Move over, Doris Kearns Goodwin, there's a new Princess of Plagiarism on the block: The Copycat (Formerly The Artist Known As The Cobra). More than two decades ago, The Copycat outed Jumpin' Joe as a plagiarist when he was trying to climb the slippery pole of success in the presidential campaign of 1988. Plagiarism dogged Jumpin' Joe for the next twenty years. Now, we learn that The Copycat was hoist by her own petard in an Op-Ed piece that this blogger mindlessly posted yesterday as part of a daily double with her Op-Ed colleague, The Butcher. Several nattering nablogs (sorry, William Safire) outed The Copycat's plagiarism of a paragraph written days earlier by Josh Marshall in "The Talking Points Memo" blog. The damning evidence was supplied in "The Huffington Post" blog (and it appears below The Copycat's historical outing of Jumpin' Joe.) First, it's Joe Biden, now it's Maureen Dowd. The Copycat deserves a 50-day suspension without pay. If this is (fair & balanced) hypocrisy, so be it.
[Vannevar Bush Hyperlink — Bracketed Numbers — Directory]
[1] 
The Copycat rips Jumpin' Joe for bein' a copycat.
[2] 
The HuffPost's Marcus Baram outs The Copycat.
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[x NY Fishwrap]
Biden's Debate Finale: An Echo From Abroad
(September 12, 1987)
By Maureen Dowd
Tag Cloud of the following article
The Neil Kinnock commercial did not lead to electoral success last May in Britain, but the 10-minute spot of the Labor Party leader's passionate speeches, against a cool soundtrack of Brahms, raised his approval rating by 19 points and became an instant classic.
On this side of the Atlantic, many Presidential campaign strategists of both parties greatly admired the way it portrayed Mr. Kinnock, who subsequently lost to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, as a man of character. Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, a Democratic hopeful, was particularly taken with it.
So taken, in fact, that he lifted Mr. Kinnock's closing speech with phrases, gestures and lyrical Welsh syntax intact for his own closing speech at a debate at the Iowa State Fair on August 23 — without crediting Mr. Kinnock.
In the commercial, the Briton began, ''Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university?'' Then pointing to his wife in the audience, he continued: ''Why is Glenys the first woman in her family in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Was it because all our predecessors were thick?''
Senator Biden began his remarks by saying the ideas had come to him spontaneously on the way to the debate. ''I started thinking as I was coming over here, why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university?'' he said. Then, pointing to his wife, he continued: ''Why is it that my wife who is sitting out there in the audience is the first in her family to ever go to college? Is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright? Is it because I'm the first Biden in a thousand generations to get a college and a graduate degree that I was smarter than the rest?''
In his speech, Mr. Kinnock, an orator of great eloquence, rhetorically asked why his ancestors, Welsh coal miners, did not get ahead as fast as he. ''Did they lack talent?'' he asked, in his lilting rhythm. ''Those people who could sing and play and recite and write poetry? Those people who could make wonderful beautiful things with their hands? Those people who could dream dreams, see visions? Why didn't they get it? Was it because they were weak? Those people who could work eight hours underground and then come up and play football? Weak?''
Senator Biden's Irish relations, it would seem, were similar, though they seemed to stay underground longer.
''Those same people who read poetry and wrote poetry and taught me how to sing verse?'' continued Mr. Biden, whose father was a Chevrolet dealer in Wilmington. ''Is it because they didn't work hard? My ancestors, who worked in the coal mines of Northeast Pennsylvania and would come up after 12 hours and play football for four hours?''
Of course, the football Mr. Biden's forebears played may not have been the same game that the British refer to as football, but the Biden clan apparently was stymied by the same social forces that kept down the Kinnocks.
How Both Men Concluded
As Mr. Kinnock concluded, clenching both fists: ''Does anybody really think that they didn't get what we had because they didn't have the talent or the strength or the endurance or the commitment? Of course not. It was because there was no platform upon which they could stand.''
As Mr. Biden concluded, clenching one fist: ''No, it's not because they weren't as smart. It's not because they didn't work as hard. It's because they didn't have a platform upon which to stand.''
William Schneider, a political analyst at the American Enterprise Institute who was in London for the British elections this summer, brought back a tape of the commercial and gave one to his friend, Senator Biden, and to people in a couple of other campaigns.
At various campaign appearances last month, the Senator talked admiringly about Mr. Kinnock's themes and incorporated phrases and concepts after first crediting the Briton. But, in his closing remarks at the Iowa State Fair forum, he did not mention the Labor leader, nor did he some days later in an interview when he recounted the positive response.
Biden Elated at Iowa Debate
''I feel real good about that Iowa debate,'' he said. ''I could tell when I was doing my close — that whole audience was absolute dead hushed silence. You can tell when you have it all. And the reason it worked there was, I was the last one. And I decided, I have no close. I didn't have a closing. I'm walking in and they're saying, 'You're going to this debate,' and I said, 'I don't like this stuff you've written for me.' ''It fit to do that there.'' Advisers to the candidate said that, when it was pointed out to him after the debate that he had followed the Kinnock speech very closely, he was surprised and said he had not been aware of it. They stressed that the Senator had been immersed in difficult preparation for the hearings on Judge Robert H. Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court, an important test for Mr. Biden's political future.
''He was not trying to put something over,'' said one adviser. ''He's under a huge amount of pressure. He didn't even know what he said. He was just on automatic pilot.''
But Mr. Biden's borrowing raises questions about how much a candidate can adapt someone else's language and thoughts, whether he remembers to give credit or not.
"Speeches Are Not Copyrighted"
''As far as I know, political speeches are not copyrighted,'' said Mr. Schneider, who gave Mr. Biden the tape. ''What he said was close to the Kinnock rhetoric, but on the other hand, it wasn't untrue, was it?''
Others disagree, however, and think that — at the very least — Mr. Biden should not have indicated that he thought of the ideas himself on the way to the debate.
Thomas Donilon, Mr. Biden's campaign aide, said that the Senator was traveling and did not care to comment on the similarities in the two speeches.
''To the degree it wasn't attributed, it was an oversight or inadvertent,'' said Mr. Donilon. Mr. Biden's aides said the Senator had been deeply influenced by the Kinnock commercial — seeing a mirror image in the Labor leader's youth and attractiveness and passionate oratory, and his message of compassion and building on past generations.
''The Kinnock message was really something that struck a chord with him,'' said Mr. Donilon. ''He thought Kinnock was saying it well and it was something that struck him as consistent with his political message his whole political career, which has been based on a campaign for middle-class values.''
Comment by Biden Aide
Mr. Donilon noted that Mr. Biden — who has been working to overhaul his message, which earlier included themes and words reminiscent of John F. Kennedy, as his campaign got off to a shaky start — had credited various ideas he took from Mr. Kinnock at several other campaign appearances. But, at those times, Mr. Biden was talking more generally about Mr. Kinnock's concept of building a party that could be a platform for the middle class to improve their lives and the lives of their children.
Asked which of Mr. Biden's relatives had been coal miners, Mr. Donilon said the Senator had not necessarily been referring to his own relatives but had been talking about the ''people that his ancestors grew up with in the Scranton region, and in general the people of that region were coal miners.''
Told that Mr. Biden had used the phrase, ''my ancestors,'' Mr. Donilon said, ''Evidently he had a great-grandfather who worked in a mining company.'' Asked the name of the man, the company and the sort of job he held, Mr. Donilon pronounced himself at a loss. ♥
[Maureen Dowd received the Pulitzer Prize for commentary in 1999, with the Pulitzer committee particularly citing her columns on the impeachment of Bill Clinton after his affair with Monica Lewinsky. Dowd joined The New York Times as a reporter in 1983, after writing for Time magazine and the now-defunct Washington Star. At The Times, Dowd was nominated for a 1992 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting, then became a columnist for the paper's editorial page in 1995. Dowd's first book was a collection of columns entitled Bushworld: Enter at Your Own Risk (2004). Her second book followed in 2005: Are Men Necessary?: When Sexes Collide. Dowd earned a bachelor's degree from DC's Catholic University in 1973.]
Copyright © 1987 The New York Times Company
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[x The HuffPost]
Maureen Dowd Admits Inadvertently Lifting Line From TPM's Josh Marshall
By Marcus Baram
Tag Cloud of the following article
New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, in an email to The Huffington Post, admits that a paragraph in her Sunday column was lifted from "Talking Points Memo" editor Josh Marshall's blog last Thursday.
Dowd claims that she never read his blog last week but was told the line by a friend of hers. In a follow-up email, she forwarded her desire to apologize to Marshall, writing that had she known, she would have gladly credited Marshall.
Dowd notes that the Times is fixing her column online to give proper credit to Marshall and that a correction will run tomorrow;
josh is right. I didn't read his blog last week, and didn't have any idea he had made that point until you informed me just now.
i was talking to a friend of mine Friday about what I was writing who suggested I make this point, expressing it in a cogent — and I assumed spontaneous — way and I wanted to weave the idea into my column.
but, clearly, my friend must have read josh marshall without mentioning that to me.
we're fixing it on the web, to give josh credit, and will include a note, as well as a formal correction tomorrow. [End]
This afternoon, a blogger named "thejoshuablog" (not Marshall) at "TPM Cafe" claimed that a paragraph in Dowd's Sunday column matches a paragraph from Josh Marshall's story that appeared on "TPM" last Thursday.
Dowd wrote:
More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when the Bush crowd was looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.
Marshall wrote:
More and more the timeline is raising the question of why, if the torture was to prevent terrorist attacks, it seemed to happen mainly during the period when we were looking for what was essentially political information to justify the invasion of Iraq.
Blogger "thejoshuablog" notes that the only difference is that Dowd changed "we were" to "the Bush crowd was."
And he concludes:
So, if this isn't outright plagiarism by a top NY Times Editorialist, than I'm a happily married, straight man with 4 kids, 2 dogs, a lovely 2nd wife of 15 years with a girl half my age on the side.
Which I assure you all, I am not.
Back in 1987, Dowd herself is the one who exposed then-presidential candidate Joe Biden's plagiarism of British politician Neil Kinnock's speeches.
A spokesperson for the Times and Marshall have not returned emails for comment. ♥
[In 2008, Marcus Baram was named night news editor at "Huffington Post". He had been producer and reporter at ABC News. Baram received a B.A. from Pomona College.]
Copyright © 2009 HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
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Copyright © 2009 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves
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