Plagiarized speech sign of Trump’s deceptions

In my day job as a journalism professor at the University of Memphis, I strive to teach students the value of clear and compelling writing.

I also join with other faculty members, in my department and campuswide, in hammering home the perils of plagiarism. The issue is discussed extensively in the syllabus for each class and in the U of M Student Handbook, among other places.

Each professor also has access to TurnItIn, an online software program designed to quickly detect plagiarized work. It’s not that the university automatically assumes that students are cribbing from others. But academic integrity is at the core of what we do.

As Ronald Reagan once famously said to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, “Trust, but verify.”

If plagiarism is found, the offending student is given an automatic F for the assignment, and quite likely an F for the course. In some cases, a student could be suspended or expelled from the university.

This is all relevant in light of the political tempest caused by the obvious lifting of passages from first lady Michelle Obama’s address to Democrats in 2008 for Melania Trump’s coming-out speech at the Republican National Convention last week.

By now, everyone who cares knows what happened and who has taken the blame. But if the political foul-up itself wasn’t bad enough, the attempted cover-up was far worse.

Donald Trump’s campaign spent two days either outright denying the charges, or suggesting that the lifted passages were so general that they did not meet the definition of plagiarism.

When that bit of obfuscation didn’t work, Meredith McIver, a Trump Organization staff writer, finally admitted that she’s the one who accidentally included the Obama passages in Melania Trump’s speech. And the GOP’s new standardbearer tweeted in typical Trump-the-entertainer fashion that “all press is good press.” P.T. Barnum would be proud.

One of the more galling aspects of this whole episode is that the passages were pilfered from the nation’s first AfricanAmerican first lady, while Trump has repeatedly called President Obama and those around him stupid and incompetent.

Now we’re told that Mrs. Obama has been an inspiration to Melania Trump. “A person she has always liked is Michelle Obama,” McIver said in her mea culpa statement.

Yet, we got two days of ridiculous denials by the Trump campaign, followed by “who cares” from Trump surrogate Newt Gingrich. And let’s not forget Doris Arnold, a Tennessee delegate for Trump, who told a reporter, “It doesn’t even matter if she plagiarized her speech.”

On the contrary, it does matter. This was intellec-

tual dishonesty without the intellect. And it speaks to a far greater concern about Trump and his candidacy.

Here is a guy who continuously harps, with some justification, about Hillary Clinton’s untrustworthiness. And Trump’s supporters express their adoration using such cliches as “he’s a straight shooter who tells it like it is.”

Except in this instance, the campaign is guilty of retelling it like it is.

In my five-plus years at the U of M, I have had only one documented case of plagiarism, but even that was one too many. Unlike the Trump campaign, however, my student owned up to the offense and didn’t try to deny the obvious.

And yes, President Obama also faced criticism during his 2008 campaign when he used lines that were similar to those given by former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick two years earlier. The difference is that Obama was referencing several historic phrases, including “I have a dream” and “we have nothing to fear but fear itself,” in the same way that Patrick had done in a 2006 speech.

Melania Trump, on the other hand, was speaking about deeply held personal values instilled in her by her parents. Except it appears those exact values were instilled in Michelle Obama first.

Come November, all of this will likely be an embarrassing footnote from a convention that was full of vitriol and very little vision. But for now, it is emblematic of a disjointed presidential campaign that is based only on glitz. And one that’s headed for failure. Otis Sanford holds the Hardin Chair of Excellence in Journalism at the University of Memphis. Contact him at 901-678-3669 or at o.sanford@memphis.edu.