an illustration of plagiarism

We all know that when President George W. Bush gives a speech, he is reading/speaking someone else's words. The same with actors in films: we know that they didn't think up what their characters are saying, but are merely repeating what someone else has thought up and written down. The "value added" of an actor is their expression and the emotion, the subtlety, they add to the author's thoughts and words.

And if the actor is attractive, famous, beloved or just prominent, there's a certain synergy that takes place from the combination of one person's (or a committee's) words and another's visage, tone of voice, and reputation.

This is why filmmaking is rightly considered to be a collaborative art form.

Apparently, campaigning for or against ballot propositions has now taken its rightful place as a comparable collaborative art form.

In this case, extremely-well-known filmmaker-director-actor Mel Gibson has "spoken" the words of another person as his own, in an effort to add his reputation to another's well-hewn rhetoric in an effort to create a synergistic impression of thoughtful celebrity in the name of stopping California Proposition 71, the Stem Cell Initiative.

To hear a more concise analysis of Proposition 71 and what it portends, from Scott Gottlieb, M.D., a business analyst at the American Enterprise Institute, click here.

On November 1, 2004, California State Senator Tom McClintock appeared on California Politics Today to talk about why he opposes Proposition 71, the California Stem Cell Initiative. You can access this interview by clicking here: "California Politics Today #166: California State Senator Tom McClintock blasts Proposition 71 as 'perhaps the worst ballot measure that we've seen over the past decade'."

In that interview, Senator McClintock re-iterates, sometimes in the same words, points he makes against Proposition 71 in an online article appearing under his byline, called "Guaranteed to Cure What Ails You--Why California's Stem Cell Proposition is a Bad Idea,".

In that article, he writes, in pertinent part:

Guaranteed to Cure What Ails You 
Why California's Stem Cell Proposition is a Bad Idea
By Senator Tom McClintock
tom.mcclintock@sen.ca.gov

Its supporters assure us that our money will produce staggering breakthroughs in medical science. But if this were likely, private capital would be rushing in to finance it. And in this era of brazenly fraudulent state grants, who will be looking over the shoulders of these political appointees as they hand out $3 billion of our money?

Not the public. The commission’s deliberations are exempt from California’s Open Meetings Act whenever it discusses “matters involving confidential intellectual property” or “confidential scientific research or data.” Considering that its entire purpose is to make grants based upon research requests, everything on the agenda after the Pledge of Allegiance will be behind closed doors.

Not the press. The commission’s deliberations are also exempt from the California Public Records Act, under the same terms. Want to find out what your $3 billion has bought? Sorry, that’s confidential.

Not the law. The working groups that will score and recommend projects for funding are completely exempt from the state’s conflict of interest laws. Pharmaceutical lobbyists, for example, are free to serve on working groups that are recommending millions of dollars of gifts to their companies. Great work if you can find it.

To see how movie star Mel Gibson took California State Senator Tom McClintock's words and ran with them, go to "California Politics Today #170: Mel Gibson appropriates Tom McClintock's words, without mentioning that he has, but McClintock, through his spokesperson, says he doesn't mind, that it's way OK with him".