I spent the entire two-day break parroting their every sentence.
Then, there were the headlines parroting a questionable figure that Sochi was the most expensive Olympics ever.
Most of the private media, controlled by a small elite, have refrained from criticising the government, while parroting its views.
On television, workers have been parroting that the best way they can show their indignation is to increase production.
For instance, rather than parroting the low figure for the proportion of applicants who are granted asylum at the first hurdle, ministers could publicise the far higher number who are eventually permitted to remain.
Both Xi Jinping, the party chief of Shanghai, and his counterpart from Liaoning Province, Li Keqiang, have been dutifully parroting Mr Hu's line.Perhaps with the top party job in mind, Mr Xi, 54, has gone to unusual lengths to make his agenda known.
To a degree, he and other officials are merely parroting longstanding Thai objections to the Karen refugees.
Its diplomats, for example, did eventually stop parroting their line about unwarranted interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign state and allow United Nations peacekeepers to be deployed in Sudan.The saga over Sudan shows how sensitive the Chinese authorities have become to criticism, despite their impassive reputation.
State-owned or -influenced media are up to their old tricks of fanning public fears, exposing supposed enemies and parroting leaks from shadowy intelligence sources.
If Mr Darling succeeded in challenging a swaggering populist where Mr Clegg failed, it was because he successfully pursued the question "so what?" Like Mr Farage, Scotland's first minister is prone to parroting bugbears as if they were conclusive arguments.
This time, however, the Red Sox won in large part by flouting conventional analytical wisdom rather than parroting it a lesson their rivals will be sure to note carefully now that the off-season, when players with expiring contracts can choose new employers, is underway.There may be no better example of the "winner's curse" than Major League Baseball's (MLB) free-agent market.
