Word: kinnock
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...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...
...Awkward Revelation. The Kinnock kleptomania was particularly damaging to Biden since it underscored the prior concerns that he was a shallow vessel for other people's ideas...
...Maladroit Response. Top Aide Tom Donilon claimed that Biden failed to credit Kinnock because "he didn't know what he was saying. He was on autopilot...
...peculiar timing of the barrage of Biden brickbats accidental? The Des Moines Register reported that an unidentified campaign had circulated an "attack video" linking Kinnock's and Biden's rhetoric. A reporter for a Florida legal newspaper, the Miami Review, was also tipped off last week about the law school plagiarism incident and alerted a sister publication, Washington's Legal Times. In trying to confirm the information, reporters for the paper talked to a variety of Washington political insiders, including an adviser to the Richard Gephardt campaign...