Pop quiz time. Why are politicians different from reporters? (No jokes about the penchant for junk food and odds hours, please).
Turns out with one group, plagiarism is rewarded — or at least the most flagrant practitioners hope so.
John Edwards is stealing Howard Dean’s tagline “you have the power,” and John Kerry is helping himself to another Dean-ism about “breaking the grip of powerful interests in this country,” according to a careful listen by Knight Ridder’s Thomas Fitzgerald.
Dean is willing to forgive and forget. “That’s part of politics, and it’s not all bad,” he said, when informed of the heists; “Certainly we’ve changed the message of the Democratic Party.”
But what about the voters? With all the tagline theft, will they possibly remember who stands for what?
–S.Q.S.
