Free Speech And Stolen Speech
Somebody please tell Republican congressman Jim Gibbons that they aren't one and the same. Al Kamen notes in the WaPo that Gibbons "rallied the faithful" at a GOP dinner with "a blistering attack on liberals":
This was great fire-breathing stuff, surely one of Gibbons's greatest, most thoughtful addresses. Unfortunately, Free Press reporter Dave Woodson wrote Friday, it was lifted wholesale from a copyrighted speech by Alabama State Auditor Beth Chapman, given at a Stand Up for America rally in Alabama on Feb. 2, 2003.In fact, 15 paragraphs of Gibbons's speech were lifted from Chapman's 21-paragraph talk. But surely not his best line -- the one where he says: "I say we tell those liberal, tree-hugging, Birkenstock-wearing, hippie, tie-dyed liberals to go make their movies and their music and whine somewhere else." Surely that's Gibbons's?
Alas, he lifted that one, too, along with his erudite observation that if antiwar folks lived in Iraq or Afghanistan, "ironically, they would be put to death at the hands of Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden."
Chapman told the Free Press on Friday that Gibbons hadn't requested permission to use her speech but that she had spoken with him earlier Friday morning and he apologized.
Gibbons said he couldn't remember where he had gotten the speech, saying, "I had no idea it was copyrighted."
Otherwise it would have been okay? Well, at least he didn't do the usual and blame "sloppy staff work" for the problem, which could affect any gubernatorial run. (Of course, neither did Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) when he was knocked out of the 1988 presidential race after he cribbed that line from a speech by British Labor Party leader Neil Kinnock: "Why am I the first Kinnock [Biden] in 1,000 years to be able to get to university?") After Gibbons's speech, outraged Nevada Democrats ripped into him, saying his statements were grossly over the top and so forth.
Thieves, thieves, they're all thieves. Who are the honest men and women in Washington...if any?
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