Tuesday, July 19, 2016
What does Melania Trump's plagiarism tell us?
As the news agencies have told us during this 24-hour news cycle, Melania Trump got up last night to further her husband's success, and took her cue from Michelle Obama eight years ago. Her speech contained phrases which can only have been copied from the First Lady's earlier address, and so have been labelled as plagiarism.
This is a damning accusation and has prompted recollections of the last big plagiarism scandal to rock a US election, when Joseph Biden re-used Neil Kinnock's 'Thousand Generations' speech, was promptly labelled a plagiarist, and was forced to withdraw from the campaign (see the New York Time's reporting of it here).
But how closely do the two cases parallel each other? Is one as bad as the other? To answer those questions, we have to figure out how plagiarism fits into political discourse.
A key sign of plagiarism, and thus a common basis for decrying it, is the absence of an attribution to the original source. When academics write research articles, they remember one simple rule. In the words of Malcolm Bradbury, 'a gentleman always cites his sources'. But politicians use speech writers, and speech writers aren't credited, so this criticism doesn't wash.
Those of us who grew up in the English-speaking world were nurtured in a doctrine of 'in your own words'. But again, in a community in which speech writers are commonly used, 'use your own words' isn't the norm; 'use the best words for the purpose is'.
One reason we have a cultural aversion to plagiarism is that it denies the right person of credit. If you're Led Zeppelin and people think you've plagiarized another band's music (which a court has decided they didn't: see this report from the Guardian), then you've taken a lot of revenues from that other band. But unlike the people who write pop songs, neither Joe Biden nor Melania Trump gave their speeches in order to make money.
Well, you might think, not to make money, but to gain influence. And this is precisely the point at which the Kinnock-Biden plagiarism case diverges sharply from the Trump story.
The plagiarism accusations in the Kinnock-Biden case revolved around a speech which Neil Kinnock made to the Labour Party congress. When the Labour asked in his emotional address why he was the 'first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university', it was in service of a point: if bright, capable people were to be able to realise their potential, they needed a social structure which permitted them to; they needed a 'platform upon which they could stand'.
When Joe Biden asked in a stump speech why he was the first Biden in a thousand generations to go to university, he meant the same thing.
Both were members of a left-wing party, waging war against the far-right leaders of their countries, Thatcher and Reagan. There was no appropriation; there were soldiers on the same side of the fight making common cause. And that's why Neil Kinnock, when asked whether he was bothered by the appropriation of his words, responded that he wasn't; to the contrary, he confessed to feeling 'flattered'.
In the same way, when the New York Times reported the Biden story, chunks of the same text were repeated from day to day, with different journalists on the by-line. But why not? They weren't in competition with each other, they were on the same team, pooling resources.
And that's the first of two reasons why Melania Trump's use of Michelle Obama's elegant formulations is highly problematic. They're not on the same team. Quite the opposite. So if Mrs. Trump can express points of deeply held principle in Obama's words, what are we to conclude? Does she share Obama values? Or does she not know what her own values are? It must be one or the other, and neither reflects well on the Trump campaign.
The second and closely related reason why this case of plagiarism should be seen as a canary fainting dead in a coal mine is that it signals an absence of something to say. Michelle Obama's eloquent speech dovetailed nicely with her husband's agenda, and indeed comportment, as president. We now why she said what she said, because she has gone on to live the values she espoused. But if Melania Trump doesn't hold a set of values which can be differentiated from Michelle Obama's, why is she trying to become first lady? Or to reverse it, if she supports Donald Trump's presidency, how can she not understand that it is antithetical to everything Michelle and Barack Obama have ever espoused?
The problem, in other words, is not the plagiarism. The problem is that it reveals an emptiness of thought which the American electorate ought to find instructive.
This is a damning accusation and has prompted recollections of the last big plagiarism scandal to rock a US election, when Joseph Biden re-used Neil Kinnock's 'Thousand Generations' speech, was promptly labelled a plagiarist, and was forced to withdraw from the campaign (see the New York Time's reporting of it here).
But how closely do the two cases parallel each other? Is one as bad as the other? To answer those questions, we have to figure out how plagiarism fits into political discourse.
A key sign of plagiarism, and thus a common basis for decrying it, is the absence of an attribution to the original source. When academics write research articles, they remember one simple rule. In the words of Malcolm Bradbury, 'a gentleman always cites his sources'. But politicians use speech writers, and speech writers aren't credited, so this criticism doesn't wash.
Those of us who grew up in the English-speaking world were nurtured in a doctrine of 'in your own words'. But again, in a community in which speech writers are commonly used, 'use your own words' isn't the norm; 'use the best words for the purpose is'.
One reason we have a cultural aversion to plagiarism is that it denies the right person of credit. If you're Led Zeppelin and people think you've plagiarized another band's music (which a court has decided they didn't: see this report from the Guardian), then you've taken a lot of revenues from that other band. But unlike the people who write pop songs, neither Joe Biden nor Melania Trump gave their speeches in order to make money.
Well, you might think, not to make money, but to gain influence. And this is precisely the point at which the Kinnock-Biden plagiarism case diverges sharply from the Trump story.
The plagiarism accusations in the Kinnock-Biden case revolved around a speech which Neil Kinnock made to the Labour Party congress. When the Labour asked in his emotional address why he was the 'first Kinnock in a thousand generations to be able to get to university', it was in service of a point: if bright, capable people were to be able to realise their potential, they needed a social structure which permitted them to; they needed a 'platform upon which they could stand'.
When Joe Biden asked in a stump speech why he was the first Biden in a thousand generations to go to university, he meant the same thing.
Both were members of a left-wing party, waging war against the far-right leaders of their countries, Thatcher and Reagan. There was no appropriation; there were soldiers on the same side of the fight making common cause. And that's why Neil Kinnock, when asked whether he was bothered by the appropriation of his words, responded that he wasn't; to the contrary, he confessed to feeling 'flattered'.
In the same way, when the New York Times reported the Biden story, chunks of the same text were repeated from day to day, with different journalists on the by-line. But why not? They weren't in competition with each other, they were on the same team, pooling resources.
And that's the first of two reasons why Melania Trump's use of Michelle Obama's elegant formulations is highly problematic. They're not on the same team. Quite the opposite. So if Mrs. Trump can express points of deeply held principle in Obama's words, what are we to conclude? Does she share Obama values? Or does she not know what her own values are? It must be one or the other, and neither reflects well on the Trump campaign.
The second and closely related reason why this case of plagiarism should be seen as a canary fainting dead in a coal mine is that it signals an absence of something to say. Michelle Obama's eloquent speech dovetailed nicely with her husband's agenda, and indeed comportment, as president. We now why she said what she said, because she has gone on to live the values she espoused. But if Melania Trump doesn't hold a set of values which can be differentiated from Michelle Obama's, why is she trying to become first lady? Or to reverse it, if she supports Donald Trump's presidency, how can she not understand that it is antithetical to everything Michelle and Barack Obama have ever espoused?
The problem, in other words, is not the plagiarism. The problem is that it reveals an emptiness of thought which the American electorate ought to find instructive.
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