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Posted By Edmund Kozak On July 19,
2016 @ 12:55 PM In Poli | Comments Disabled
Everytime
Eric Clapton plays a twelve-bar blues song, you could call it plagiarism.
After
all, Robert Johnson and others played the blues first in the South way back in
the 1920s and 1930s. But that misses the point. There are only so many ways to
play a twelve-bar blues tune, just like there are only so many words a
candidate’s wife, who has focused her attentions on raising her family rather
than being in public life, can say in a speech at a national political
convention that she loves America.
Rather
than focus on the similarity of the sentiments expressed by Melania and
Michelle, the natural question to ask is who sounds more authentic.
Context
matters. When Churchill said, “Never in the field of human conflict was so much
owed by so many to so few,” he was plagiarizing Shakespeare’s “Henry V” and
giving old words new meaning, greater than what they contained before.
If Melania
Trump expresses sentiments strikingly similar to Michelle Obama’s, the natural
question to ask is who sounds more authentic, more genuine? Many guitarists can
play the blues, but few can interpret the music the way Clapton can. Many
politicians can quote Shakespeare, but few can use it to inspire their
countrymen as Churchill could. And many wives of presidential candidates can
profess their love of country in the same words emphasizing family — the duty
to honor our forebears and the duty to pass freedoms to future generations.
When
they utter similar phrases, who sounds more authentic — Michelle or Melania?
Did Michelle’s subsequent actions and statements as first lady give the nation
any reason to believe that the sentiments she expressed were sincere? And do we
have any reason to doubt that Melania’s expressions of those same sentiments
are not heartfelt, and that by her actions as first lady she would be faithful
to them?
In the
aftermath of SpeechGate, Democrats and their supporters have revealed the
depths to which they will descend in order to attack Trump. Not being able to
attack Trump directly, as he didn’t speak Monday night, liberals have instead
decided to attack Melania for plagiarism.
Not
only is the charge of plagiarism tenuous at best, but those who wish to see
Hillary Clinton in the White House would do well not to bring up issues like
honesty in attacking the Trump campaign. And the pathetic attempt to hurl weak
charges of plagiarism at Melania Trump is particularly bizarre given the Democrats’
own history of plagiarism.
In
February 2008, President Obama gave a speech in Wisconsin many argued was
stolen from a speech given by Deval Patrick.
Joe
Biden, meanwhile, plagiarized an entire speech originally given by British
politician Neil Kinnock. "Why I am the first Kinnock in a thousand
generations to be able to get to university?" Kinnock asked. "Was it
because our predecessors were thick? ... Was it because they were weak, those
people who could work eight hours underground and then come up and play
football, weak? ... It was because there was no platform upon which they
could stand," he continued.
"Why
is it that Joe Biden is the first in his family ever to go to a
university?" Biden later asked. "Is it because our fathers and
mothers were not bright? .. Is it because they didn't work hard, my ancestors
who worked in the coal mines of Northeast Pennsylvania and would come up after
12 hours and play football for four hours? ... It's because they didn't
have a platform upon which to stand."
Biden
has a history of plagiarism — indeed he was forced to withdraw from the 1988
race for just that reason. Not only have Obama and Biden had their own brushes
with accusations of plagiarism, but what is arguably the most famous speech
ever to pass a Democrat's lips was also an apparent product of plagiarism.
"Ask
not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your
country," John F. Kennedy famously asked the nation. Indeed, his words
will likely live on well past the point where most people have forgotten who
spoke them. The only problem is — they weren't his. George St. John,
Kennedy's old headmaster at the Choate School in Connecticut, habitually asked
his students such a question.
"I
boil every time I read or hear the 'Ask not... etc.' phrase as being original
Kennedy," a former classmate said. "Time and time again we all heard
[St. John] say that to the whole Choate family."
Finally,
Michelle Obama herself was accused of plagiarism after the giving the speech
which Melania Trump allegedly plagiarized Monday night. Saul Alinsky, the
radical community organizer with a clear influence on the Obamas, wrote that
"the standards of judgment must be rooted in the whys and wherefores of
life as it is lived, the world as it is, not our wished-for fantasy of the
world as it should be."
Michelle
Obama told the assembled crowd that "Barack stood up that day, and he
spoke words that have stayed with me ever since. He talked about 'the world as
it is' and 'the world as it should be.'"
Rather than focus on the similarity of the
sentiments Melania and Michelle expressed, the natural question to ask is who
sounds more authentic, more genuine. Michelle spoke of the values of honesty,
hard work, and personal responsibility — values entirely absent from her husband's
administration.
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