I'm stunned that the Clinton campaign is presenting such a fallacy of ideas. Let me begin with the uproar she is spreading about the "plagiarized" words that she accuses Obama of stealing from Gov. Patrick:
Sen. Hillary Clinton's campaign wants everyone to see a campaign speech made in 2006 by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick just before he won that office and a recent speech by Sen. Barack Obama.
At the link, there is a video that shows that the two speeches are just about identical from the two men. Further in the article, Gov. Patrick states:
"Sen. Obama and I are long-time friends and allies. We often share ideas about politics, policy and language. The argument in question, on the value of words in the public square, is one about which he and I have spoken frequently before. Given the recent attacks from Sen. Clinton, I applaud him responding in just the way he did."
Since Gov. Patrick doesn't mind that Obama borrowed his ideas, why should Hillary? Especially since she has so little regard for words anyway! Here lies the fallacy.
Let's see what HRC has said about words (bold mine):
Words 'cheap,' Clinton argues
Hillary Clinton's newly strengthened line of attack -- "Some people may think words are change," she said during a campaign rally last week in Ohio, "you and I know better; words are cheap" -- seems designed to give a nudge to an emerging storyline: That her Democratic challenger for the presidential nomination, Barack Obama, is little more than an excellent public speaker with a knack for vague, uplifting bromides.
So if "words are cheap", why then would she care that Obama's friend gave him some words to use?
And I also cannot connect the ideas of Bill Clinton here:
Clinton's one direct reference to Illinois Sen. Barack Obama was praise for his inspirational speeches, which are galvanizing the youth vote.
"I used to be a pretty good speaker myself," he said, getting a laugh from the crowd before explaining that his wife would make a better president because she is in the solutions business.
"Do you think words are more important than actions? Do you think that the speech that moves is more important than the solution that moves forward?" he asked.
If words are so unimportant, why did Bill's "pretty good" speaking have any impact on electing him? Wasn't it the words in those speeches that got him elected so that we could see results?
Further, Bob Cesca at Huffpo analyzes how campaigns steal words from each other all of the time, including HRC's:
For instance, I looked up Senator Clinton's Jefferson-Jackson Dinner speech from last week. Here's a particularly familiar line:
"Are you ready to take back the White House..."
That sounds an awful lot like this one:
"...and then we're going to Washington, D.C., to take back the White House! YAAARRR!"
If words are cheap, why did HRC 'borrow' one of the greatest lines ever?
I love words. And I am not alone. One only has to witness the devastation to humankind with the loss of the Royal Library at Alexandria, the preponderance of books since the invention of the printing press, and the explosion of words in the information age to understand that these strokes of pen, these taps on keyboards, and these utterances of syllables give us humankind.
HRC must know this about words, or why would she care that Obama borrowed some from a friend?