Word: kinnock
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...from memorably, at the Bork hearings. But what most voters are more likely to remember was the endless TV sequences of Biden's words on the campaign trail juxtaposed with almost identical oratory coming from the mouth of Robert Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey and British Labor Party Leader Neil Kinnock. English teachers in New Hampshire high schools were soon using Biden as the bad example in lessons on the evils of plagiarism...
...called the Glib Crib Crisis began when the New York Times revealed that Biden had been guilty of rhetorical shoplifting. Biden's passionate and seemingly personal closing statement in a Democratic debate in Iowa in late August had been swiped without attribution and almost word for word from a Kinnock TV commercial designed to evoke memories of the British class struggle. Where Kinnock's coal-mining ancestors worked "eight hours underground," Biden's somewhat mythical forebears "would come up after twelve hours." Biden in the past had given credit to Kinnock, but in Iowa he introduced the fiery rhetoric...
...clearly folly for Biden to expropriate Kinnock's family tree as he conjured up coal-mining ancestors "who read poetry and wrote poetry and taught me how to sing verse." But hitherto, politics has been far more tolerant of borrowings from Bartlett's than of monkey business in Bimini. In fact, some of the most famous lines of modern oratory have questionable paternity. Winston Churchill's "blood, toil, tears and sweat" was inspired by John Donne; John Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you" echoed Oliver Wendell Holmes; and Ronald Reagan's 1980 debate...
...might fare against Biden braino-a-braino, he'd be hard pressed to lose a veracity contest to the senator. All of Biden's claims were false. "I exaggerate when I'm angry," he said by way of explanation. Similarly, his aides tried to explain away his appropriation of Kinnock's speech and ancestry by saying that he had gone on "automatic pilot...
...when he goes on automatic he is forced to make things up or steal them from others. Have there been no formative events in his life of which to speak? Nothing inside which he can fall back on? I bet Biden doesn't even realize that when Kinnock spoke of his ancestors playing football after a long day's work, he was talking about soccer...