Yep. It was embarrassing. I said 'ouch' out loud, when last night Hillary Clinton uttered the line. Whomever wrote the phrase should be fired. Though it probably won't make a difference now.
It smacked, somehow, of the work of someone used to writing political speeches in, oh, the 1990s or so.
Tragic, really. You could see her heart wasn't really in it. (In which case, one might ask, why the hell allow it to remain in your verbal tool-box, Senator Clinton? Didn't you find your voice?)
Here it is, folks, once again:
"You know, lifting whole passages from someone else's speeches is not change you can believe in, it's change you can Xerox,"
Actually, trying to parse that sentence, I'm not even really sure what it means, but whatever. It didn't work.
But here's the thing that has been bothering me ever since, and maybe it's too small an issue to diary, but i wanted to draw people's attention to it.
The thing that made it unnecessary for Obama to bother replying to this pathetic piece of hack-ad-speak was the audience reaction. As soon as she spoke the words, the room was filled with boos. You all remember that, right?
Well, I've now seen the clip played on CNN a few times, and you know what? The sound of audience boo-ing has been edited out of the piece. It's not there.
This bothers me. Why would CNN do this? Were they asked to do it by a campaign that has shown itself only too ready to take on the TV media, especially MSNBC? What kind of neutral editorial rationale could there possibly be for removing the powerful audience reaction to Hillary's botched attempt at an Obama smackdown?
Or am I missing something?