Melania Trump plagiarized speech. Big deal?

shoshanim999

Tue, Jul 19 2016, 8:43 am

So I wake up this morning and I read about the "scandal" that occurred last night as it appears that Melania Trump plagiarized part of her speech from Michelle Obama's 2008 convention speech. Certainly not a good idea and it will give Trump's opponents ammunition to mock him, but what's the big deal? If a student plagiarizes a college paper the reason it's wrong is because he/she is presenting it as her own thoughts and ideas that are actually someone else's. Let's be honest, Every single high level politician has a speech writer who writes every single word of a prepared speech such as the convention speeches. In a few days when Donald Trump stands before the audience and millions more watching on TV and tells the country what he believes in and where he stands on important issues, that's not plagiarized? Are those really his own words? Of course not. Every word was written and scrutinized by a highly skilled team of writers. Same goes for Hillary when it's her turn to speak. Every word out of her mouth is someone else's thought or idea. I agree that it wasn't very smart for Mrs. Trump to copy part of an old convention speech, but at the end of the day every speech in a way is plagiarized because the person articulating the speech is presenting it as his own when it was surely written and prepared by others. Am I missing something?

singleagain

Tue, Jul 19 2016, 9:43 am

I haven't been up on politics lately, but hire can you say there is no difference between a speech writer and someone who simply repeats a speech already said?

Yes, almost every public figure had a team of writers, combining words in order to deliver the message they want to share.

Think of a speech writer as a book editor, you can always look at who the editor is, but it's the author who gets recognition.

But to completely plagerize an entire speech, especially in this day of instant replay and YouTube... is that the kind of leadership we want?

It's not okay for anyone to claim another's idea as their own. Doesn't mean ppl won't do it, but that doesn't make it right

tigerwife

Tue, Jul 19 2016, 9:53 am

Jeanette wrote:

If the speechwriter writes the speech it's still an original work presented by the candidate. forget the morality and ethics of it, what they did is just plain dumb. Did they think nobody would catch on? And Michelle Obama of all people. They couldn't find a Nancy Reagan speech to rip off?

This. I for one have no memory of Michelle's speech, but it was definitely recent enough for anyone to compare, and a running candidate should expect comparisons on every action. I doubt Mrs. Trump came up with the idea herself, but it's strange that her team would do such a dumb move.

wiki

Tue, Jul 19 2016, 9:57 am

The idea of the first lady's speech is to humanize the candidate and to offer insight into what makes the members of the candidate's family individuals. For Melania, it was a great opportunity for her to sound patriotic, steeped in values, to make her life story an American one, and to make her sound deeper than just a pretty face.

Using Michelle Obama's words to do this (and have you seen the videos? It's around one long paragraph, nearly verbatim, about the values she was raised with) cheapens her attempt to do any of this.

Not a huge deal, but definitely a deal. It's morally worse than using a speechwriter, YES.

wiki

Tue, Jul 19 2016, 10:00 am

Also, one could argue that there is a difference between cribbing words from others about political vision (which many people can all share), and cribbing words from others about the most important take-aways from your upbringing that make you a good person.

If you have to use someone else's words to describe what made your upbringing valuable, then your words lose nearly all of their value.

Last edited by wiki on Tue, Jul 19 2016, 10:02 am; edited 1 time in total

PinkFridge

Tue, Jul 19 2016, 10:02 am

It wasn't the entire speech, was it? Just a paragraph or so, at least that's what's being played endlessly on the radio.
I cannot imagine that this will be the tipping point for someone to not vote for Trump. Still, it was stupid. Some speechwriter's head will roll.
I was wondering how long it would take for someone to parse other speeches, like maybe even Michelle's, going to back as far as Bess Truman. I already heard someone - not on Salem (RW) radio - who had a few snips from Obama's speeches, with one clause lifted straight from John Edwards, another from Duval Patrick. (One of them actually added a few words so that the meaning was different, but the word combination compelling.)

I'm not bent out of shape over that. I remember working on the yearbook and mining old yearbooks for good adjectives, adverbs, and more for the write-ups. Of course, using "effervescent" after I got the idea from an old yearbook isn't anything like what Mrs. Trump said, but I can't imagine this as being THE BIG SCANDAL THAT WILL BRING TRUMP DOWN.

Oh, and I did hear a RW host dredge up an interview he did with Trump last year in which Trump was asked about going head to head with a Democrat nominee. When Biden came up Trump said something about his plagiarism. Yeah, that's gonna come back to haunt him.

Honestly, if this is what brings Trump down, after the McCain line, his bullying his fellow debaters, banning Muslims and so so much more, I am even more worried for society as we know it than I've ever been before.

Fox

Tue, Jul 19 2016, 10:02 am

Having read the so-called plagiarized sections, I would be more inclined to call them "cliches" or more charitably, "worn-out tropes." In fact, if I didn't know better, I'd claim that both women's speeches were plagiarized from an Imamother thread on support and entitlement among newly-married frum couples.

Political speechwriting is the most boring, derivative application of rhetoric, and it reaches its apogee at political conventions, where the goal is to talk for five days straight without saying anything.

The whole thing reminds me of the old George Carline routine:

Quote:

"Tell us...in your own words." Do you have your own words? Personally, I'm using the ones everybody else has been using. Next time they tell you to say something in your own words, say, "Nigflot blorny quando floon."

wiki

Tue, Jul 19 2016, 10:08 am

Scandal that will bring Trump down? I seriously doubt it. It's not that big of a deal.

But as a high school teacher, I can assure that an essay with this many identical phrases in a row, making up nearly a whole paragraph, would earn a 0, along with an "I'm sure you've learned your lesson now. Let's move on and you'll do better next time!" (Speaking from the experience of having done this to similar work.)

This was a lot more plagiarized than a few cliche phrases which a lot of people use. It was MANY specific phrases, used in the same sequence all in a row. It was not some form of original work inspired by another work--it was work taken from someone else and presented as one's own.

Last edited by wiki on Tue, Jul 19 2016, 10:10 am; edited 1 time in total

PinkFridge

Tue, Jul 19 2016, 10:08 am

Fox wrote:

Quote:

Huh, sounds like this Carline fellow's channeling George Carlin.
Wink

marina

Tue, Jul 19 2016, 10:21 am

This was really the first time she addressed the entire party, the entire nation. She's been pretty silent for the entire campaign. So yes it is pretty ridiculous that in her debut and in her discussion of her family's particular values she copies almost word for word Michelle's speech - the wife of the guy who allegedly destroyed the entire country.

If you're going to talk about your family values, there are many other things she could have said. Although perhaps honesty is not one of them Smile

And it is not going to lose Trump any votes nor should it. It's just funny and ridiculous. Like the entire RNC circus last night

amother

Ginger

Tue, Jul 19 2016, 11:17 am

This whole thing is a tempest in a teapot and there are way more important issues to talk about. It was silly, it was dumb, but hardly a scandal. However, your comparison to plagiarism and speech writing is false. When a student plagiarizes a paper, they are not doing the assignment that was asked of them. Stakes are low in high school, in college it could mean obtaining credit or a even a degree fraudulently, as they did not really do what was expected to have been done.
Speech writing is not "taking someone else's words" to use as your own. You are paying someone to write up your ideas. Politicians are generally bright enough and decent enough writers, but they've got a lot of other things to deal with, and so usually employ speech writers (and BTW, a lot of judges don't write their own decisions, their clerks do; Antonin Scalia was well known for being one of the few who did his own writing). They don't have an ethical duty to write their own speeches, they have a duty to represent their constituents (whatever that may mean). I know George W. Bush's presidential speech writer. He explained to me how it works. He didn't just write stuff for the president to read off the teleprompter. The president is still generally involved, giving him the ideas and telling him the mood or tone he wants. He also had to write in a way to reflect his persona. That simple folksy vibe (that some liberal elites liked to call dumb) that Bush gave off? That was intentional. He wanted meant to sound like that and his writers made it happen. So really, Melania should fire her speech writer, who did a cr*ppy job by ripping off another speech rather than tailoring something to her.

shoshanim999

Tue, Jul 19 2016, 11:36 am

amother wrote:

[u]

I suspect your giving politicians way to much credit. I guess as the leader of the party they have the final say, but I highly doubt someone with no political/speaking experience like Melonia Trump had any input as to the content of her speech. I would imagine it was written for her start to finish, every word in the way my dh wrote my 12 year old bas mitvah speech.

fmt4

Tue, Jul 19 2016, 11:58 am

shoshanim999 wrote:

Well I guess she's a liar then cuz she said she wrote it.

http://www.latimes.com/nation/......html