Sunday, August 24, 2008

Correct usage of the Verb " To Biden"

I had a different topic all set to go, but once I found out about Obama's veep nomination, I had to jump on the Bash Biden Bandwagon.

I remember one of Biden's first run ins with plagiarism. It was during the 88 presidential campaign and Biden was an up and coming youngster who was all set to give George Bush Senior a run for his money. Before the Democratic field was narrowed a whole host of allegations came up about Biden's uh "failure to reference" key components of his speeches. It was soon afterward that investigative reporters discovered a trend of Biden "duplicating the work of others" as far back as his academic days. Over the next months before the key primaries, Biden's reputation was savaged enough so that he never made much of a splash in that campaign or any campaign since.

Well, I was just a young'n in High School during that 88 campaign and we were learning about sophisticated concepts in our English and History classes such as footnotes and references. I distinctly remember my US History professor telling us, before an important paper was due, to properly footnote and include all references because "You don't want to end up like Joe Biden".

It was precisely at that moment the verb to Biden was created. That verb quickly became a shorthand term my friends and I appropriated to refer to "repurposing each others work".
For Example
"Hey Bobby, did you do that math homework last night?"
"Nah man, I Bidened it off of Tommy. It saved me a ton of time."

But the verb can also be used as a participle as well
"How does Sheila get her work in so fast, she never studies at all?"
"Oh, she's been Bidening the answers from the guys down the hall".

The infinitive form of this verb also has a particularly catchy resonance to it
"Hey guys, I was out all night at the U2 concert so I'm going to have to Biden someone's book report on Catcher in the Rye."

Some verbs can also be used as nouns too:
"After seeing the papers had the same paragraph structure, same silly jokes and same sentences word for word, Professor Johnson realized he was looking at the worst case of Bidening he'd seen in years."

Honestly, we did do this and it caught on for at least two of my high school years. That's especially significant seeing as how most trends back then had a half life of two weeks.

Now Joe Biden is back in the spotlight and it's fitting that he end up with someone like Obama. This means the Democratic ticket now features the man with no significant record alongside the man with no significant authentic record.



What a Joke.



I'm so very happy that I'm voting for McCain.

1 comment:

Olivejenny said...

Afrolistic -

I'm so happy you're voting for John McCain, also. ;-)

This is a very entertaining article and you drive home an extremely important point which, no doubt, will be covered up and minimized by the Obama campaign and the media ... sheesh, which will only make everyone else emphasize it all the more!

Character matters!

And you must have gone to high school with a much more current-events-oriented crowd than I did! Lol, one of my biggest memories from HS is the day I locked my keys in the car, with my books and my purse inside ... with the lights on ... and the ENGINE running ... and my umbrella inside ... oh, yeah, and it was raining that day! :-D

But, kidding aside, yes I vividly remember being taught the seriousness of plagiarism! Interesting, as you point out, that Biden - the candidate with a record for using others' words without giving them the proper credit - is paired up with Obama - a man famous for making beautiful speeches about things others thought of before him.

We need a maverick. We need a leader. We need John McCain - someone known for standing up for what's right, no matter who gets the credit!

Thank you, Afrolistic!