Melania's Plagiarism

[Arkady]

As a couple people here have already noted, Melania Trump's speech was plagiarized in part from one Michelle Obama gave. That, on its own, isn't terribly interesting to me. Mrs. Trump is a drop-out whose professional experience involves standing there while other people take pictures of her, so I'm sure she's completely innocent of the misconduct. Not only was the speech written for her, but she strikes me as the kind of person who would almost certainly not ever have watched a political convention before this one, so she'd have been in no position to recognize those words. She just read the material she was handed, without second-guessing it, as a spokes-model is expected to do. And even if she'd willfully plagiarized the speech herself, the role of First Lady is minor enough that I wouldn't consider that ethical lapse to be a significant consideration in the election.

No, what interests me is how the media has come down on her for the plagiarism, while Cheney got a free pass for a section of his 2000 convention speech that similarly plagiarized Reagan's inaugural address. The evidence of plagiarism was at least as strong in that case, and the there was a much stronger case for holding Cheney responsible for it, since he'd been a major politician in 1980 and certainly should have recognized the text as having been lifted, even if a ghost writer actually did the lifting. Plus, Cheney was auditioning for a role that would put him a heartbeat away from being the most powerful man in the world, so his lack of ethics should have been seen as much more consequential (we came to understand later just how disastrous such a lack of ethics could be).

So, why the double standard? Why did the media not even mention Cheney's plagiarism, while it came down like a ton of bricks on Melania's? Is it just that the media is hostile to the Trump campaign, whereas they'd been charmed by Bush back in 2000? Or is Melania just an easier target? Or is it the cross-party nature of the plagiarism that matters? I expect that last item is the dominant factor. When Melania's speech takes from Michelle, it's seen as theft of the "other side's" property, whereas when Cheney takes from Reagan, he's seen as drawing from the common patrimony of the GOP, even if that particular Republican was already incompetent to give his consent by the time of the "borrowing." In that framework, Biden also got hammered for plagiarism, way back in the 1980s, because he wasn't drawing from his own community's well, but rather from across the pond.

 

[Lukey]

Yeah, that's really egregious behavior. How can one vote for someone who does something like that???

 

[Deleted member 21794]

Yes I too was shocked to find out that there are actually two people on the planet whose parents raised and instilled them with similar good values. Fortunately, I was sitting down when I read about this scandal on Politico this morning.

 

[Deleted member 21794]

Yeah, that's really egregious behavior. How can one vote for someone who does something like that???

I'm sure CNN must have given strong coverage to that. We all know how hard they come down on plagiarism. Oh wait a minute...

I found it ironic Arkady used CNN as his source.

 

[Craig]

As a couple people here have already noted, Melania Trump's speech was plagiarized in part from one Michelle Obama gave. That, on its own, isn't terribly interesting to me. Mrs. Trump is a drop-out whose professional experience involves standing there while other people take pictures of her, so I'm sure she's completely innocent of the misconduct. Not only was the speech written for her, but she strikes me as the kind of person who would almost certainly not ever have watched a political convention before this one, so she'd have been in no position to recognize those words. She just read the material she was handed, without second-guessing it, as a spokes-model is expected to do. And even if she'd willfully plagiarized the speech herself, the role of First Lady is minor enough that I wouldn't consider that ethical lapse to be a significant consideration in the election.

No, what interests me is how the media has come down on her for the plagiarism, while Cheney got a free pass for a section of his 2000 convention speech that similarly plagiarized Reagan's inaugural address. The evidence of plagiarism was at least as strong in that case, and the there was a much stronger case for holding Cheney responsible for it, since he'd been a major politician in 1980 and certainly should have recognized the text as having been lifted, even if a ghost writer actually did the lifting. Plus, Cheney was auditioning for a role that would put him a heartbeat away from being the most powerful man in the world, so his lack of ethics should have been seen as much more consequential (we came to understand later just how disastrous such a lack of ethics could be).

So, why the double standard? Why did the media not even mention Cheney's plagiarism, while it came down like a ton of bricks on Melania's? Is it just that the media is hostile to the Trump campaign, whereas they'd been charmed by Bush back in 2000? Or is Melania just an easier target? Or is it the cross-party nature of the plagiarism that matters? I expect that last item is the dominant factor. When Melania's speech takes from Michelle, it's seen as theft of the "other side's" property, whereas when Cheney takes from Reagan, he's seen as drawing from the common patrimony of the GOP, even if that particular Republican was already incompetent to give his consent by the time of the "borrowing." In that framework, Biden also got hammered for plagiarism, way back in the 1980s, because he wasn't drawing from his own community's well, but rather from across the pond.

It seems that plagiarism has now become a positive. Nothing to see here but a strong woman raised with proper values.

I'm certain that Michelle Obama was given the same respect by these right wingers for her talk about family and hard work.

 

[Barbella]

As a couple people here have already noted, Melania Trump's speech was plagiarized in part from one Michelle Obama gave. That, on its own, isn't terribly interesting to me. Mrs. Trump is a drop-out whose professional experience involves standing there while other people take pictures of her, so I'm sure she's completely innocent of the misconduct. Not only was the speech written for her, but she strikes me as the kind of person who would almost certainly not ever have watched a political convention before this one, so she'd have been in no position to recognize those words. She just read the material she was handed, without second-guessing it, as a spokes-model is expected to do. And even if she'd willfully plagiarized the speech herself, the role of First Lady is minor enough that I wouldn't consider that ethical lapse to be a significant consideration in the election.

No, what interests me is how the media has come down on her for the plagiarism, while Cheney got a free pass for a section of his 2000 convention speech that similarly plagiarized Reagan's inaugural address. The evidence of plagiarism was at least as strong in that case, and the there was a much stronger case for holding Cheney responsible for it, since he'd been a major politician in 1980 and certainly should have recognized the text as having been lifted, even if a ghost writer actually did the lifting. Plus, Cheney was auditioning for a role that would put him a heartbeat away from being the most powerful man in the world, so his lack of ethics should have been seen as much more consequential (we came to understand later just how disastrous such a lack of ethics could be).

So, why the double standard? Why did the media not even mention Cheney's plagiarism, while it came down like a ton of bricks on Melania's? Is it just that the media is hostile to the Trump campaign, whereas they'd been charmed by Bush back in 2000? Or is Melania just an easier target? Or is it the cross-party nature of the plagiarism that matters? I expect that last item is the dominant factor. When Melania's speech takes from Michelle, it's seen as theft of the "other side's" property, whereas when Cheney takes from Reagan, he's seen as drawing from the common patrimony of the GOP, even if that particular Republican was already incompetent to give his consent by the time of the "borrowing." In that framework, Biden also got hammered for plagiarism, way back in the 1980s, because he wasn't drawing from his own community's well, but rather from across the pond.

While yes, indeed, Melania's words strongly mirror Michelle's, the sentiments expressed are exactly what one would expect from a presidential candidate's wife.

In other words, it's no big deal... it's not like Michelle's speech was an original work of art that Melania tried to pass off as her own... LOL

We've got bigger problems.

 

[Deleted member 21794]

While yes, indeed, Melania's words strongly mirror Michelle's, the sentiments expressed are exactly what one would expect from a presidential candidate's wife.

In other words, it's no big deal... it's not like Michelle's speech was an original work of art that Melania tried to pass off as her own... LOL

We've got bigger problems.

No no no... I'm sure that prior to Michelle Obama, NO POTENTIAL FIRST LADY ever spoke of her parents raising her with values like hard work and respect.

Based on the tripe we're reading, Melania must have hit it out of the park.

 

[Barbella]

No no no... I'm sure that prior to Michelle Obama, NO POTENTIAL FIRST LADY ever spoke of her parents raising her with values like hard work and respect.

Based on the tripe we're reading, Melania must have hit it out of the park.

Based on the tripe we're reading, I KNOW America is fast becoming a laughing stock for the rest of the world...

 

[Boca]

Yeah, that's really egregious behavior. How can one vote for someone who does something like that???

It's getting harder and harder to shut these clowns up. Good job!

Now if you'd only figure out how to get vid to Wasserwoman - Schultz.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/video/dnc-chair-trump-campaign-has-to-answer-for-rnc-speech/vi-BBuvc0p

 

[Drumcollie]

Is Hillary accusing her Challenger again? Its 2008 all over...Ouch!

 

[Drumcollie]

Biden Admits Plagiarism in School But Says It Was Not 'Malevolent'
By E. J. DIONNE Jr., Special to the New York Times
Published: September 18, 1987
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/18/us/biden-admits-plagiarism-in-school-but-says-it-was-not-malevolent.html

But it ok to be President and V.P. when you are caught plagiarizing... just not First Lady huh?

 

[Drumcollie]

Clinton aide accuses Obama of plagiarism
By Mike Allen

02/18/08 12:03 PM EST

Howard Wolfson, the Clinton campaign's communications director, today accused Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) of committing “plagiarism” in a speech in Milwaukee on Saturday night.

Wolfson made the explosive charge in an interview with Politico after suggesting as much in a conference call with reporters.



Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2008/02/clinton-aide-accuses-obama-of-plagiarism-008570#ixzz4Erc0RYaI
Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook

Wait Hillary what...it's beginning to look like a pattern

 

[Drumcollie]

In 1967 Kearns went to Washington, D.C. as a White House Fellow during the Lyndon B. Johnson administration. Johnson initially expressed interest in hiring the young intern as his Oval Office assistant, but after an article by Kearns appeared in The New Republic laying out a scenario for Johnson's removal from office over his conduct of the war in Vietnam, she was instead assigned to the Department of Labor; Goodwin has written that she felt relieved to be able to remain in the internship program in any capacity at all


In 2002 The Weekly Standard determined that her book The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys used without attribution numerous phrases and sentences from three other books: Times to Remember, by Rose Kennedy; The Lost Prince, by Hank Searl; and Kathleen Kennedy: Her Life and Times, by Lynne McTaggart
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doris_Kearns_Goodwin

again lefty plagiarizes

 

[Drumcollie]

The Write Stuff?
Why Biden's plagiarism shouldn't be forgotten

the 1988 presidential race
Teachers and scholars consider the unattributed use of someone else's words and ideas to be a very serious offense, but the public doesn't seem to mind much, at least when it comes to politics. The incidents of plagiarism and fabrication that forced Joe Biden to quit the 1988 presidential race have drawn little comment since his selection as Barack Obama's vice presidential running mate—just as revelations of plagiarism by Stephen Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin scarcely hurt their book sales. In 1987, before Biden quit the race, he called the incidents "a tempest in a teapot." Although most reporters disagreed then, at least enough to pursue the story, they seem now—perhaps jaded by two decades of scandal-mongering—to have come around to Biden's view.

http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history_lesson/2008/08/the_write_stuff.html

Uh oh...lefty lost a Presidential election...but didn't disqualify him as veep..bet this issue isn't as important...wonder what Joe or Obama would have to say.

 

[Drumcollie]

As a couple people here have already noted, Melania Trump's speech was plagiarized in part from one Michelle Obama gave. That, on its own, isn't terribly interesting to me. Mrs. Trump is a drop-out whose professional experience involves standing there while other people take pictures of her, so I'm sure she's completely innocent of the misconduct. Not only was the speech written for her, but she strikes me as the kind of person who would almost certainly not ever have watched a political convention before this one, so she'd have been in no position to recognize those words. She just read the material she was handed, without second-guessing it, as a spokes-model is expected to do. And even if she'd willfully plagiarized the speech herself, the role of First Lady is minor enough that I wouldn't consider that ethical lapse to be a significant consideration in the election.

No, what interests me is how the media has come down on her for the plagiarism, while Cheney got a free pass for a section of his 2000 convention speech that similarly plagiarized Reagan's inaugural address. The evidence of plagiarism was at least as strong in that case, and the there was a much stronger case for holding Cheney responsible for it, since he'd been a major politician in 1980 and certainly should have recognized the text as having been lifted, even if a ghost writer actually did the lifting. Plus, Cheney was auditioning for a role that would put him a heartbeat away from being the most powerful man in the world, so his lack of ethics should have been seen as much more consequential (we came to understand later just how disastrous such a lack of ethics could be).

So, why the double standard? Why did the media not even mention Cheney's plagiarism, while it came down like a ton of bricks on Melania's? Is it just that the media is hostile to the Trump campaign, whereas they'd been charmed by Bush back in 2000? Or is Melania just an easier target? Or is it the cross-party nature of the plagiarism that matters? I expect that last item is the dominant factor. When Melania's speech takes from Michelle, it's seen as theft of the "other side's" property, whereas when Cheney takes from Reagan, he's seen as drawing from the common patrimony of the GOP, even if that particular Republican was already incompetent to give his consent by the time of the "borrowing." In that framework, Biden also got hammered for plagiarism, way back in the 1980s, because he wasn't drawing from his own community's well, but rather from across the pond.

why the double standard...this is just loser bankster rich white lady Hillary's M.O....she did it to Obama...I guess she figured like most Democrats that people of color can't speak for themselves.

 

[Drumcollie]

It seems that plagiarism has now become a positive. Nothing to see here but a strong woman raised with proper values.

I'm certain that Michelle Obama was given the same respect by these right wingers for her talk about family and hard work.

Wow you just aids lying was a positive...Hillary is champion!...btw what did you think of Hillary accusing Obama of plagiarism?

 

[Arkady]

While yes, indeed, Melania's words strongly mirror Michelle's, the sentiments expressed are exactly what one would expect from a presidential candidate's wife.

Nobody is faulting the sentiments or claiming that somehow Obama has a monopoly on expressing such sentiments. The scandal is regarding plagiarism -- the copying, without giving credit, of the way the sentiments were expressed, with only minor variations over the course of several sentences.

Think of it this way. If a speech were to mention that "in 1776 a new nation, inspired by the ideals of liberty and equality was founded," that's not plagiarism. If, however, someone says that "twelve-score years ago our fathers set forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal," that's different. The way that second sentence is set up makes it inconceivable a person could have drafted it without consciously borrowing from the Gettysburg Address. In that particular case, the words are so famous that you could claim it was an homage rather than plagiarism, but you'd look like a great fool if you instead pretended it was a mere coincidence, and that the similarity was due only to the two sentences having referred to the same overall ideas. Likewise, anyone who pretends that the Trump speech wasn't consciously borrowing from the Obama speech looks like a great fool, because there's no way that pack of sentences would otherwise be that close.

The Trump campaign and Trump supporters are really making themselves look dumb and dishonest here, for no reason. They don't need to deny the obvious fact it's plagiarism. All they need to do is say it was a matter of a lazy and unethical professional speechwriter handing Melania pilfered goods. Nobody would expect Melania to be conversant enough in modern politics, nor to have a good enough memory, to have spotted the theft. And so nobody could really blame her, much less the actual candidate. The story would be DOA, since it would just be a matter of professional misconduct by some obscure figure we've never heard of, and nobody is going to care about that. But by lying about it, they turn it into a real story. Now people are given the ability to write about the fundamental dishonesty of the Trump campaign, and also the ability to speculate about why they're sheltering the speech writer (for example, maybe Donald Trump --an infamous liar who famously role-played the part of a pair of his own publicists-- was the one who stole that material, so there's nobody to throw under the bus for it).

 

[Drumcollie]

Nobody is faulting the sentiments or claiming that somehow Obama has a monopoly on expressing such sentiments. The scandal is regarding plagiarism -- the copying, without giving credit, of the way the way the sentiments were expressed, with only minor variations over the course of several sentences.

Think of it this way. If a speech were to mention that "in 1776 a new nation, inspired by the ideals of liberty and equality was founded," that's not plagiarism. If, however, someone says that "twelve-score years ago our fathers set forth on this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal," that's different. The way that second sentence is set up makes it inconceivable a person could have drafted it without consciously borrowing from the Gettysburg Address. In that particular case, the words are so famous that you could claim it was an homage rather than plagiarism, but you'd look like a great fool if you instead pretended it was a mere coincidence, and that the similarity was due only to the two sentences having referred to the same overall ideas. Likewise, anyone who pretends that the Trump speech wasn't consciously borrowing from the Obama speech looks like a great fool, because there's no way that pack of sentences would otherwise be that close.

The Trump campaign and Trump supporters are really making themselves look dumb and dishonest here, for no reason. They don't need to deny the obvious fact it's plagiarism. All they need to do is say it was a matter of a lazy and unethical professional speechwriter handing Melania pilfered goods. Nobody would expect Melania to be conversant enough in modern politics, nor to have a good enough memory, to have spotted the theft. And so nobody could really blame her, much less the actual candidate. The story would be DOA, since it would just be a matter of professional misconduct by some obscure figure we've never heard of, and nobody is going to care about that. But by lying about it, they turn it into a real story. Now people are given the ability to write about the fundamental dishonesty of the Trump campaign, and also the ability to speculate about why they're sheltering the speech writer (for example, maybe Donald Trump --an infamous liar who famously role-played the part of a pair of his own publicists-- was the one who stole that material, so there's nobody to throw under the bus for it).

Lifting whole passages from someone else's speeches is not change you can believe in it's change you can Xerox."

HRC

Apparently Hillary has a history of accusing opponents just before she loses.

 

[Arkady]

No no no... I'm sure that prior to Michelle Obama, NO POTENTIAL FIRST LADY ever spoke of her parents raising her with values like hard work and respect.

You're not grappling with the issue here. Nobody is taking issue with Melania echoing the overall themes of Michelle. It was a wholesale pilfering of a significant tract of text, with wildly improbable verbatim repetitions of multiple phrases, constructed in the same order. It was a very clear case of plagiarism. The smart thing for the Trump campaign to have done is just to blame the speechwriter and move on. Nobody would fault Melania for using a professional speechwriter, and nobody would insist that somehow she should have spotted that bit of plagiarism. So, there'd be no fault on the part of Melania or the candidate -- they'd just be victims of bad behavior by a lazy campaign functionary. Instead, Trump has put himself in the absurd position of denying the obvious fact it was plagiarism, and thus putting his apologists in a position of looking absurd, as well, as they echo his clearly dishonest denials.

 

[Arkady]

Based on the tripe we're reading, I KNOW America is fast becoming a laughing stock for the rest of the world...

Yes, as someone who works a great deal with people in other countries, I can confirm that ever since Trump became the Republican front-runner, the US has been an incessant butt of jokes for the rest of the world.