Patterico's Pontifications

9/10/2008

This Just In — Obama Plagiarized His Riff Yesterday That Ended With The Porcine Cosmetics Quip (UPDATED with Disagreement from Patterico)

Filed under: General — WLS @ 3:43 pm



[Posted by WLS]

According to the Boston.Globe, Obama’s comments about McCain bringing change to Washington were taken from the text of a Tom Toles cartoon out a couple days ago.

Campaigning in Terre Haute, Ind. on Saturday, Barack Obama, mocking claims by John McCain and Sarah Palin that they will challenge their Republican Party if elected, got off a pretty good line.  Maybe what they’re saying is, ‘Watch out George Bush,'” Obama said with sarcasm, according to NBC News. “Except for economic policies, and tax policies, and energy policies, and health care policies, and education policies, and Karl Rove-style politics — except for all that, we’re really going to bring change to Washington! We’re really going to shake things up!”

It wasn’t Obama’s line, though. It came from Washington Post cartoonist Tom Toles, whose cartoon Friday featured these words along with a drawing of McCain and Sarah Palin in front of the White House: “Watch out, Mr. Bush! With the exception of economic policy and energy policy and social issues and tax policy and foreign policy and Supreme Court appointments and Rove-style politics, we’re coming in there to shake things up!” (See the cartoon here.)

There’s got to be a Joe Biden joke in there somewhere.

Obama claims he got the line from a friend who didn’t tell him about the source.  In using this line again today while campaigning in Michigan, Obama attributed it to a Washington Post cartoon.

— WLS

UPDATE BY PATTERICO: I suppose this might fit some dictionary definition of “plagiarism,” but I don’t see what the big deal is. It’s an obvious angle for Obama, he didn’t steal the exact words, and he apparently didn’t intend to take it without attribution. I see this as a big nothing; indeed, I was fed the tip last night and passed on it. (And even before the tip, I noticed the similarity when I saw the Obama clip, having read the cartoon.)

Also, it’s “Tom” Toles and not Ted. I corrected it in the post.

18 Responses to “This Just In — Obama Plagiarized His Riff Yesterday That Ended With The Porcine Cosmetics Quip (UPDATED with Disagreement from Patterico)”

  1. I think we all know who the cartoon character is here.

    Icy Truth (6273ad)

  2. How is this plagiarism going to help Michelle Obama’s kids?

    aunursa (1b5bad)

  3. I don’t see why it matters where he got it. Political speeches aren’t expected to be original work; for one thing, everyone knows politicians have speech writers, and they lift lines from wherever they can find them. There’s nothing wrong with it.

    What was wrong with the speech Biden lifted from Kinnock wasn’t that he lifted it, it was that the things he said, which were true of Kinnock, weren’t true of him. Had they been true, had he actually shared these experiences with Kinnock, he’d have been perfectly entitled to borrow Kinnock’s words to describe them.

    Milhouse (89df7f)

  4. Unfunny and unoriginal…a winning combination.

    the wolf (6cfe5d)

  5. Quiet! Let the Great Man think…”uh, ummm, ohhh, yeah…that’s from a cartoon.”

    Dmac (e639cc)

  6. Excerpt from Obama’s next speech: “Th-th-th-that’s all, folks!”

    Icy Truth (94cc06)

  7. I don’t see why it matters where he got it
    .
    Where he got it doesn’t matter at all. What matters is an appearance of co-opting the line without attribution – and he admitted he took it at first without permission from the author (he was unaware of the comic, the line came to him from “a friend”). I’m sure the cartoonist is flattered or pleased that the line is getting wide play, so the only downside ramification in skipping attribution is, well, whatever one thinks of those who pawn off the work of others as “their own.”
    .
    Everybody knows Jay Leno has writers, so he doesn’t have to attribute to them – but if he was taking lines from Letterman, or someone not on his writers payroll, well, that’d be different.

    cboldt (3d73dd)

  8. I think his name is actually Tom Toles, but regardless he’s about as talented as Ted Rall, Lloyd Dangle, and Tom Tomorrow.

    Jack Klompus (b0e238)

  9. I, for one, am going to be a lot more comfortable if Obama has a teleprompter and several ready made speeches on tap hooked up to the 3:00AM red phone in the White House.

    huey (e5b1a1)

  10. So incredibly appropriate with Biden as a running mate. And the fact that his entire campaign theme is lifted straight from Deval and Axelrod

    JD (5f0e11)

  11. Obligatory mention that if George W. Bush was caught passing off a cartoon in a politcal speech, the MSM would be all over what a rube he was. And that if Palin did it, it would be “Quayle Potatoe: The Sequel.”

    But it’s The One, so shhhh…

    Karl (1b4668)

  12. Patterico — then who is Ted Toles?

    Re the significance, I don’t think its too much either. I just thought it was humorous in light of the Deval Patrick stuff and Joe Biden’s “biography.”

    WLS (26b1e5)

  13. Icy Truth wrote: Excerpt from Obama’s next speech: “Th-th-th-that’s all, folks!”

    That will come in November. Between then and now, he’ll be quoting Daffy Duck a lot.

    L.N. Smithee (b048eb)

  14. The main significance to me is that this reinforces the idea that Obama’s comment was not an accident.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  15. #5 Dmac:

    Quiet! Let the Great Man think…”uh, ummm, ohhh, yeah…that’s from a cartoon.”

    Huh. It sure gets quiet in my car, when I say “Fasten your seatbelts. I’m gonna try something. I saw it in a cartoon, but I’m sure it will work.”

    –attribution uncertain, Stephen Wright perhaps?

    EW1(SG) (1c0755)

  16. Could be – I’ve always loved that guy.

    Dmac (e639cc)

  17. When did Obama say that he got it from a friend because on another site, Obama fans were saying that he had used it on MSNBC over a week ago and had credited it to a cartoonist then??

    Strange, guess its hard keeping up on all the lies??

    LogicalUS (742bd0)

  18. When did Obama say that he got it from a friend because on another site, Obama fans were saying that he had used it on MSNBC over a week ago and had credited it to a cartoonist then??
    .

    A good line, but not Obama’s – Scott Helman (Boston.com)
    Asked about the borrowing, Obama spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Obama used Toles’s lines unwittingly, after being alerted to them by a friend who didn’t mention the source.
    .
    “This came to Senator Obama from a friend who didn’t indicate where he had gotten it from, but the questions it raises certainly continue to ring true,” Psaki said in an email. “He did not know it was from a cartoon and now that he does he will certainly credit the cartoonist.”

    cboldt (3d73dd)


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