Posted on 08/25/2008 1:50:15 PM PDT by rightwingintelligentsia
Teachers and scholars consider the unattributed use of someone else's words and ideas to be a very serious offense, but the public doesn't seem to mind much, at least when it comes to politics. The incidents of plagiarism and fabrication that forced Joe Biden to quit the 1988 presidential race have drawn little comment since his selection as Barack Obama's vice presidential running mate—just as revelations of plagiarism by Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin scarcely hurt their book sales. In 1987, before Biden quit the race, he called the incidents "a tempest in a teapot." Although most reporters disagreed then, at least enough to pursue the story, they seem now—perhaps jaded by two decades of scandal-mongering—to have come around to Biden's view.
But Biden's exit from the 1988 race is worth recalling in detail, because his transgressions far exceeded Obama's own relatively innocent lifting of rhetorical set pieces from his friend Deval Patrick, which occasioned a brief flap last February. Biden's misdeeds encompassed numerous self-aggrandizing thefts, misstatements, and exaggerations that seemed to point to a serious character defect. In some ways, the 1988 campaign—in which scandal forced not just Biden but also Gary Hart from the race—marked a watershed in the absurd gotcha politics that have since marred our politics and punditry. But unlike Hart's plight, Biden's can't be blamed on an overly intrusive or hectoring press corps. The press was right to dig into this one.
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
Hey, somebody dig up the old Letterman Top 10 list from 1988 about Biden dropping out of the race. It was the Top 10 things Biden was going to do now that he was no longer running for prez. I remember 2 of them:
Chase skirt with Teddy Kennedy.
Spend more time with my imaginary coal mining relatives.
Zero/Xerox
Biden had some words of encouragement to reassure democrat campaign staffers: “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
— Jay Leno, 1988
Geez... the 1990s students learned that oral sex is not sex from Clinton. Now, they’ll invoke Biden when arguing that plagiarism is not plagiarism if he mentioned the sources in his previous homework or term paper.
What's one more lying Demoncrapper.
People WANT to believe liars and deceivers.
That would make Biden the Baron of Bedwetting.
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