dbackjon wrote:JoltinJoe wrote:
No, it was just a joke about Biden and plagiarism. I was expecting big laughs. I guess it wasn't as obvious as I thought it was.
Of course, McCain is more of a Plagarist than Biden, who did credit the author in many previous speeches...unlike McCain, who has yet to do so.
Nice try, DU man. Joe Biden
IS Mr. Plagiarist. Cheated in law school, had to beg the disciplinary board to keep from being thrown out, later got caught plagiarizing a speech WHILE A U.S. SENATOR RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT.
The guy is so jacketed as a plagiarist, Wikipedia cites him as the example of a plagiarist in their "Organization Publications" section on plagiarism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism
And, despite the Dem's best shot at distracting the public from his weak past...his legacy of a lifelong plagiarst whose excuses are Lovitz-like in their contrived, confabulated manner, is unequaled within his political peers.
http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/sptimes/acc ... ility&pf=1
At the University of Delaware, he was a mediocre student - 506 out of 688 in the class of 1965. He was ``trying to be the complete Joe College,`` wrote a history professor, ranking Biden average in ``intellectual achievement`` but high in ``command of English language.`` The professor nonetheless recommended the former football and baseball jock for admission to law school ``on grounds of personality and general promise.``
But Biden soon ran into trouble at Syracuse Law. He was accused of plagiarism after lifting five pages from a law review article for a course paper. But his pleading - ``I implore you, don't take my honor`` - convinced the dean to let him stay in school, take the course over, and wipe the slate clean.
Another law dean later told a prospective employer that Biden, who finished 76th in a class of 85, had been an academic ``disappointment.`` But the dean said Biden's ``confidence,`` ``general physical appearance`` and ``general speaking ability`` would help make him a natural trial lawyer...
...Biden appropriated an inspirational speech by British Labor leader Neil Kinnock. Kinnock told of ancestors who played football after long days underground in the mines, who recited poetry poetry and paved the way for him to become the first in his family to attend college.
When he saw a tape of Kinnock in action, Biden said Thursday, ``it was a connect. I mean, I could tell how that man felt. That's how I feel.`...
...So he used it - changing the names but little else - at a debate last month in Iowa. But instead of crediting Kinnock, he told the audience he thought of it on the way to the debate.
Biden acknowledged Kinnock's language didn't fit his family perfectly. His father was in used car sales, his grandfather was a mining engineer. But he had been told and ``assumed`` that other relatives had worked in the mines. And, ``to make it clear,`` members of his mother's family had, indeed, been to college.
He had used some old Bobby Kennedy lines, too, but blamed a speechwriter for it. The suggestion of pilfering here was especially troublesome, since Biden's central campaign theme is an appeal to idealism that harks back to great Democratic struggles of the 1960s.
Thus ``the complete Joe College`` awkwardly tried to explain just where he stood back then:
``During the 1960s, I was in fact very concerned about the civil rights movement. I was not an activist. I worked at an all-black swimming pool in the east side of Wilmington, Delaware. I was involved, I was involved in what they were thinking, what they were feeling. I was involved, but I was not out there marching. I was not down in Selma, I was not anywhere else. I was a suburbanite kid who got a dose of exposure to what was happening to black Americans in my own city. . . . It was a revelation and it appalled me.
``I am not culturally one of those guys who like to - I don't fit very well because I'm not a joiner. I don't go out, I'm not very, I was out of sync . . . by the time the war movement was at its peak . . . I was married. I was in law school. I wore sportcoats. I'm serious. What you all don't seem to understand - some of you, I think, you understand it, but I don't think you're really being - well, I won't characterize it.
``Now look: You're looking at a middle class guy. I am who I am. I'm not big on flak jackets and tie-dyed shirts, you know, that's not me. I'm serious.``
He said it was ``bizarre`` that reporters ask him about such things. His family was most important, he noted. ``You know, I mean, I hated law school. I really did.`
