Looking at the overnights, the matter of similarities of Melania Trump’s convention speech last night to a convention speech by Michelle Obama supportive of Barack Obama seems to be most of the news about the Republican convention. Never mind how Rudy Guliani and others speech givers effectively ripped up Hillary. During the day there was some drama that got much instant press about the walk-out of some primarily “free the delegates” delegates who were ticked off over parliamentary treatment. More on that later. But what about Melania’s “plagiarizing.”
Listening to some side by side clips, several passages sound very similar. And a look at two transcripted paragraphs from Michelle’s 2008 convention address and Melania’s are similar (via Zero Hedge). But a full transcript of the entirety of each speech would be better, not just incidental parts, which comprised elements of a couple of paragraphs, not an extensive amount of either speech. Nevertheless in an interview just before giving the speech, NBC Today Show host Matt Lauer asked Melania good-naturedly if she had been practicing it. She responded: (Heavy.com transcript, this writer also heard the live interview)
“I read once over it and that’s all because I wrote it, with as little help as possible.”
So what does “as little help as possible” mean? I doubt Melania had a transcript of Michelle Obama’s speech in front of her when she wrote what she wrote of the speech. The phraseology said to be plagiarism is rather formulaic if you ask me. They might have been the result of talking points or an outline “suggested” to her.
The Trump campaign tried to divert the matter to the extent of blaming it on speech writers after all. So what is to be believed about this?
The matter has already received more attention than speeches by Democrat candidates and office holders Biden, Hillary and more, where ‘plagiarism” charges were largely ignored by the same people tut-tutting about Melania. And there is the matter of how original Michelle was in her speech :(from Breitbart report)
Michelle Obama: “…the world as it should be.” In 2008, the aspiring First Lady was accused by bloggers of lifting lines for her DNC speech from Saul Alinsky. Alinsky wrote, in Rules for Radicals (emphasis added): “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 said: “And 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.’” (Perhaps Mr. Obama who left out the attribution.)
That the Obamas have copied Alinsky’s words and implemented his philosophy is tragically evident.
R Mall
“That the Obamas have copied Alinsky’s words and implemented his philosophy is tragically evident.”
Melania should have won the approval and support of the Pacem in Terris folks. They much admire Saul Alinsky.