The Cartoonists are having a field day with Melania's speech

[happyslug]

36. I see people citing JFK piece of plagiarism as original...

"Ask NOT what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country". Oliver Wendell Holmes said that in a 1927 speech and he stole it from an Egyptian who said it in the late 1800s... Yet no one accused JFK of plagiarism.

The last President to give a speech NOT written by someone else, was Truman and the reason for that is he had a problem reading speeches thus spoke "off the cuff". Good writers tend to be good readers and will use what they have read, thus you see a lot of plagiarism in speeches.

Sometimes the original is cited, other times it is not. In the 1990s a Democratic Candidate was accused of plagiarism for he used a phase first used by a British Labour Politician. The Democrat was caught for he liked the phase and used it several times, most of the times CITING THE LABOUR POLITICIAN as the author. The Accusation of plagiarism occurred when is a speech he failed to cite his source and his opponents KNEW it had been made by someone else for they had read the Democrat's earlier speeches when he had cited the source.

Sorry, I can NOT make a big deal of plagiarism in a speech, if the phase is GOOD, it will be used over and over again and when someone else steals it it is more a complement to the original author of the phase then an insult to whoever spoke those words.