PLAGIARIZING YOURSELF

Who deserves credit for a speech is an interesting exercise in morality.  It seems strange but plagiarizing* yourself can be serious business.  I knew of a couple of scientists who borrowed some paragraphs from earlier scientific papers they had published without attribution so in reality they plagiarized themselves.  It turns out that the two publications were by different publishers and the publisher of the earlier piece called foul.  The publishers legally own the rights to the publications so you are not allowed to plagiarize yourself.  

So now we have the case of Melania Trump plagiarizing some thoughts of Michelle Obama in a Republican convention no less. Horrors.  You can hear the whole Melania speech here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jt_9yb4FSYA .  You can read the transcript of the Michelle speech here: http://www.npr.org/2012/09/04/160578836/transcript-michelle-obamas-convention-speech  Well, I do not know who owns the Michelle pieces, but I doubt very much she would sue.  After all, her all but forgotten speech now has renewed interest and she has had her picture alongside that of Melania.  Michelle has gotten lots of credit now, so I say let's move on.  They say that Melania didn't want to talk in the first place, that she had rejected one speech and went with a friend of hers.  The friend has apologized and offered to resign which has been rejected. The speech in its entirety appears to be very nice.

The weird thing is that one of Trump's children, Donald Trump, Jr. gave a speech the next day and HE plagiarized a part of his speech from a column published by F.H. Buckley who happens to be his speech writer.!  You can hear the whole speech at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-7WlIZwePc  Well the speech writer says it is OK since he plagiarized his own stuff.  Well I guess that if it is all right with him, it is all right with me.  But come on you Republican speech writers.  You are supposed to be word smiths, and you can do better.  Don't be so lazy and give us fresh stuff.

You don't have to get very high up in politics and administration of anything before you no longer write your own speeches or articles.  Yes, you meet with the writer and give him or her your thoughts and may check back in on drafts to make sure you are saying what you want to say, but you probably have never put pencil to paper or fingers to a keyboard.  Most or all of the phraseology is done by someone else, usually anonymously.  Should the speaker get all the credit.  Shouldn't it be by speaker and writer?

Once when I was working for NASA, the Chief Scientist sent me a draft of a speech and asked if he could say a certain part.  I reply that the passage looked fine, but, at any rate it was his speech.  I read the whole draft and found myself wondering that this is very nice, I wonder who wrote it.  He may have written it himself as there were passages about his daughter.  But you see, it didn't occur to me that someone in his office would write their own stuff.

I was surprised to hear that Ronald Reagan wrote some of his own speeches.  I thought he was in early Alzheimer's when he was elected president but could still remember his lines.  I did recognize his sense of humor, but writing?  I guess he had more in the tank than I realized.

Often you will see books by the "author" and the ghost writer, but not always.  I know of one case where one scientist wrote a whole book for a more major scientist, a professor, and didn't get so much as an acknowledgement.  He carried this hurt the rest of his life.  I'm told that in India, the name on a building was that of the patron who financed the endeavor and the architect got no credit.  I'm sure that sort of thing goes on.

I've been really amazed by movies where the credits go on and on, to the assistant grip,  second assistant camera man, etc.  No other place in life is so much credit given.  I'm impressed.

* From Merriam Webster On-line Dictionary:  to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one's own :  use (another's production) without crediting the source