The Parrot Hilton

It was on MSNBC TV this morning (my bedroom TV is my alarm clock) and I had to turn it off after half a minute of punditry because some commentators are so ignorant they make me want to puke.

But it's also all over LJ, CNN and everywhere else. Hillary and Barak both being stupid on national television last night.

Hillary's line saying Barak's campaign is "Change you can Xerox" would have been clever coming from the Republican nominee in October 2008, but it was just plain rude coming from a colleague.

Barak's lack of a response did not display the courage he has shown in the past, and it was made worse by his throwing up the smoke screen of "Silly Season".

( See the source material here )

Barak's excuse was the same one Joe Biden lost his Presidential bid over - I was just borrowing a line from my good buddy who said to go ahead and use it. On the one hand, good buddy didn't say to use it without attribution, on the other hand, Barak was quick to attribute it when he was called on it. I think Hillary should have dropped it from her debate agenda after Barak fessed up.

Personally, I don't think Barak's "just words" speech is particularly powerful. Not nearly as powerful as "ask not", which urban legend says was lifted from Khalil Gibran's 1925 essay, The New Frontier, but wasn't really.

Here's Gibran's version:
"Are you a politician asking what your country can do for you or a zealous one asking what you can do for your country? If you are the first, then you are a parasite; if the second, then you are an oasis in a desert."

The "ask not" phrase is the thing we all remember, and that was original JFK (or one of his speech writers, which is the same thing). Ironically, Kennedy called his campaign, and later his administration, The New Frontier.

But I digress.
The point of the "just words" speech, Barak tells us, is words can be powerful and important. But he doesn't push on to the logical conclusion that it is people acting on those words, not just the words themselves, which is the real force of change.


Bottom line: Hillary was wrong to sling mud, Barak was wrong to make excuses.