well then, they both plagerized John D. Rockefeller, Jr.:
‘I believe in the sacredness of a promise, that a man’s word should be as good as his bond; that character - not wealth or power or position - is of supreme worth”
or W. Lamb:
“Your word is your bond. Make sure your words match your actions. Keep your word and fulfill your promises. Your character is more important than your reputation.”
or Orson Welles:
In common with all Protestant and Jewish cultures, America was developed on the idea that your word is your bond. Otherwise the frontier could never have been opened, ‘cause it was lawless. A man’s word has to mean something.”
or even Charles Dickens:
“The word of a gentleman is as good as his bond; and sometimes better”
The similarity is in the thought.
I do concede that changing a thought with a few changes of words is not acceptable practice.
Again, voters are not going judge Melania the way a professor would judge a student or a literary critic would judge an author.
The controversial passage was incidental and and it wasn’t like her entire speech was lifted word for word from someone before her.
Context does matter. Under the right circumstances, occasional plagiarism won’t really change our opinion of someone the way habitual plagiarism would change the way we view a person.
It all depends on whether a person is fundamentally dishonest enough not to have any original thought worth mentioning and not even Melania’s critics accuse her of plagiarizing Michelle’s entire address.
And she isn’t running for public office or trying to get a paper submitted in school or write a book, its not that a big deal and no one thinks it will really matter come Election Day.
Yup. It’s not like Michelle Obama coined the centuries-old idiom. No one demanded she cite it when she used it...nor the other one, which is a typical description of rising from a hard-scrabble early life.