Great Writers Steal

T.S. Eliot (allegedly) said, "Good writers borrow, great writers steal" or something to that affect. Keeping this in mind. . . I'm a great writer. I have stolen an idea from one of my favorite writers, Jay Nordlinger. The first lines posts that I've been writing for the past few months (which can be seen as a whole by clicking the link "First Lines" in this blog) was an idea that I lifted from Mr. Nordlinger. Many of the first lines I've posted have come from his article on the same subject.

Now, I plan on continuing the posts for a longer period of time, and hope one day to entice him to my site so that he can lift some for me for a follow on article (and thus become a "great" writer himself). I bring this up not to highlight my "greatness" as a writer, but rather to highlight Mr. Nordlinger.

Jay writes articles that he titles Impromptus for National Review magazine and National Review Online. In his articles, among other things, he enjoys talking about keen phrasings that have been used by politicians, interesting word choices, and the evolution of language. In this vein, I would love to see him discuss, and disambiguate the term that is being floated around political circles right now; Value Added Tax or VAT. Is there truly value added to a product do to the tax? How is that value transferred? Should it really be a CAT or Cost Added Tax?

I believe too that if Jay read this post that sentence in which I challenged him regarding the VAT would offer two or three bullet points; how do we float something political circles, and isn't the term disambiguate not only wonderfully fun to say but also extremely to the point? And finally, am I not even a greater writer now that I'm writing about words and language evolution as that is two things I've stolen from Jay?