Plagiarism in the Post?

I read The New Yorker often; I almost never read the National Post. Nevertheless, when I spied the Post's bit on left-winger/bon-vivant-turned-Iraq-War-proponent Christopher Hitchens, I took a gander and read the piece. After finishing, something seemed amiss — I was reminded, particularly by one line, of a Hitchens profile that The New Yorker ran the previous month.

Well, I've finally dragged that issue out of the great stacks of clutter that populate my room. I've compared it to the Post's piece, and I think I've found something.

Take a look at this sentence, written by Joseph Brean and run in "A day in the intellectual glare of Christopher Hitchens," The National Post, November 18, 2006:

In public speaking, which [Hitchens] does frequently and well, he has adopted the politician's trick of eliding the last words of one sentence into the first words of the next, which prevents both stuttering and interruption. Not that either seem much of a danger for him these days. Now, at public events like these, he does the interrupting . No one else would dare.

Now take a look at this line from a New Yorker piece on the same subject, by Ian Parker (October 16, 2006, p. 150):

[Hitchens] is a fine, funny orator, with the mock-heroic manner of an English barrister sure of his ground ("by all means," "if you will"), using derision, a grand diction, and looping subclauses that always carry him back to the main path. He also has the politician's trick of eliding the last word of one sentence to the first word of the next, while stressing both words, in order to close a gate against interruption.

Plagiarism, coincidence, or what?

EDIT: I've received a response from Joseph Brean, the author of the National Post piece. I'll be putting some of our correspondence up here in the forthcoming days.

Also, it occurs to me I haven't done any of my Christmas shopping yet.

I never cease to anticipate myself.