Politics: August 2008 Archive Page

My colleague Lee McClain passed this article on to me -- via a post-it note attached to the dead-tree edition of the story.

"Move over, mainstream media, it's the voter's turn," says the blurb for an event called: "Tapping the Creative Community: The Power of Voter Generated Media."

To be sure, there are television satellite trucks parked in the parking lots around the Pepsi Center, blow-dried anchormen speaking earnestly into cameras and dignified, old hands like Bob Schieffer of CBS roaming about the hall.

But in the media security lines snaking outside the convention venue, the faces are mostly young, the equipment mostly laptops, and the credentials for Web sites you may have never heard of. --Mackenzie Carpenter, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

I remember the Biden law school incident. Not long after that, during the Clarence Thomas hearings, I remember reading that law school students were secretly photocopying homework assignments submitted by their arch enemies, in the hopes of one day using that information to torpedo a big political appointment.

By choosing Joe Biden as his running mate, Barack Obama has insulted academics -- students and teachers alike -- a constituency that was significant in bringing him the nomination of his party. Especially in a year that has seen two prominent political careers hamstrung by sex scandals, and in an era where choosing vice presidential candidates seems to be foremost an exercise in avoiding skeletons in the closet, it's surprising that Biden's record of plagiarism did not disqualify him from Obama's consideration.

Joe Biden, you will remember, ran for president in 1988. He delivered a speech that presented the thoughts of British Labour Party Leader Neil Kinnock is if they were his own, and was slow to explain or apologize for this transgression. The ensuing scrutiny of Biden's record revealed that he had also plagiarized in law school, failing a course for doing so. Shortly after these revelations, he dropped out of the race. -- Jonathan Beecher Field