If You Must Write Prose and Poems, The Words You Use Should Be Your Own
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Scott Baio night at the RNC had a fitting punchline:
The first night of the Republican National Convention ended dominated by one bizarre question: Was Melania Trump’s convention speech plagiarized from a Michelle Obama convention speech from 2008?
Trump delivered several lines on Monday night that sound almost identical to some from Obama’s 2008 convention address. Now, these are not banal lines that you might expect in any speech given by a political spouse. They’re lines of actual substance and style, which is why people are calling this plagiarism — not a coincidence.
Obviously, this isn’t the biggest deal in the world. Melania Trump is not a major figure in the GOP, and plagiarism doesn’t have the same connotation in political speeches that it does in academia or journalism. (Among other things at most it’s plagiarism once removed, because nobody expects candidates to write or research their speeches.) But it does seem obvious that a competent campaign wouldn’t have let this happen.