One of the big stories to come out of the bizarre Republican Convention was Melania Trump being accused of plagiarizing Michelle Obama, of all people, in her speech on the first night of the convention. It just snowballed and got more bizarre. First an out of work Tampa journalist discovers the word for word lifting of phrases from Michelle Obama’s 2008 convention speech. Then the Trump campaign denies it. Then the two former George W. Bush speechwriters, who were asked to write a speech for Melania Trump, say their speech was completely changed, except for one phrase, and they were never consulted. Then finally, Meredith McIver, a former ballerina, who is a writer for the Trump organization, says she was responsible for the plagiarism. She claims Melania Trump had read Michelle Obama’s speech and liked it, and asked her to re-write the speech using some of the phrases. McIver says she never checked Obama’s speech herself. She admitted she made a terrible mistake, and offered to resign. Trump refused her resignation, saying everyone makes mistakes. This was a big one.
The Merriam-Webster online dictionary says to “plagiarize” means, “to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own, to use (another’s production) without crediting the source, to commit literary fraud, to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source.” If you are a writer or a composer, it cuts to the heart of your profession. It’s the stealing of the expression of ideas. It’s the theft of your creation. Any writer will tell you the process of producing original material is very personal, and demanding work. It can paralyze and exhaust some of the greatest of writers. I think that’s why so many of the great ones were self destructive alcoholics. Some may think, “What’s the big deal? It’s just some words.”
Words form ideas. The creation and expression of those ideas are part of the foundation of a free society. We have the right to express ourselves, and the right to protect our work. It’s especially interesting that this plagiarism was exposed in the middle of the most divisive political campaign in recent American history. There has been accusations from both sides about trustworthiness. Clinton accused of lying about the use of that private e-mail server. Trump being sued over ripping people off at Trump University. Both sides could produce a long list of what the other side supposedly did. I don’t blame Melania Trump for this. She was a victim of a careless, incompetent staff that didn’t exercise basic due diligence on the biggest night of her public life. If Trump can’t protect his own wife from being humiliated on national television because of basic carelessness, you have to wonder how he’s going to protect us from those “Mexicans” and “Muslims”.
Every four years Americans get to hear the ideas of political parties and their candidates on how they are going to make our lives better. We make judgments on what they say and how they express themselves. We have to feel confident they are being honest, and can express themselves on their own terms. Words are tools available to all of us to build our ideas. Writer Somerset Maugham said, “All the words I use in my stories can be found in the dictionary-it’s just a matter of arranging them into the right sentences.” That’s what we own. That arrangement of words. When words are stolen, all of society feels the loss.
Well stated. Plenty of new and progressive ideas out there to fix what needs to be fixed. Yet, not one sensible idea from Trump.
Melania should at least be responsible for saying she wrote it herself with “little help”.
She had to have known that there was no truth to her statement, before the speech. After the controversy, she was happy to let someone else take full responsibility.
If you speak the words, you are responsible for them.