Remember why the good lord made your eyes
So the big question today is (not counting the one about will the US go down in flames in a few months or not) why did anyone think it was a good idea to fill out Melania Trump’s convention speech by plagiarizing Michelle Obama’s from 2008?
The disarray was evident as Mr. Trump’s campaign and senior Republicans offered conflicting explanations for the similarities in the speeches, with some officials conceding that the passages were lifted and demanding accountability, and others arguing that nothing untoward had occurred.
They aren’t similarities you know. They’re the same words.
Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman, pushed back aggressively against accusations of plagiarism and even tried to go on the offensive.
Describing it as “a great speech,” Mr. Manafort said at a morning convention briefing that “obviously Michelle Obama feels very similar sentiments toward her family.”
And that’s why she copied Melania Trump’s speech eight years in advance.
Deflecting questions about the passages themselves, Mr. Manafort instead attacked Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, for what he said was an effort to draw attention to the matter.
“This is once again an example of when a woman threatens Hillary Clinton, she seeks out to demean her and take her down,” Mr. Manafort said on CNN. “It’s not going to work against Melania Trump.”
Also, we lost the war because the Jews and the bankers stabbed us in the back!!
Here are the relevant passages:
Ms. Trump, Monday night:
From a young age, my parents impressed on me the values that you work hard for what you want in life, that your word is your bond and you do what you say and keep your promise, that you treat people with respect. They taught and showed me values and morals in their daily lives. That is a lesson that I continue to pass along to our son. And we need to pass those lessons on to the many generations to follow. Because we want our children in this nation to know that the only limit to your achievements is the strength of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.
Mrs. Obama, in her 2008 speech:
“Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you’re going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them, and even if you don’t agree with them. And Barack and I set out to build lives guided by these values, and pass them onto the next generation. Because we want our children — and all children in this nation — to know that the only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.”
There’s another thing about that – which is that “willingness to work for them” have rather different overtones coming from Melania Trump as opposed to Michelle Obama. Trump’s “achievements” are more the result of inheritance and cheating than they are of work. The Obamas? Not so much.
Seen on facebook: “We should cut Melania Trump some slack; she probably learned speech-writing at Trump University.”
Zing!
AFAIK, last night, when all the internet was abuzz about this, Hillary said not a word.
Over on one of the Patheos blogs someone has proposed an interesting explanation for the plagiarism, in a post titled “Why Trump’s Campaign Is Denying Melania Plagiarized: A Charitable Theory”.
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/barrierbreaker/why-trumps-campaign-may-be-denying-melania-plagiarized/
Basically he cites his experience working with college students from “other cultures” (he didn’t say whether any of them were from anywhere near Melania’s native Slovenia) who had been taught that the important parts of a presentation should be copied from a better writer. The students didn’t consider that “plagiarism” and were horrified to be accused of cheating.
So maybe Mrs. Trump really did write her own speech, and she used a successful speech from the past as her model. If that’s the case, my heart goes out to her — she put her best effort into her speech, and it turned into a major embarrassment (but needless to say, a competent campaign staff would have caught it — just another example of why I wish we could just have the cast and writers of The West Wing to run the country!).
On the other hand, in addition to borrowing liberally from the enemy, her speech also included a “Rick Roll”:
So I think a more likely explanation is that some as yet unknown staffer wrote the speech on his “last day at work”.
So, the campaign:
Commits plagiarism (by the speech writers, because seriously she memorised the speech, she didn’t write it).
Claims she did write it.
Claims it’s no big deal and just a bunch of similar common words.
Tries to deflect by saying Michelle feels the same way (which incidentally means she and Obama can’t be the bad people they are claimed to be).
Blames Hillary because… super evil powers?
On the ‘common’ words front, there was an article in our Australasian media this morning pointing out from a writers perspective how unimaginable that claim is. Specifically, the writer used a very anodyne seven word phrase to describe the idea, then pointed out that that phrase returned zero google hits on Monday and exactly one after publishing the article.
Some people just don’t even pretend to take stuff seriously and then wonder why no-one takes them seriously, or worse, seriously takes them to be liars.
@4, yeah if it was copied/plagiarised they should have just said “Yup, copied from MO by a staffer who contributed a few lines. They are now an ex-staffer.
That response I have incidentally copied from others… ;-)
And what an excellent job they did. Take up with a married narcissist, marry him, support his ignorant, racist, sexist, appallingly dishonest ass as he runs for President of the United States, a job he’s patently not qualified for, sit by while the white supremacists and neo Nazis applaud him and call you “Empress Melania”…and oh yeah, the plagiarism thing.
Good job, Melania’s parents.
Oh, and Ophelia — nice Tom Leher reference! [Only be sure always to call it please ‘research‘.]
That isn’t just a characteristic of “other cultures”. A lot of my students who are home-grown, locally taught, have simply grown up cutting and pasting off the internet. High school teachers tend to have large classes, and aren’t supported very well if they try to do anything about it, so it often goes uncommented on. Nearly every paper submitted in my classes is heavily copied from the internet; when it is called to their attention, the students put quote marks at the beginning and end of the paper, and re-submit.
When I have tried to do something about it, I am not given any support, either. Unless I can prove to 100% absolute positive certainty without any possible other explanation, and without the student denying it, that the student copied, then…crickets. Nothing can be done, because the student (or parents) might get unhappy. This is college. I had to pass a student a year ago who copied 100% off the Internet, I could show them word for word where she copied it, and they said, nope, can’t prove it. So why would we expect different of Melania?
Oh, gawd, that’s depressing.
Apparently the claim that she has a degree in “design and architecture” is a lie. She dropped out of university after her freshman year.
http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_578dd95ce4b0c53d5cfac0dc
Iknklast,,
Can you sort the sheep from the goats with those exam thingies, or are exams so 20th century?
There’s obviously a mole in the Trump campaign.
Exams, yes. Except for online exams, which have had obstacles thrown in my way in every direction. They want us to give frequent, small exams. But we can’t require proctors if there are frequent exams, because that is too onerous. We can’t require video monitoring if there are frequent exams, because that is too expensive. If I give less frequent exams covering more material, I get zinged on my student evaluation, which my bosses take as gospel, in spite of the fact that students engage in obvious hateful hyperbole and make it obvious that any lecture/exercise that requires them to be in class the entire scheduled class section is excessive.
So, I guess the short answer is, as much as I can, but there are limits. Mostly imposed by a new model of education that says the student must be happy so they keep giving us money because that is how our public schools operate anymore – on a business model, not an educational one.
“copied from a better writer”
But that would have to indicate some respect for a speech from someone who is 1) African American, 2) female, 3) representative of all that’s gone wrong with America over the past 8 years.
(I also love the Lehrer reference. It’s amazing how well so much of his stuff has held up, and I often wonder what he is up to these days. I do hope he’s a bright, curmudgeonly octogenarian.)
I grew up on Tom Lehrer – his songs were the background music of my childhood – along with Josh White, Errol Garner, and Django Reinhart.
Iknklast, @13
“on a business model, not an educational one”
All part of the commodification of Western societies. Here in Australia, international students are big money earners for universities, and critics claim that some ‘compromises’ have been made in order to keep the ‘trade’ flourishing. Some students come from notoriously corrupt countries and expect to get what they paid for, it’s rather like buying a car. When students whose English is poor present papers apparently written by native English speakers alarm bells ring, but apparently not loudly enough for the University admin. It’s probably all going to end in a monumental scandal one day.
When I first attended university in the 60s it was free apart from a union (amenities fee). Students either reached graduation standard or they failed. When I returned to university in the early 90s (before the net) to do a postgrad course there had been a change of culture as a result of secondary education reforms. Students thought that they could negotiate better grades from their lecturers, so naturally some teaching staff became somewhat elusive if they weren’t prepared to change the marks they had originally given the student’s work.
Thanks