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(R) Trisha Calvarese
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(R) Donald Trump
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July 19, 2016 08:39 AM UTC
25 Comments
The entire Trump campaign is built on style, not substance…Paul Manafort is a prototypical, slimeball, political operator who is trying to sell a product that has offered nothing of value. As I have said before, the Republican Party (no, not exclusively) left the truth lying face down in a ditch long ago. This is entertainment, my friends. PT Barnum identified their target audience 135 years ago.
Aside from the schadenfreude I'm enjoying as the TRUMP™ camp rushes around to deny reality yet again, I really don't think it's that big of a deal. If she did cobble together the speech largely by herself (with some help from another speech she liked), I'm not particularly interested in punishing her for doing what normal people do every day– use other folks' words, which they feel but believe they can't adequately express themselves. She's not a politician, or a native English speaker, she's just someone's spouse trying to support them in the fiery heat of our political/media crucible.
Of course, what you say is correct. And Melania delivered a competent address. When you look at the pieces side by side, though, it is hard to deny that the second was not inspired by the first, and edited to create the second by changing a few words and sentences. Though Melania is very bright and speaks five languages, English is not, obviously, her first language and I daresay she hasn't written extensively in English. If she did, in fact, write it herself, she may not even have understood what plagiarism is….but someone should have read it and told her.
Yeah, I think it's undeniably plagiarism. My wife asked why someone hadn't read the speech and noticed the issue. I told her that it could easily have been some intern too young or inexperienced to ask about its origins or to recognize the Obama speech from eight years ago.
I definitely think someone let her down. The campaign should have written the speech with her and there should have been no problems. I would normally say that was the campaign's fault, and it well may be as we only have their word they didn't write the speech, but with the organization hardly existing and a candidate who thinks they're largely unnecessary anyway, it may have been her husband who failed to recognize the need to support her.
Now, when Bill's speech inevitably goes off the rails, it'll all be on him
I just don't think that the truth matters to the Trumps. At all. I commented yesterday that Melania's speech was very wooden and inauthentic, compared to other First Ladies' speeches.
Now we know why. She had copied the gist of it from a successful first lady. Like many other very beautiful women who grew up poor, she probably suffers from a basic insecurity about who she is without her "looks". She also knows that the Donald will probably trade her in for a younger, hotter wife when she starts to show her age, as he has done twice before. Hence, she plagiarized someone she probably covertly admires.
That's my .02 psychoanalysis. I feel sorry for Melania. She has been thrust into a spotlight she is not ready for. And, I doubt if all the riches and comforts of being Mrs. Donald Trump can make up for….well, being Mrs. Donald Trump.
It shouldn't have been some young intern for something this important. And political speech writers all say that everyone claims to have written most of their own speeches but in most cases it's written by pros and simply tinkered with a bit by the speech giver. They characterize these claims as polite fictions that everyone lets slide. A notable exception they mentioned is President Obama who has been the primary speech writer for some of his most notable speeches and is considered by the pros to be a great speech writer in his own right. It's highly unlikely that Melania really had more than the usual small amount of input into hers.
The fact that this is now a big story, along with the, granted, quickly put down resistance to Trump's candidacy is proof in and of itself that it was an unforced error. It was also noted that Melania's speech was devoid of any of the kind of personal anecdotes about her spouse that are usually included in this sort of speech to humanize the candidate. Nothing nefarious implied. Just a little odd and could very well be because she is a very private person.
It has also brought on scrutiny of other aspects of Melania's life such as her apparently false claim to a university degree. None of it so far is a huge deal but it all adds up to more days talking about things they don't want to talk about instead of things they do want to talk about. And since they claim nobody did anything wrong when somebody clearly did, the story is hanging around longer, taking up more oxygen.
And may I say…. boohoo.
Climb into your way-back machine, and I think you'll find some ancient document (from maybe a month ago) which reported that the scamanuals and course scamaterials from Drumpf University were actually copied (stolen) wholesale from someone's previous work.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/30/us/politics/donald-trump-institute-plagiarism.html
Donald Drumpf, the Art of the Steal
It was surprising to hear someone born behind the iron curtain recounting tales of her family extolling hard work and equality of those with whom we disagree politically, when their social position was based on being party aparatchiks.
Her father was a member of the Yugoslav Communist Party. Who would have expected that the Party of Richard M. Nixon, Roy Cohn, Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan would offer up the daughter of a Red as a potential First Lady?
Let's not bring her father into it, shall we? I see you're probably trying to demonstrate that she was unlikely to have been brought up with these bromides but it's pretty clear the only reason Team Trump is sticking with the ludicrous explanation that no plagiarism is involved (according to a site that specializes in detecting plagiarism 16 matched words together is a one in a trillion something chance of not being plagiarism and one of her matched segments was 23 words) is because that would mean admitting that Melania "misspoke" about writing the speech herself with only a little help. Following his usual pattern Trump is sticking with his usual …Who ya gonna believe, me or your lyin' eyes (and ears) …. approach. Melania's upbringing is beside the point.
I do think that Melania's upbringing may be a fair point . . .
. . . because apparently she was raised by Michelle Obama's parents? Small world, huh?
On tap and expected at tonight's episode of Drumpfapoolza – inspiring words and a message from his daughter, Sasha, and his son, Malia. Stay tuned.
Stay tuned? No thanks. The low lights on the after shows is plenty for me.
More plagiarism?
I give up.
<http://f.tqn.com/y/politicalhumor/1/S/j/h/6/melania-copying-michelle.jpg>
I'm sure the Obama speech writing team is annoyed, but don't forget about her more important plagiarization:
Tweet from a guy named Bob Fisher: Melania: "These accusations about my speech hurt not only me, but also hurt my children Sasha and Malia".
Question: Is it possible for me to overdose on popcorn?
Ha. Nobody has so far stated she is not a dumb bimbo blonde (whatever her real color is). I say she is not a dumb bimbo, she says she even has a degree from Hugoslavia. Others say she partied out as a freshwoman and does not really have a degree. Okay. So there is no evidence her CV is true. She is a drumpian and can stretch things a bit to cover something any carny barker would be proud of.
She did good quoting the First Lady. So much so that you would think she wants to be a First Lady too. Too bad about not being Trumps first. Oh, well.
Because there's no real quite like the surreal . . .
— Sky News Tonight (@SkyNewsTonight) July 19, 2016
OK. So not plagiarism. Just using somebody else's words that people have heard before. Which of course isn't plagiarism at all. Oh wait…. isn't that pretty much the definition of plagiaism?
Either way, why didn't she and her speech writer choose phrases Americans had heard before from some Republican former first lady instead of from one of the Satanic Obamas. Nancy Reagan, perhaps?
LOL. Well that is where it gets surreal.
If you click on the video interview link in that tweet (it's no long, just a minute) you'll see the mental jujitsu and schizophrenia that it takes to be a Trump spokesmodel, where everything is fabulous, and there’s never any wrongdoing, mistakes, or even missteps, and certainly never anything requiring apology or retraction, and where words have multiple meanings, or no meanings, or changeable meanings.
Apparently, the "logic" spewed here, during this interview, is somehow that Melania (who did not plagiarize) was speaking to the convention in her own words, in the familiar way "like Laura Bush, and like Elizabeth Dole" [by using Michelle Obama's speech]???
Twilight Sparkle did not approve!
RNC Communications Director Sean Spicer attempted to use a quote from the children's program "My Little Pony" to show that Melania Trump was only using "common words", not plagiarizing Michelle Obama's speech, in talking about "following one's dreams".
But the actor who voices Twilight Sparkle, the dreamy pony in question, wasn't having it:
Tara Strong, who voices Twilight Sparkle, also weighed in on the controversy: