Obama's So-Called "Plagiarism" Inspires Character Questions

Posted by D. Cupples (photo from Senate.gov ) | Yesterday, I posted about Barack Obama's so-called "plagiarism" (a strong word given the context).  One thing I mentioned was that Obama's failure to credit Gov. Deval Patrick during the speech in question (e.g., by saying, "As a good friend once said...") would make Obama appear comfortable with snatching undeserved credit -- and leave him vulnerable to other lines of questioning.

The questions are already coming and not just from small blogs.  At Huffington Post, clinical psychologist Sylvia Welsh is asking such questions while arguing why the so-called "plagiarism" matters:

"...We, as a society, value honesty and integrity and one of the surest mark[s] of a lack of both is a person's willingness to claim someone else's words (or work) as their own.

"And this is why it matters that Barack Obama is now furiously trying to suggest that it's 'no big deal' that he plagiarized his friend's, Deval Patrick's, speech. He's even claiming that Mr. Patrick told him to use the speech. Perhaps Mr. Patrick did. Perhaps Mr. Patrick told him to use the speech and never told him to say it was written by Mr. Patrick and not by Mr. Obama. It doesn't matter, actually, what Mr. Patrick said or did not say to Mr. Obama.

"What matters is that Mr. Obama passed this speech off as his own, adding only his by now customary flourishes of tone and inflection." (Huffington Post, emphasis added)

I must interject to make a significant distinction.  Obama's speech was not 100% exactly like Patrick's.  Obama just heavily borrowed the impressively unique structure and some key phrases.  Dr. Welsh continues:

"That the man who has presented himself to this country as the man of integrity and change turns out to be a fraud — and that is what we call people who pretend that someone else's words are their own — must be a profound disappointment for his supporters, if they can be honest enough with themselves to admit it. (Huffington Post)

I must interject again.  "Fraud" is a strong word.  At least Senator Obama came clean and admitted that he should have credited Mr. Patrick -- even if it wasn't until after the media learned that Obama had passed off another politician's words as his own.  Better late than never!  I also doubt that Obama's more ardent supporters are the least bit disappointed.  Dr. Welsh continues:

"...Here stood a man who towered above others in his quest for decency and integrity. Here stood a man who played it straight and said it as he saw it. But Mr. Obama is not that man. This man, as it turns out, is just another guy who seems to have bought into his own hype about how wonderful he is even as he tries to convince us he is not simply a liar. Worse still, he has been shown to be a liar while he has paradoxically been running his entire campaign based virtually exclusively on his stellar character, a character he has claimed that is so different from all those Washington insiders he has sought to set himself apart from. (Huffington Post)

Time for another interjection.  "Liar" is also a strong word (I can't quite explain why, but I know in my bones that it is).  Admittedly, though, I agree that Obama took a big risk of being held to a higher standard when trying to "set himself apart from" all those "Washington insiders," especially his U.S. Senate colleague Hillary Clinton (whose voting record since 2005 is surprisingly similar to Sen. Obama's).

"Listening to the pundits of Slate Magazine claim that this charge of plagiarism 'won't stick' with the voters because 'with Obama, there's no pattern of lying,' only adds insult to injury. I'm sure that even Slate Magazine remembers that Mr. Obama's so-called autobiography, Dreams From My Father, was discovered not to be entirely factual, as well. It took Mr. Obama some time, as I recall, to finally admit that, yes, some of the characters were not real but were, rather, 'composite' characters. In other words, they were fiction.

"Which means that, in other words, he lied about it and never told anyone that his autobiography was not only not entirely written by him (check with his ghost writer), but that his so-called life was not exactly what he claimed it was...." (Huffington Post)

At the risk of sounding like Dana Carvey playing Johnny Carson, I did not know that.  I'll have to run some sort of fact check and see if Dr. Welsh's details are accurate.  Still, I think that words like "liar" and "fraud" are too strong.  Dr. Welsh is almost done:

"Children know that not telling the truth, either by omission or commission, is the definition of a lie. Perhaps there is more of a pattern to Mr. Obama's distortions and omissions than even these two rather egregious examples point to.

"As a clinician, I have found that if one lies about one or two things here or there and then makes light of those lies, and acts as if the ones who find this offensive are the ones making mountains out of molehills, you can almost take it to the bank that a deeper pattern of not telling it like it is exists. It's only a matter of time before it becomes more fully exposed." (Huffington Post)

Being unfamiliar with clinical psychology, I honestly don't know whether a few instances of un-truthfulness actually indicate a "deeper pattern" of dishonesty.  Perhaps the "For Dummmies" series has a well indexed volume that will help me quickly find an answer.  Memeorandum has other bloggers' reactions.

Related BN-Politics Posts:

* Obama a Plagiarist?  No, He Just Lacks Originality

* Media Fashions Bill Clinton's Words into Corkscrew

* Is the Media Biased Toward Barack or Against Hillary?

* Has Obama been Sufficiently Vetted to Survive GOP Machine?

Comments

[Adam]

Wow, what a hack job. Not you, Ms. Welsh.

I'll link to the response I read yesterday that I thought dealt with this pretty well:

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2008/02/19/plagiarism/index.html

The Clinton campaign is basically saying "it's OK for Hillary to borrow lines from other people's speeches, but not for Obama to do it, because Hillary doesn't make pretty speeches like Obama does". Really, that's their argument. They're not idiots, so they know that's an unsound argument. They've steered clear of explicitly calling this plagiarism, because they know better.

You're right that Obama *could* have said "As a good friend once said...", but the question is, did he have to? Given the nature of the media of political speech, I think the answer is no. Pretty clearly no.

I see this story as only marginally newsworthy. Again, we already knew he had people who wrote speeches for him. The fact that one of them had delivered the speech before is different, and newsworthy. But if Obama spoke with the guy in advance, and the guy gave Obama permission to use the speech, then he's essentially just another speech writer. Unless I'm missing something, the rest of this is just the media, and the Clinton campaign, and some Clinton supporters like Ms. Welsh, trying to make hay out of something.

The Obama autobiography accusations are new to me, too. How significant they are depends on what they are about. Taking some literary license in autobiographies is pretty common. It's really a matter of context and opinion whether condensing a couple people in his life into one person significantly alters the nature of his personal story. I won't give him a pass on this, but after the rest of Ms. Welsh's column I'm not inclined to take her at face value.

[D. Cupples]

Adam, I'm getting so tired of the campaigns. I can't wait until it's all over. What about you?

[Adam]

Yeah, I think it's inevitable that things descend into personality politics and identity politics at this stage. I know that when the time comes I'm just going to gather all the information I can about the candidates and make a choice, and most of this stuff won't matter.

Although I hate the direction the Democratic nomination race is headed, I do understand why some Dems have issues with Obama. He really hasn't been on the scene that long, which may be a positive in some ways but it does raise questions about what he would focus on as president. He's remarkably accomplished given his time in public life, but it's still not a long history to look at. I get why Damozel says she'd love to have him as a candidate in eight years.

The bright side is that we are getting to know the candidates better. The actual attacks being leveled are basically meaningless, but seeing how candidates respond to the pressures of the campaign trail do give us some insight into their natures. (And I suppose it's worth knowing if an actual scandal is discovered.)

On that note, here's a neat piece applying a popular personality analysis to the candidates:

http://www.slate.com/id/2184696

One more nice thing - I already know I'm going to like the 44th president more than the 43rd.

[Pat]

I don't like Obama because I won't vote for a celebrity of the moment. There is nothing to back him up. His inspirational words are not his. He has nothing to offer just change and hope - and that doesn't put food on the table. I also don't like the way he brushed aside those charges of plagiarism as unimportant because that says a lot of the man. Plagiarism is theft. Any student knows that. Authors fight against plagiarism and their associations stress ethics and standards against it. So I don't know what is more disturbing - that a presidencial candidate is too stupid to quote a source or that it doesn't matter to him even if it is a theft, making his ethics suspect. Lets inspire our children to use the "Obama defense" when they get in trouble in college with charges of plagiarism.

I know Obama walks on water. I know he is winning the popularity vote. Women scream and faint in his presence. They scream, "I love you" as if he were a rockstar, but even if Oprah offers a car, I need some ethics from a president. And I don't understand how it seems unimportant to address this issue. I can't vote for someone who doesn't have ethics or speaks the truth. And saying that my friend gave me permission, goodness gracious, that is no defense!

[D. Cupples]

Pat,

the psychologist that I quoted above also mentioned the example that un-attributed borrowing would set for children.