I almost fell out of my chair. In a segment on Barack Obama ("Obama echoes Deval Patrick, again"), the weekend news anchor questioned who is writing Obama's sound bites, citing the similarity between "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself" with sound bites used exactly by another politician, Deval Patrick, whose campaign was also managed by Obama consultant, David Axelrod.
That sound bite is one of the most often quoted lines ever delivered by a US President: FDR's inaugural address seeking to calm a jittery nation. But that's not what the news anchor's script reported. What it said was that the phrase was an example of plagiarism by Obama.
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10 comments:
idiots is right:
Google:
Franklin D. Roosevelt The only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, ...
www.brainyquote.com/quotes/ authors/f/franklin_d_roosevelt.html - 32k -
Franklin D. Roosevelt Quotes
Franklin D. Roosevelt Quotes · Click Here. There is nothing to fear but fear itself.
You are way off base. And I say this as a HUGE Obama fan. Read the story again. ABC was not saying Deval came up with "you have nothing to fear...." The point of the story was that Deval Patrick faced very similar criticisms about just offering speeches, and he rebutted the criticism by noting famous speeches and words used by politicians to rally their people. Obama recently used the same line of argument. Again, I don't think the story was unfair and your post mischaracterizes it.
from gimleteye:
Anonymous apparently did not hear or watch the news segment on TV.
During the segment, there was no attribution to FDR of the quote, or even that Obama was stringing together famous quotes of famous people.
Without the attribution, if you were a viewer without any knowledge of where these quotes came from, you would have believed that Deval had invented the "we have nothing to fear, but fear itself" and that Obama had copied Deval's invention.
GIMLETEYE:
Another Obama supporter here to tell you that this post makes you look rather silly. The point of whatever you saw on ABC and the concomitant news story on Jake Tapper's blog is to highlight the eerily similar rhetorical strategies by Patrick and Obama. Considering that they have the same campaign strategist, David Axelrod, this shouldn't be too surprising. It's not plagiarism by any means, but Obama obviously didn't come up with this rhetorical riposte to Hillary's charge of "just words" himself.
You've misunderstood the story rather badly. I'm not trying to be mean or derisive in any way, just trying to se you straight as the previous poster did. Peace out, gobama!
From the south to the north, east to west, rich and poor, black and white, etc...
OBAMA is a FRAUD!!!
Gimleteye:
I sort of see your point. It assumes that the listeners wouldn't know any of those quotes. I know no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people, but this is going a bit far. MOST people would know Deval and Obama were quoting others.
Why would you want to use that line anyway? It fit the times when FDR used it. I doubt it would resonate today. Perhaps Obama and Patrick should come up with something original. Oh wait, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain! (Another famous line from the 1930's.)
Gimleteye says:
Honestly, I can't believe this story has legs. It's on Yahoo. It was in the New York Times today. The Clinton team acknowledges it is pushing the story hard, because they believe that it compromises his skills as an orator. Excuse me? How in the world is that the basis for a legitimate argument against Obama? There is no part of this, that I understand, except that it does seem to be grasping at straws.
Obama is a fake and a fraud. Middle name Hussein, forget him can you imagine eating goat on the floor for a State Dinner?
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