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Plagiarism, Obama, Clinton, and Jesus

February 22, 2008

by Nate

For those of you not masochistic enough to follow every moment of the Democratic nomination process, there's been a recent spat regarding plagiarism. It began with Clinton attacking Obama for using tropes from a speech by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick. I thought the issue didn't have much life to it, since almost everyone seemed to shrug his shoulders after hearing that Gov. Patrick was a close friend and confidant of Obama's, and that Patrick promptly said publicly that he was neither surprised nor displeased to have Sen. Obama use his words.

But the plagiarism issue came up last night in the Texas debate and, sadly, apparently both parties began trading plagiarism accusations afterward. Today I find the various blogs I read rife with indignant charges of hypocrisy from Obama supporters.

This is a non-issue, friends.

It reminded me, though, of one of my favorite discoveries about Jesus during college: that "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Matt. 27:46) was a quotation from Psalm 22. (Though apparently this conclusion is not uncontroversial.) I remember being struck at how powerful it was to imagine Jesus quoting from a meaningful literary reference, the same way I might quote Shakespeare to try to describe something that I was experiencing. Quoting a passage that is old and powerful is like grasping hold of a tangled knot of meaning, connecting thousands of threads of significance to what one is attempting to describe. That Jesus would reach for poetry in his death made him suddenly real in a visceral way I hadn't experienced before.

Tropes in speech may not always be at this level of seriousness, but they strike me as similar: of course one is going to reach for phrases and ideas that have used before, that have resonated before; it's part of speaking in a common forum. Obama's use of Gov. Patrick's words was probably significant enough that best form would have dictated he mention his friend, but its very innocence has required that anyone making a big deal of it slip into attacking all uses of phrases that have been heard before.

Let's abandon this ridiculousness as soon as possible.

Comments

On February 22 at 11'59 AMPermalink, hb wrote:

1

I don’t think both camps were trading plagiarism charges—the links you provide seem to be just “he said, she said” journalism, without any actual evidence of “he said.” I read this and this last night, which seemed to give the all the emphasis to showing that such charges were meaningless in such a context. I’m sure the Obama campaign highlighted these clips behind the scenes, but I’d like to see where they actually leveled the p-word charge.

Meanwhile, the press is doing its regularly idiotic job of reporting on the debate, leading with that one line, and just repeating it without context or evaluation. This whole moronic talking point could have been put to bed in two seconds if the press had checked Lexis once or twice. Instead, it’s up to the bloggers to provide real context, and the journalists just become stenographers.

On February 22 at 12'27 PMPermalink, anne wrote:

2

i recall this charge of plagarism starting from the press, not from the clinton campaign.

On February 22 at 12'54 PMPermalink, hb wrote:

3

Not to get into a set of back and forths about politics, here, but I recall that the original story cited “a rival campaign that asked not to be identified.” I’m guessing it wasn’t Mike Gravel. Best link I could find on a quick search.