Intersecting hypocrisies
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Tuesday's political news was dominated by the discovery that Melania Trump's Monday-night convention speech copied a couple of paragraphs from Michelle Obama's 2008 convention speech (see here, here, here, here, and here for some background and discussion — Update: the latest explanation is here.).
And today, we learn that Donald Trump Jr.'s Tuesday-night speech borrowed some phrases from a 2015 article in The American Conservative. But there's a wrinkle: it turns out that Trump Jr.'s speech was written by Frank Buckley, the same guy who wrote the earlier article.
I'll leave the issues of political ethics, public relations, and campaign management to the experts in those areas, except to note that such stories seem to be a distraction at best from the speakers' goals, and that there are good plagiarism-detection programs out there that can be used to detect potential problems and prevent such issues from arising.
Instead I want to focus on two pervasive hypocrisies infecting the whole discussion.
First, there's the pretense that public figures write their own articles, books, and speeches. Everyone with half a brain knows that this is almost always false; but almost everyone involved still maintains the laughable fiction that it's generally true.
And second, there's the idea that the term "plagiarism" covers not just borrowing someone else's words, but also recycling your own. Again, most people whose responsibilities include turning out text find it convenient to re-use bits and pieces of their earlier work from time to time; but in some contexts "self-plagiarism" is treated as a very serious offense, while in other contexts it's considered normal.
Put these two odd cultural tangles together, and you get knotty quasi-naughties like speechwriter Frank Buckley's role in the recycled bits of Trump Jr.'s speech, or speechwriter David Axelrod's role in the bits of Obama's speeches that were recycled from earlier speeches given by Duval Patrick.
But again, I'll leave it to the journalists, anthropologists and philosophers to untangle the ethical and practical skeins of responsibility and blame in these political "authorship" issues. I'll just recycle some of my own previous writing:
It's long past time for our society to have an honest conversation about honesty, honor, and authorship. We give students a clean, hard, harsh definition of plagiarism, according to which it's obvious that every politician and senior executive in the country is a plagiarist. Students, not being stupid, see this implicit contradiction — and therefore file anti-plagiarism strictures under the category of "irrational adult rules that I need to be careful not to be caught breaking, even though they have no moral or practical basis".
At least in the case of the equally-hypocritical rules about under-age drinking, we no longer pretend that alcohol is forbidden for everyone: it's just forbidden for most college students.
I agree that students should not be allowed to cut-and-paste their essays and research papers. And much more seriously, students should also be forbidden to hire others, or to have their parents hire others, to do their assignments for them. But rules of this kind make no sense in the absence of a discussion about why political speechwriters are nevertheless OK — or where the boundaries should be for columnists, historians, novelists, and so forth.
Victor Mair said,
July 20, 2016 @ 8:08 am
This NYT article details how Melania Trump's speech departed radically from the draft presented to her last month by speechwriters Matthew Scully and John McConnell: Maggie Haberman and Michael Barbaro, "How Melania Trump’s Speech Veered Off Course and Caused an Uproar",(7/19/16)
[(myl) See the links in the first paragraph original post, which include that story.]
S Frankel said,
July 20, 2016 @ 8:15 am
At lot of the coverage I've seen of Trump, Jr's speech refers to "recycling," by the speechwriter of his previous material, which seem fair. I wonder if the term "plagarism" would even be thought of at all if that pump hadn't been primed by his stepmom the night before.
[(myl) But in some academic and scholarly contexts, "self-plagiarism" is a serious offense. Papers are sometimes rejected for publication for "self-plagiarism"; and I know a student who was put on academic probation and almost failed to graduate for this offense (in a case that involved recycling of a few paragraphs, not re-use of an entire document).]
Narmitaj said,
July 20, 2016 @ 8:31 am
Educational assignments are made to discern what individual students know and understand about the subject in hand, and as such are helpful to the institution and the student in purely educational terms, and so plagiarism is pointless and wrong. (In the wider scheme of things, of course, cheating & plagiarising might in practice lift a student above a certain threshold and thus be useful career-wise and eventually financially, as with athletes and doping).
Politicians in government and opposition are not individuals in the same way, they are decision-makers and figureheads in a large project. Original creative writing and argument-making as an individual is not being examined in political speeches; that the politician is in command of some coherent policy programme put together with allies, civil servants, party-members, speech-writing employees and so on is being examined.
However, individuals (and their spouses) making a specifically personal pitch as to why that individual has the personal character and background to become a decision-making politician in charge of a big government project should probably err on the side of not plagiarising someone else's life and thoughts.
[(myl) These are obvious and relevant points, which nevertheless you will not find discussed in typical University plagiarism policy documents.
Speaking for myself, I don't have any difficulties with speechwriters working for public figures, though I'd like to see a more honest and open recognition of that situation. I'm less clear on the ethics of ghostwritten books and essays being presented as the work of a public figure who played little or no role in the writing.]
bks said,
July 20, 2016 @ 8:41 am
The reaction to the Melania speech is not about plagiarism, per se. It's about who was plagiarized. If Melania had aped Barbara Bush, there would have been no outcry. But you can't spend the evening vilifying the Obamas and then claim Mrs. Obama's words as your own.
[(myl) That's certainly part of it. But look at the reaction to Joe Biden borrowing from Neil Kinnock for evidence that coherence of viewpoints is generally not enough of an excuse.]
Tobias said,
July 20, 2016 @ 9:09 am
In public relations one of the rules is that you need to repeat your message until you are absolutely sick of hearing it. Only then has the audience noticed a little bit, so you continue repeating yourself (with some variation).
So the concept of self-plagiarism doesn't really make sense when repetition is part of the game. A good politician delivers her stump speech with the same vigor at every occasion.
As for recycling by speechwriters, I don't see a problem if you stick to recycling your own material and make your client aware of it.
Jonathan said,
July 20, 2016 @ 9:18 am
@bks: I heard Melania's speech live. I remarked to my wife that I was expecting something much more interesting; that this sounded like the sort of anodyne stuff we expect from this sort of occasion, not the sort of surprises we've come to expect from this remarkable campaign. And sure enough it was.. from another anodyne speech. I think you *can* demonize the Obamas all you want and then use lines from their speeches. Why not? I am reminded of Mary McCarthy's quip about Lillian Hellman: "Everything she writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the.'" Surely there's plenty of room for both sides to agree that words are bonds, is there not?
Ari Corcoran said,
July 20, 2016 @ 9:51 am
As a former, and perhaps future, speechwriter for politicians and others, the notion of self plagiarism being a sin, makes little sense. Consistency—or perhaps evolutionary change over time—makes sense.
There’s a limit, as a speech writer, to which you are encouraged, able, or allowed, to introduce totally new ways of seeing, in Berger’s words, let lone speaking. And if you come up with a mot juste, why not repeat it? Even if it is self plagiarism? And by the time you get to write the speech for the third year in a row for the opening of the “Orchid Spectacular”, it is difficult not to repeat some lines, at least.
I once had to write five speeches for five events across five days welcoming a visiting international sports side. The audiences for each were sufficiently the same to have to come up with a different 1400 words each time; to come up with different jokes and expressions of praise. Along with the crap finger food at each event, it was an exhausting, and thankless task.
Nevertheless, it can be fun: and part of that can be re-quoting, whether that of the speech deliverer, or parts of a speech, re-quoted, that you wrote for someone else many years previously. Or inserting your own jokes and perspectives. Or snatching quotes from the Bible and Trotsky in a single sentence (under torture I will never reveal who I did that for).
We’re not part of the academic system where “originality” is sacrosanct. FFS. Speechwriting is essentially a creative process, even though it can extend to the drear and banal.
As for myl’s “Speaking for myself, I don't have any difficulties with speechwriters working for public figures, though I'd like to see a more honest and open recognition of that situation.” Unless you are a famous speechwriter, it’s not going to happen. One of the rules of the game is that the speechwriter is anonymous, even though it is generally accepted that someone else has scripted a large part of a particular delivery.
Nevertheless, the speechwriter for Trumps’ missus that ripped of Obama’s missus should be taken out to a back paddock and given a lead injection. For stupidity.
J.W. Brewer said,
July 20, 2016 @ 10:03 am
One of the more unusual lawsuits in the history of rock music involved essentially a self-plagiarism claim. When John Fogerty had his big career comeback in 1985, part of the backstory was that he'd been out of the business for a long time largely because of protracted and bitter disputes with his former label Fantasy Records, which owned the back catalog of the very successful (both commercially and critically) work he'd done with Creedence Clearwater Revival. When he put out his comeback album on a different label, Fantasy promptly sued him on the grounds that one of his "new" songs ("The Old Man Down the Road") was so strikingly similar to one of his old songs as to which Fantasy controlled the rights ("Run Through the Jungle," from 1970) as to infringe the copyright on the latter song. Fogerty ultimately won (and it went up to the Supreme Court because of an issue as to when successful defendants in copyright litigation should be able to get their attorneys fees reimbursed by the unsuccessful plaintiff), but many people found the lawsuit bizarre because they thought it perfectly reasonable for songwriters/performers to recycle their own earlier work in a way that would be more dubious if done by someone else.
The distinction here, of course, was that the writer did not own or control his own earlier work and thus couldn't (from a copyright-law standpoint) just "give himself permission" to borrow from his own earlier work to an extent that might have been prohibited if unauthorized. But one can imagine a situation in which the conventions of the ghostwriting trade are such that speechwriter A cannot recycle material he wrote to be said out of the mouth of politician B in a speech subsequently drafted to be said out of the mouth of politician C without B's permission. That would involve A's obligation to former client B (as to which of them controlled the future use of the work B had paid A to do), rather than (directly) any independent obligation by C not to recycle the words that had come out of B's mouth but that everyone knew B had not actually composed. Or it could involve a separate obligation by A to his new client C not to create a risk of embarrassment for C by doing recycling w/o C's prior knowledge/authorization.
James said,
July 20, 2016 @ 10:08 am
Very interesting, Mark — and thank you for the insider's perspective, Ari Corcoran.
It seems clear to me (I'm an ethics professor and also an editor of a journal that has recently formulated an explicit policy about this) that 'self-plagiarism' is a different kind of wrong, when it is wrong, from the more familiar sort of plagiarism. Plagiarism is a kind of intellectual theft, and there is no wrong of stealing from oneself.
In academic contexts, such as scholarly journals, there is something wrong with passing off recycled ideas of one's own as new. But we have an excellent way of dealing with the problem of needing to re-use a smallish old thought in a new paper or book: we cite. So there is no real problem for someone who is conscientious and thorough.
Since political speeches don't have footnotes, it's clear that the standards for 'self-plagiarism' have to be more permissive.
I'm looking forward to reading more comments about this topic.
Ari Corcoran said,
July 20, 2016 @ 10:17 am
Curiously, in the written versions of some of the speeches I have written, footnotes have been supplied! [I was brought up on Prescott's Conquest of Peru, where the footnotes outnumber the prime text!]
The real issue is indeed citation: you say where particular ideas or words have come from if there is direct quotation happening (e.g. "as Winston Churchill once said"). Citation is the key, which is where the benighted soul who wrote the Trump speech has got into trouble! Imagine if she/he had provided the citation!
Steve Rafferty said,
July 20, 2016 @ 10:21 am
Apropos 'recycled' words: There's a joke in academia that a professor bragged "I published four papers last year; and both of them were pretty good."
[(myl)
In fairness to Lobachevsky, I need to note Tom Lehrer's assertion that the name was chosen "solely for prosodic reasons".]
GeorgeW said,
July 20, 2016 @ 10:22 am
Someone commented that it wasn't just that Melania used Michelle's words, but she appropriated her childhood memories.
Joe said,
July 20, 2016 @ 11:00 am
@Ari Corcoran: "Nevertheless, the speechwriter for Trumps’ missus that ripped of Obama’s missus should be taken out to a back paddock and given a lead injection. For stupidity."
Maybe it's my tinfoil hat – but is there a possibility that this was an act of political sabotage by a speechwriter?
Bloix said,
July 20, 2016 @ 11:01 am
This. Melania was introducing herself to the public and the authenticity of her statements was essential. Instead of her authentic personal experiences and beliefs, she delivered – Michelle Onama's authentic personal experiences and beliefs. Regardless of whether this is the same as academic plagiarism, it is evidence that like her husband she's a fraud and a grifter.
J.W. Brewer said,
July 20, 2016 @ 11:23 am
In a helpful reminder that there's no public controversy that uninvolved third parties can't turn to their own commercial advantage, a neighbor has just advised me via a picture on social media that a tapas place in Manhattan is today touting (via the daily-specials chalkboard stuck out on the sidewalk to lure in passers-by) "Sangria so good you'll want to plagiarize it."
Jason Merchant said,
July 20, 2016 @ 12:36 pm
This whole discussion recalled to me the fun little book on plagiarism that Dick Posner wrote a few years ago, The Little Book of Plagiarism, where he nevertheless doesn't talk about work-for-hire, in particular the usual (but peculiar to those of us outside the law) practice of judges having their opinions written (/drafted) by clerks who are never named. Unlike anonymous government reports, etc., the opinions of the court have the judge's name as author. And yet there's no doubt that clerks prepared substantial parts of it; they go nameless (not even a "research assistant" acknowledgment footnote anywhere).
[(myl) Yes, the practice of having law clerks draft large parts of opinions nominally authored by judges is another sub-tangle of the bizarre web of practices related to "authorship" in our society, and another reason that it's hard for an intelligent undergraduate to accept that there are actually any general moral principles at issue in this whole area.]
Bruce said,
July 20, 2016 @ 12:40 pm
I suspect Michelle Obama doesn't mind re-use of her words but would prefer attribution — especially at a political convention that is supposed to show how different the two ladies are.
carl said,
July 20, 2016 @ 1:14 pm
it's Deval, not Duval
John Baker said,
July 20, 2016 @ 1:16 pm
Most of these different sets of rules make sense in context. The problem is that we use the same term, plagiarism, to refer to what are really entirely different practices.
J.W. Brewer said,
July 20, 2016 @ 1:44 pm
Before I was an actual law clerk for a federal judge myself (after graduating from law school) I was a summer intern for a different federal judge, in which capacity I had no significant input into drafting much of anything. But that was a judge who had a bunch of verbal/stylistic tics in how liked to write. So one of the skills his clerks tended to develop was learning how to write in "his voice" by e.g. putting enough of those distinctive features into their own first drafts that the judge would feel the need to do less editing to make it "sound like himself." So if your drafts got less heavily edited by the judge as your clerkship went on it meant you'd figured out how to write in his voice, which was a good thing.
But the practice w/ judges is ubiquitous throughout the legal profession where no one assumes that the lawyer who signs a brief or letter was necessarily the principal drafter, any more than one assumes a corporate CEO who signs a required filing with the federal government actually wrote the thing. The signature is, one might say, an acceptance of ultimate responsibility for the document's substantive content, not a claim of credit for the wording. But typically the person who signs is senior in the profession's hierarchy than the person who drafts, and if you're a law student doing work for a class there isn't *supposed* to be anyone in the hierarchy below you for you to delegate such tasks to.
richardelguru said,
July 20, 2016 @ 2:27 pm
I'm sure you've seen the latest totally believable explanation of how it happened:
'The Trump staffer said Mrs Trump had read out passages from Mrs Obama's convention speech in a phone conversation as they discussed people who inspired her.
"A person she has always liked is Michelle Obama," she wrote.
Image copyright AFP
Image caption Republicans have rallied to support Mrs Trump
Ms McIver later included the phrases in a draft of the speech without checking Mrs Obama's speeches, she added.'
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-36850215
Victor Mair said,
July 20, 2016 @ 2:44 pm
richardelguru beat me to it.
"Melania Trump staffer takes blame for plagiarized speech", AOL (7/20/16):
…The staffer, Meredith McIver, said she and the candidate's wife discussed "many people who inspired her," which included the current first lady.
"Over the phone, she read me some passages from Mrs. Obama's speech as examples," McIver wrote. "I wrote them down and later included some of the phrasing in the draft that ultimately became the final speech. I did not check Mrs. Obama's speeches. This was my mistake, and I feel terrible for the chaos I have caused Melania and the Trumps, as well as to Mrs. Obama."
McIver went on to say she offered her resignation for the error, but that the Trump family rejected it.
"Mr. Trump told me that people make innocent mistakes and that we learn and grow from these experiences," she wrote.
An early draft of the speech obtained by NBC News this week did not include the section that appears to have been lifted from the 2008 convention speech…..
See also Maggie Haberman, "Melania Trump’s Speechwriter Takes Responsibility for Lifted Remarks", NYT (7/20/16)
ohwilleke said,
July 20, 2016 @ 2:57 pm
First, if someone ghost wrote your speech, don't indignantly tell the press that you wrote it yourself. Instead, admit that your speech was ghostwritten and take responsibility even if it was actually written by someone else.
Second, recycling with attribution is fine. Attribution is not hard. Most certainly, do not claim that your material was original once you are caught – at least attribute after the fact and apologize.
Third, if you don't want your family members to be attacked, don't put them in harms way giving political speeches at political events.
Fourth, you do have a responsibility to read speeches you are going to give for accuracy. Even if your speech writer screwed up, it isn't acceptable to say in a speech that you've graduated from college, or have been with your husband for 18 years, when neither fact is true.
Ari Corcoran said,
July 20, 2016 @ 4:36 pm
Surely there is some place where the invidious position of the speechwriter has been discussed, if not in Language Log. I note here that the errant speech writer has offered (and been refused) a resignation. FFS. As a speech writer you are a mere functionary, sometimes treasured, sometimes traduced. It's no big deal. The real issue is the message: in this case of Trump's wife, the blame has gone, at least in part to the writer. Ultimately the deliverer of the speech has to take the fall, no matter who's written it, in part or in full.
As I have suggested in previous posts to this particular LL entry, a speechwriter takes on something of the deliverer. Words per minute, key phrases and expressions, speech rhythms, idioms and so on. At best, you become the person you are writing for. It's a curious game.
D.O. said,
July 20, 2016 @ 4:36 pm
Bloix, Instead of her authentic personal experiences and beliefs, she delivered – Michelle Onama's authentic personal experiences and beliefs. Come on, there are millions of parents who tell their children to be honest, to work hard, to eat their broccoli, and to please rip their clothes not as often.
David L said,
July 20, 2016 @ 4:40 pm
I know people who have worked as speech writers and was about to submit an account of how they work, in particular how they ideally embody the thoughts and speech patterns of the person they are working for, but Ari Corcoran beat me to it. Preemptive plagiarism, if you ask me.
Victor Mair said,
July 20, 2016 @ 5:02 pm
Yet another surprise:
"Melania Trump’s speechwriter is a registered Democrat" Bob Fredericks, New York Post (7/20/16)
Victor Mair said,
July 20, 2016 @ 5:33 pm
I almost thought that NYP article was from the Onion, but apparently it's for real.
And now yet another stunner, told to me by a colleague who is usually reliable:
=====
Totally in keeping. The Trumpster and most of his kids were not registered GOP's and could not even vote for him in the NY primary!
=====
J.W. Brewer said,
July 20, 2016 @ 5:40 pm
There is some tension between the claim that Ms. McIver is a registered Democrat and the claim that she is non-existent (e.g. ,http://www.mediaite.com/online/people-are-starting-to-wonder-if-melania-speechwriter-meredith-mciver-really-exists/) but of course it is naive to suppose that the voter registration rolls are 100% composed of actually-existing people.
Victor Mair said,
July 20, 2016 @ 6:49 pm
"Yes, Meredith McIver’s A Real Person And We Can All Calm Down Now: The Trump staffer who took the blame for the plagiarism in Melania Trump’s RNC speech is a real human woman."
Ellie Hall & Claudia Koerner, BuzzFeed (7/20/16)
Theophylact said,
July 20, 2016 @ 7:13 pm
Indeed, it turns out that judges' opinions are often drafted by the prosecution (and signed unread, typos and other errors uncorrected). This is more than an academic sin; it's a stain on the entire criminal justice system.
Rebecca said,
July 20, 2016 @ 8:55 pm
Speaking of drafting speeches to fit the verbal style of the person who is to deliver it: this is one area that Trump's speech writers need to work on. His own style is so distinctive, that it is really jarringly noticeable when he uses prepared material. I know all candidates use speech writers, but the others sound pretty much as they do in interviews or when speaking off the cuff. Trump sounds like a completely different person. I wonder, as the campaign progresses, if we'll hear more of his prepared material written to match his extemporaneous voice
Chris C. said,
July 20, 2016 @ 9:14 pm
@Rebecca — I'm not sure that's possible. Trump's extemporaneous voice is such a syntactically tangled stream-of-consciousness clusterfuck (see a number of previous articles on it here) that I'd don't think we can safely assume it can be duplicated. And if it could be, I'm not sure anyone could reliable read it off a teleprompter, Trump included.
tangent said,
July 20, 2016 @ 11:52 pm
What a strange way of taking(?) responsibility! Isn't McIvers throwing Melania Trump under the bus there, by saying Melania knew the source of the text?
And "I did not check Mrs. Obama's speeches" is odd where I might have expected "did not remember to reword the text." That she did not *check* — does she imply she wasn't aware of the source of the text or the need to massage the text, because Melania knew the source but didn't tell McIvers? Or is this saying McIvers knew she had verbatim Obama text in her draft, was going to run a final scan against the Obama source to make sure all verbatim matches had been edited away, but forgot that final scan (and of course also forgot the editing, unmentioned)?
How do other people read the implication of the language?
Jon said,
July 21, 2016 @ 12:50 am
When I was a working scientist, I often recycled a paragraph or two of introductory or background material from my earlier papers. But then, seeing the passage in a new context, I could never resist revising it. What surprises me when I hear about someone plagiarizing chunks of other people's texts is that they don't feel compelled to rearrange and reword. But maybe that's just me.
Joyce Melton said,
July 21, 2016 @ 1:36 am
"How do other people read the implication of the language?"
Myself, I read the implication that McIvers was paid to take the blame. I can't make sense of it any other way.
Then again, making sense has not been a high point in the Trump campaign to date.
tangent said,
July 21, 2016 @ 3:16 am
She explicitly took all the blame, but at the same time told a history where Melania at least did the actions along with her. Maybe did more, if you go for my second para, but at least did it with her.
(Yeah, it's tempting to speculate she was directed to take blame falsely and this is a 'tell', which surely would have to be unconscious. But that's extralinguistic and I'm more interested in the semantics and pragmatics of her statement, at least for LL.)
Jakob Boman said,
July 21, 2016 @ 3:38 am
I think we should ask a different question, and that is, did she add anything original?
The thing is everybody borrows (or steals depending on how aggressive your wording is) from each other. It is a natural part of our development process. We build on each others work. If we do not add any extra value, but merely repeat others, it is purely plagiarism and that should have negative consequences for the people involved.
However, if we combine existing material and add an original twist, it is something new and that should be rewarded. All great artist, writers, architects etc borrowed big time from others, but somehow they managed to turn it into their own. That is the difference for me. So the question is not whether or not you have borrowed material but if you manage to make it your own. I know that it is hard to determine whether or nor somebody has made it their own, but yet we all agree on it when it comes to the ones that stands out.
Back to the issue with Melania Trump's speech, I didn't feel that the speech was her own. The situtation is also complicated by the fact that it was Michelle Obama's words she borrowed and that Trump essential is running against two parties as a lot of conservative doesn't support him.
Acilius said,
July 21, 2016 @ 7:39 am
When I catch my students handing in plagiarized work, I am disappointed they did not take the class seriously enough to do original work. In that same situation, some of my colleagues respond with anger that their students are not taking them seriously as professionals.
In this case, I think the person who was not taken seriously was Melania Trump. Her adult stepchildren are deeply involved in the staffing and operations of the campaign. It might be nice for those adult stepchildren if their father were to become president; it would definitely be very nice for them if their stepmother were to have departed the scene when their father's will is read. With a conflict of interest like that weighing on their minds, it is understandable that the assignment to write her convention speech floated around among various speechwriters and ended up in not-especially skilled hands shortly before the deadline.
Jerry Friedman said,
July 21, 2016 @ 12:05 pm
Acilius: It might be nice for those adult stepchildren if their father were to become president; it would definitely be very nice for them if their stepmother were to have departed the scene when their father's will is read.
As far as money is concerned, I'm not sure it's so definite. If their stepmother departs the scene, she'll take some assets with her, and their father's biography suggests that a new stepmother might well enter the scene. As far their relationships with their father and stepmother are concerned, I couldn't say.
BZ said,
July 21, 2016 @ 1:20 pm
When I was in 12th grade I was accused of plagiarism by my history teacher for a major paper. Actually, my whole class was accused (there were about 10 people in the class, it was a small school), but I took it rather hard because he picked on me as the example. His evidence, in part, was that I used the word "lofty" in the paper, which supposedly should not have been in my vocabulary. He even took to calling me "lofty Boris". He pompously spoke about how next year in college we would all be expelled, but he would have pity on us, and just lower everyone's grade a bit (I got a B).
As furious as I was, I didn't report the false accusation. One major reason was that I actually substantially recycled a paper I wrote the year before (so the word "Lofty" was in my vocabulary even earlier than my teacher thought). Now, I've always been a man of strong morals, but that doesn't mean I follow rules I disagree with if I can get away with it. To be sure, I am not certain what the school policy was for self-plagiarism, but my personal feeling was that it was ok in this instance. In my view, the paper was to test my knowledge in an aspect of the material learned that year and the ability to put it into a coherent form. That I had already already done prior research on a qualifying subject that saved me some time was not a defect, but a fortunate event that gave me a competitive advantage.
Andrew said,
July 21, 2016 @ 5:44 pm
Can I ask if the McIver story really makes sense? According to her, Melania read these passages over the phone. Presumably McIver was taking notes. Is it plausible that she wrote down every word dictated over the phone in the correct order? This seems pretty difficult to do. If I wanted to get the text exactly right – as she did – I would probably have to ask the person to repeat the passages multiple times, so that I got the wording perfect. This seems implausible to me. Plus, the further implication is that she wrote down these passages with the note – Melania wants something like this – and then just transferred it to the speech. This explanation doesn't pass the smell test.
Acilius said,
July 22, 2016 @ 8:51 am
Andrew: Ms McIver may not be a top-flight speechwriter, but I can't imagine she is so unprofessional that she failed to make an audio recording of a conversation with the person for whom, she was writing.
James Wimberley said,
July 22, 2016 @ 5:41 pm
The typical Trump voter will be puzzled by this controversy. It looks like a fetish of pinko East and West Coast liberal intellectuals, of no interest to Real Americans like them. Any impact on the race will come through the press. Journalists, however conservative, live by the pen or keyboard; their status and careers depend crtically on bylines and proper credit for their work; conversely stealing that work is a grave professional offence. The episode may accelerate the end of the deplorable Trump honeymoon with the press, actually closer to an extended dirty weekend of mutual bondage.
This comment is self-plagiarised from one I posted in another blog. Anything wrong with that?
Graeme said,
July 25, 2016 @ 3:16 am
To me political plagiarism – of the hanging kind – would be taking a policy from another jurisdiction and presenting it as your own creation. (Especially in the US where some Bills bear the sponsoring congressperson's surname).
It happens but rarely without some acknowledgement – given the reassurance of appealing to precedent in law, and its public nature.