like his policies because they are opposed to subsidizing health care for their fellow americans who are less fortunate than they are, but I can't understand the personal animus directed towards this man. I really can't. He's a class act. I would LOVE to have a man who is a class act in command. I think the first Bush had some class, but it's been a rare quality in presidents. That's not why I'm voting for Obama, but it's a nice side benefit.

Sorry I don't fit into your hole that you want to peg me into.

[abcdefz]

The idea of speechwriters altogeher bugs me. I think "idea people" are great, but as soon as a ghost writer gets involved, you learn less
about the person whose face is presenting the words as their own.

[RobMoney$]

Originally Posted by Documad

Then there are the things you're exposed to in the 100 plus sources we are exposed to every day. I get ideas out there, but they spin around in my brain and I might repeat something I heard from someplace else without knowing it or without thinking I need to credit it to someone even if I know that I heard it someplace else. For instance, if i ever defend a criminal in a jury trial, I'm going to paraphrase the explanation Beth posted here re what reasonable doubt means because it was common sense and fucking brilliant, and I won't tell the jury that I got the idea from a message board because that would detract from my argument.

Paraphrasing, or borrowing an idea is different than copying virtually word for word.

[QueenAdrock]

Plagiarism is taking thoughts and ideas that aren't your own and passing them off as if they were. So copying word for word OR paraphrasing both fall under the category of "plagiarism."

Either way, most politicians I know of have been accused of plagiarism at one time or another. Sad, but it's true. Good ol' boy McCain has had his fair share of plagiarism complaints as well. Perhaps you should look at those cases and be infuriated by them, too.

[ToucanSpam]

Originally Posted by QueenAdrock

Either way, most politicians I know of have been accused of plagiarism at one time or another. Sad, but it's true. Good ol' boy McCain has had his fair share of plagiarism complaints as well. Perhaps you should look at those cases and be infuriated by them, too.

Correct. If there were some examples posted of complaints against McCain then perhaps we could discuss the idea of plagiarism in a bi-partisan manner instead of just keying in on one politician's goofs.

[QueenAdrock]

Originally Posted by kaiser soze

Maybe Obama is taking notes from mccain

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews...from_Wikipedia

http://blog.prospect.org/blog/ezrakl...mccaincrop.jpg

Forget that it's plagiarism, the bigger issue here is that he stole from Wikipedia. I mean, really?

[Bob]

Originally Posted by RobMoney$

Because obviously Obama made a mistake.

i don't understand. obama intentionally stole something because he made a mistake?

Because he's done it before and gotten away with it.

again, you can only cite to two examples; this thing and the deval patrick thing. and he didn't get away with the deval patrick thing, he got called out on it. are you just assuming that he plagiarizes all the time and the only reason we never hear about it is because he gets away with it? that's not exactly fair, there's no way to defend against that.

Because he's too stupid to know he was doing it in the first palce, he was reading what some other hack wrote for him.

i object to your characterizing obama as being stupid because he's reading a speech that someone else wrote. every fucking politician does this. mccain does it. your hero sarah palin does it. you expect them to spend time on google cite-checking everything to make sure they're not lifting any material from political cartoons? come on. mccain certainly doesn't (i found this link all by myself i take all the credit)

besides, if that's what happened, then he didn't intentionally steal anything, so i don't know what point you're trying to make.

take your pick. It happened though, obviously. Why it happened, there could be a million reasons. The real reason is one we'll probably never know.

that doesn't seem to be stopping you from acting like you do know.

[Laver1969]

Originally Posted by QueenAdrock

Forget that it's plagiarism, the bigger issue here is that he stole from Wikipedia. I mean, really?

Come on QA, McCain doesn't know how to use a computer.

[Bob]

Originally Posted by Laver1969

Come on QA, McCain doesn't know how to use a computer.

some hack must have written it for him

[Documad]

Originally Posted by RobMoney$

I know you always try to find a way to dismiss any criticism against your almighty Obama, but stealing and lying are still important issues to me in a President.
Plagiarism is stealing and lying.

Originally Posted by RobMoney$

Paraphrasing, or borrowing an idea is different than copying virtually word for word.

Originally Posted by kaiser soze

Maybe Obama is taking notes from mccain

http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Wikinews...from_Wikipedia

Uh oh, Rob can't vote for McCain now.

I don't think this is a big deal. But it's highly amusing that McCain's youthful speech writers didn't know ANYTHING about Georgia and apparently decided to do what we all would do -- wiki it and accept the wiki summary as fact.