My Take on The Melania Trump Plagiarism Scandal

Note: This story appeared on my blog on July 20, 2016.

Michelle Obama (left) and Melania Trump (right)

At first, I planned to write nothing about Melania Trump stealing passages from a Michelle Obama speech. I’m getting bored with Trump’s campaign antics and I wasn’t even surprised that the Trump campaign was uncreative enough to plagiarize. After all, Trump’s racist, xenophobic, us-against-them rhetoric is a hallmark of uncreative politicians from times memorial and, as far as I can tell, Trump’s team is just as unoriginal as he is.

Then I realized that I was sort of surprised. I was surprised that Trump’s speechwriters plagiarized Michelle Obama, the wife of a man that they have vilified almost from the start of his presidency. Why not someone else who made similar remarks? Haven’t other politicians and political spouses said things along the lines of Michelle Obama’s 2008 speech?

The truth of the matter is, all politicians, regardless of political affiliation, beat their audiences over the head with the idea that success in life is almost exclusively determined by one’s willingness to work hard. A few examples:

You want to be a doctor, or a teacher, or a police officer? You want to be a nurse or an architect, a lawyer or a member of our military? You’re going to need a good education for every single one of those careers. You can’t drop out of school and just drop into a good job. You’ve got to work for it (emphasis mine) and train for it and learn for it. — Barack Obama

When challenges to our prosperity emerged, we rose to meet them. Facing the prospect of a financial collapse, we took decisive measures to safeguard our economy. These are very tough times for hardworking families, but the toll would be far worse if we had not acted. All Americans are in this together. And together, with determination and hard work (emphasis mine), we will restore our economy to the path of growth. We will show the world once again the resilience of America’s free enterprise system. The decades ahead will bring more hard choices for our country, and there are some guiding principles that should shape our course. — George W. Bush

…[M]y mother had to support us, so we lived with my grandparents while she went back to Louisiana to study nursing…She endured that pain because she knew her sacrifice was the only way she could support me and give me a better life. My mother taught me. She taught me about family and hard work (emphasis mine) and sacrifice… — Bill Clinton

You see, there is a yearning in America, a feeling that maybe it’s time to get back to our roots. Sure we must change, but some values are timeless. I believe in families that stick together, fathers who stick around. I happen to believe very deeply in the worth of each individual human being, born or unborn. I believe in teaching our kids the difference between what’s wrong and what’s right, teaching them respect for hard work (emphasis mine) and to love their neighbors. I believe that America will always have a special place in God’s heart, as long as He has a special place in ours. Maybe that’s why I’ve always believed that patriotism is not just another point of view. — George H.W. Bush

My philosophy of life is that if we make up our mind what we are going to make of our lives, then work hard (emphasis mine) toward that goal, we never lose — somehow we win out. — Ronald Reagan

In a nation that was proud of hard work (emphasis mine), strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. — Jimmy Carter

The preceding quotes were just from the last few presidents. If I quoted every piece of folk wisdom regarding the importance of work that came out of the mouths of every other president, every political candidate, and every political spouse of these presidents and candidates, I would be writing this blog post all day.

And the fact that so many politicians trot out the hoary old Horatio Alger myth without being challenged is proof positive that our fundamental understanding of work is flawed.

The truth is, work is important. Meaningful work provides structure to our days as well as many other benefits. It allows us to make contributions to our community. It gives us an outlet for our talents and skills. For many of us, work provides much needed social outlets and relief from boredom. More than a few people find romance at work. Work is good.

What work doesn’t do is provide a guarantee of financial security and prosperity. Despite what the right wing says, many of the poorest people in our country, people who rely on the safety net provided by food stamps and Medicaid, work for wages. And most American workers, despite their devotion to the cult of paid work, live paycheck to paycheck, precariously close to edge of financial ruin.

Hard work also doesn’t guarantee reward. Fruit pickers, some of the hardest working people in America, live in grinding poverty while movie stars and athletes, who only work a few months out of each year (if they work at all), make millions. Are fruit pickers, athletes, and actors all workers? Of course they are. But in a society in which certain jobs are valued much more highly than others, the rewards of hard work in a low-prestige field are often minimal.

That being said, the Trump speech writers who plagiarized Michelle Obama’s speech shouldn’t be fired. Even if they hadn’t been dumb enough to lift passages word for word, they would have ended up saying the same boring old thing about “hard work” anyway.