Friday, November 07, 2008

"Thank god for the BBC, because I'm cutting and pasting, oh, baby!"

Birmingham [England] Mail reporter Adam Smith had taken a week's vacation to go to Miami to volunteer for the Barack Obama's campaign.

The timesonline reported:

"I jumped on a plane on Friday to volunteer for the Barack Obama campaign," Mr Smith explained in a strong, if rather slurred, Brummie accent. "As an ill-advised promise, I've decided to say to my paper back home that I'd write about the American election.

"I wanted to be here because I'm here for history. The trouble is, the readers of the Birmingham Mail are going to get my version of history. And I'm just a little bit pissed..."

With a laugh and a clap of the hands, he added: "And thank god for the BBC, because I'm cutting and pasting, oh, baby!"


The link includes the post on YouTube.

As they say at the Harvard Business Review: "plagiarize with pride"! And don't forget Syracuse Law School, circa 1965. The Poshard saga was just the beginning.

***For those who don't remember, from 88 JPTOS 1068-->

In an article in the Harvard Business Review in April 2004, [FN6] one of the subheadings was "Plagiarize with pride," followed by the text "Softball competitors like to think that their bright ideas are sacred. But hardball players know better. They're willing to steal any good idea they see --as long as it isn't nailed down by a robust patent -- and use it for themselves."

George Stalk, Jr. and Rob Lachenauer, Hardball: Five Killer Strategies for Trouncing the Competition, Harvard Business Review [HBR], 62, 68 (April 2004). This article represented the cover story of the April 2004 HBR, with the cover depicting a cartoonish baseball pitcher and the caption "Play to Win."

*****UPDATE

NYDailyNews story: Barack Obama gives campaign staffers extra cash, BlackBerrys, laptops:

[on Obama workers getting extra paychecks worth a month's salary]

"It was totally unexpected, and you can't believe how helpful this is with the holidays coming," the lower-level worker said. "A lot of people thought they were going to be broke and would have to try to find a job in this rotten economy. It's a huge help."

In addition to the cold cash, staffers also have the option of keeping their campaign-issued computers and BlackBerrys - but must pay income tax on the hardware if they do.

It's an almost unprecedented move at the end of a presidential campaign, even a winning one, because usually they are flat broke, having taken public financing and gone through every last penny.

But Obama skipped public financing and raised more than $600 million, including more than $150 million in September, and nearly $40 million in the first couple of weeks of October.

****Electoral votes

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home