Ottawa

BTC: Twirling, twirling

So in addition to referencing Kang this morning, Jack Layton is now being accused of “referencing” Barack Obama and Bill Richardson. Compare and contrast.

Layton, this morning. “Today, Stephen Harper announced he is quitting as Prime Minister. And so, today I’m applying for his job.”

Richardson, in this ad.

Layton, this morning. “Like a father and son in Kenora—co-workers in their mill—who told me what it’s like to box up equipment they’ve worked with for years, so the company they worked for could ship it—and their jobs—off to China.”

Obama, at the Democratic convention. “This country is more generous than one where a man in Indiana has to pack up the equipment he’s worked on for twenty years and watch it shipped off to China, and then chokes up as he explains how he felt like a failure when he went home to tell his family the news.”

The first is a tenuous match, at best. The second is closer, but still probably wouldn’t count as plagiarism in an undergraduate English course.

For that matter, that references to the Simpsons, Bill Richardson and Barack Obama could be respectively found in the same text probably qualifies this as the most interesting speech Jack Layton has delivered in some time.

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