Has Hillary Been a Bad Girl? Hillary Clinton Plagiarizes during the Very Same Debate She Was Laying the Charge of Plagiarism Against Barack Obama

February 25, 2008 
Category: The Situation Room

During the CNN/Univision-sponsored debate on Thursday, Feb. 21, the Hillary Clinton charge was unambiguous. In her response to a probe by the panel of journalists, Hillary Clinton, once again, accused Barack Obama of having plagiarized lines from a 2006 campaign speech that Deval Patrick had given in his then victorious bid for the office of governor of Massachusetts. This borrowing, according to Hillary Clinton, put into question both the originality and sincerity of Barack Obama’s speeches:

“If your campaign is going to be about words, they should be your own words,” Hillary Clinton attacked. “Lifting whole passages isn’t change you can believe in; it’s change you can Xerox.”

Now, now, now, Hillary.

Interestingly, on the very night in which she was accusing Barack Obama of plagiarism, Hillary Clinton herself was plagiarizing speeches by both Bill Clinton and John Edwards. Take a look:

Hillary Clinton, February 21 debate:

“You know, whatever happens, we’re going to be fine. You know, we have strong support from our families and our friends. I just hope that we’ll be able to say the same thing about the American people.”

This echoes John Edwards’s words on the December 13 debate:

“What’s not at stake are any of us. All of us are going to be just fine no matter what happens in this election. But what’s at stake is whether America is going to be fine.”

Now, now, now, Hillary.

Worst, a YouTube video has now surfaced in which Bill Clinton is shown to be saying in some 1992 speech:

“I want you to know something, that the hits I took during this election are nothing compared to the hits that the people of this state and this country have taken under this administration.”

Compare that to what Hillary Clinton said on Thursday night:

“I think everybody here knows I’ve lived through some crises and some challenging moments in my life… But people often ask me … ‘How do you keep going?’ And I just have to shake my head in wonderment, because with all of the challenges that I’ve had, they are nothing compared to what I see happening in the lives of Americans every single day.“

(By the way, watch the video montage of Hillary Clinton’s double-talk as she plagiarizes on YouTube: Click here):

After looking at all that, what you get is, not the spontaneous, sincere moment that Hillary Clinton wanted to serve us with on Thursday night, but, rather, a very cold and rehearsed moment that she seemed to have reserved for the end of the debate, in a desperate attempt to reproduce the New Hampshire Cry.

Talk of plagiarism and fakeness, huh? Now, now, now, Hillary. You been a bad girl…

Some people have tried to argue that the Obama “plagiarism” was really more verbatim that Hillary’s. But there is a huge difference:

- Obama claims that it is Deval Patrick himself who suggested that he use the incriminating lines. Nothing surprising: Deval Patrick is a national co-chairman of Obama’s campaign. He is therefore likely to suggest ideas for Obama’s campaign speeches and strategy, especially because he himself had been the subject of similar criticism when running for governor.

- In 1997, Joe Biden was irremediably battered during his presidential campaign bid for plagiarizing, even though his plagiarism was not as “verbatim” as that of Obama. The ideas he borrowed from a British politician called Neil Kinnock read as follows:

Kinnock (original)

“Why am I the first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Why is Glenys the first woman in her family in a thousand generations to be able to get to university? Was it because our predecessors were thick? Does anybody really think that they didn’t get what we had because they didn’t have the talent or the strength or the endurance or the commitment? Of course not. It was because there was no platform upon which they could stand.”

Joe Biden, 1987

“I started thinking as I was coming over here, why is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a university? Why is it that my wife who is sitting out there in the audience is the first in her family to ever go to college? Is it because our fathers and mothers were not bright? . . . No, it’s not because they weren’t as smart. It’s not because they didn’t work as hard. It’s because they didn’t have a platform upon which to stand…“

The non-verbatim justification advanced by the Clinton camp is therefore not a coherent argument. Plagiarism is defined as the verbatim or non verbatim use of someone else’s ideas or words without proper credit. It is simply disingenuous of the Clinton campaign to have been using the plagiarism charge against Barack Obama so adamantly on the very same night, and the very same debate, during which Hillary Clinton herself was unashamedly plagiarizing from both John Edwards and Bill Clinton speeches. This is ridiculously humiliating, and cunningly contradictory.

And to think that, just like her husband in the impeachment years, she looked the American people straight in the eyes during the debate, pretending to be expressing feelings that were genuinely hers and heart-felt… The coldness and fakeness of the pretense are truly shocking. It makes one faint just thinking back to all those ”human moments” Hillary Clinton has faked in the course of this campaign every time she found herself on the verge of defeat.

It is so strange in this campaign to see so many people accusing others of ”crimes” that they themselves have been committing. Fascinating, to say the least. Have morals disappeared from American politics altogether?

For Hillary Clinton, only one comment is of the essence at this crucial moment of the campaign: Who is xeroxing now, hey? You been a real, real bad girl, Hillary. Real, real bad.

Dr. Daniel Mengara
The author is an Associate Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Montclair State University (New Jersey). He is also the leader of Bongo Doit Partir (Bongo Must Go), a movement of expatriated Gabonese citizens opposed and seeking an end to the 40-year-old dictatorial regime of Omar Bongo in Gabon.

Comments

One Response to “Has Hillary Been a Bad Girl? Hillary Clinton Plagiarizes during the Very Same Debate She Was Laying the Charge of Plagiarism Against Barack Obama”

  1. Bobo on February 26th, 2008 2:12 pm

    It’s hillary gone wild indeed.

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