Just Words! But NOT Hers!!! (w/poll)

"Just Words" - these two simple words, the cadence used to punctuate great lines from american oratory, words for which Obama was accused of plagiarism today by the Clinton campaign, were delivered at the Wisconsin Founders' Day Gala on Saturday, and were since attributed to his trusted friend and advisor, Deval Patrick.

Yet at the very same Gala, Clinton claimed a few words for her own, and failed to attribute them to the author herself.

I once wrote a book called "It Takes a Village."

That is what she said at the very same event where her campaign accuses two-time best-selling author and grammy winner Barack Obama of "plagiarism".

But her assertion is not quite how others seem to remember it.  From wikipedia:

Clinton has been criticized for not giving credit to a ghostwriter in connection with It Takes a Village. The majority of the book was reportedly written by ghostwriter Barbara Feinman.[8] When the book was first announced in April 1995, The New York Times reported publisher Simon & Schuster as saying "The book will actually be written by Barbara Feinman, a journalism professor at Georgetown University in Washington. Ms. Feinman will conduct a series of interviews with Mrs. Clinton, who will help edit the resulting text."[9]

Feinman spent seven months on the project and was paid $120,000 for her work.[10] Feinman, however, was not mentioned anywhere in the book. Clinton's acknowledgment section began: "It takes a village to bring a book into the world, as everyone who has written one knows. Many people have helped me to complete this one, sometimes without even knowing it. They are so numerous that I will not even attempt to acknowledge them individually, for fear that I might leave one out."[11] During her promotional tour for the book, Clinton said, "I actually wrote the book ... I had to write my own book because I want to stand by every word."[2] Clinton stated that Feinman assisted in interviews and did some editorial drafting of "connecting paragraphs", while Clinton herself wrote the final manuscript in longhand.[2]

This led Feinman to complain at the time to Capitol Style magazine over the lack of acknowledgement.[12] In 2001, The Wall Street Journal reported that "New York literary circles are buzzing with vitriol over Sen. Clinton's refusal, so far, to share credit with any writer who helps on her book."[13] Later, in a 2002 article for The Writer's Chronicle,[14] Barbara Feinman Todd (now using her married name) related that the project with Clinton had gone smoothly, producing drafts in a round-robin style. Feinman agrees that Clinton was involved with the project, but also states that, "Like any first lady, Mrs. Clinton had an extremely hectic schedule and writing a book without assistance would have been logistically impossible." Feinman reiterates that her only objection to the whole process was the lack of any acknowledgement.

Ghostwriter Controversy

Then today, Chelsea Clinton, stumping for her mother in Hawaii made the claim that her mother was the first to use the term "green-collar jobs".

Chelsea in Hawaii

Interesting... let's quick check Wikipedia again!

Of or pertaining to both employment and the environment or environmentalism.

1976, Patrick Heffernan, "Jobs for the Environment — The Coming Green Collar Revolution", in Jobs and Prices in the West Coast Region: Hearing before the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, Ninety-Fourth Congress, Second Session, U.S. Government Printing Office, page 134,

1997, Geoff Mulgan, Perri 6 [sic], et al., The British Spring: A Manifesto for the Election After Next, Demos, page 26,
The United States, Canada, Germany, and Denmark are all generating hundreds of thousands of new 'green collar' jobs, especially for young people, achieving remarkable reductions in energy, water, waste disposal and materials costs.

2001, Diane Warburton and Ian Christie, From Here to Sustainability: Politics in the Real World, Earthscan, page 75,
Studies for the UK suggest that the more than 100,000 existing 'green collar' workers in environmental occupations could be joined by many thousands more, both in the private sector and in the 'social economy' of community enterprises.

Green Collar Workers

A campaign can rise, and fall, on "just words".

As ye slime, so shall ye be slimed.