Joseph Joubert:
Everything that is exact is short.Also from Joseph Joubert
The Notebooks of Joseph Joubert: A Selection , trans. Paul Auster (New York: New York Review Books, 2005).
Michelle Obama in 2008:
“Barack and I were raised with so many of the same values: that you work hard for what you want in life; that your word is your bond and you do what you say you’re going to do; that you treat people with dignity and respect, even if you don’t know them, and even if you don’t agree with them.”“Your word is your bond”: why aren’t those words a matter of plagiarism? Because they’re meant to be recognized as a borrowing. Dictum meum pactum , “My word is my bond,” is the motto of the London Stock Exchange. The philosopher J. L. Austin adapted that motto in his How to Do Things with Words (1962):
For one who says “promising is not merely a matter of uttering words! It is an inward and spiritual act!” is apt to appear as a solid moralist standing out against a generation of superficial theorizers: we see him as he sees himself, surveying the invisible depths of ethical space, with all the distinction of a specialist in the sui generis . Yet he provides Hippolytus with a let-out, the bigamist with an excuse for his “I do” and the welsher with a defense for his “I bet.” Accuracy and morality alike are on the side of the plain saying that our word is our bond.The poet Geoffrey HIll borrowed Austin’s words in a 1983 essay, “Our Word Is Our Bond.” More recently, Austin’s words showed up in Marianne Constable’s punning book title Our Word Is Our Bond: How Legal Speech Acts (2014).
From Wikipedia, items in an odd and funny series: “Meredith McIver is a staff writer for The Trump Organization, author, former ballerina, and registered Democrat.” And now she has taken responsibility for the appearance of words from a Michelle Obama speech in Melania Trump’s Monday night speech. From Ms. McIver’s statement:
In working with Melania on her recent First Lady speech, we discussed many people who inspired her and messages she wanted to share with the American people. A person she has always liked is Michelle Obama. Over the phone, she read me some passages from Mrs. Obama’s speech as examples. I wrote them down and later included some of the phrasing in the draft that ultimately became the final speech. I did not check Mrs. Obama’s speeches. This was my mistake and I feel terrible for the chaos I have caused Melania and the Trumps as well as to Mrs. Obama. No harm was meant.This explanation leaves an important question unanswered: did Ms. Trump make clear that she was reading passages from Ms. Obama’s speech? That these passages were from Ms. Obama’s speech doesn’t mean that Ms. McIver knew that at the time . Either way, it’s plagiarism, but it’s not clear to me who really bears greater responsibility for passing off Ms. Obama’s words as Ms. Trump’s own.
Tony Schwartz wrote The Art of the Deal for Donald Trump:
If he were writing The Art of the Deal, today, Schwartz said, it would be a very different book with a very different title. Asked what he would call it, he answered, The Sociopath .Read it all at The New Yorker : Jane Mayer, “Donald Trump’s Ghostwriter Tells All” (The New Yorker).
*
If Trump is elected President, he warned, “the millions of people who voted for him and believe that he represents their interests will learn what anyone who deals closely with him already knows — that he couldn’t care less about them.”
The American Heritage Dictionary has an updated its usage note for singular they .
My thinking about singular they changed in 2009 — a conversion experience — and has remained unchanged since. I think the pronoun is best used sparingly, and best avoided when one’s writing is subject to formal evaluation. Recasting a sentence can be a better choice than a singular they or a cumbersome he or she .
The most interesting part of the AHD note:
The recent use of singular they for a known person who identifies as neither male nor female remains controversial; as of 2015 only 27 percent of the Panelists accepted Scout was born male, but now they do not identify as either traditional gender. With regard to this last sentence, the Panel’s responses showed a clear generational shift: the approval rate was 4 percent among Panelists born before 1945 and 40 percent among Panelists born later.Singular they as a pronoun for a person who identifies as neither he nor she seems to me to be inherently confusing. As I wrote in a comment on another they post, “If I were not a he and were making this kind of decision for myself, I’d choose singular pronouns.”
[Nancy , April 2, 1953. From Random Acts of Nancy .]
Nice cursive, Sluggo, or Tony.
Related reading
All OCA handwriting posts
All OCA Nancy posts (Pinboard)
[Hi and Lois , July 19, 2016. Click for a larger, emptier view.]
In Lois and Chip’s absence, Hi has sold most of the furniture to pay for a.) college or b.) living-room expansion or c.) both. I’m not sure which.
Related reading
All OCA Hi and Lois posts (Pinboard)
The New York Times headline is so tactful: “Melania Trump’s Speech Bears Striking Similarities to Michelle Obama’s in 2008.” Striking similarities, yes. It’s plagiarism. The Trump campaign denies it, saying that Ms. Trump’s speech was a matter of “common words and values.” Common words, one after another after another.
Barring sabotage by a disgruntled speechwriter, I can think of three possible defenses:
Ms. Trump (or her speechwriter) had been so moved by Ms. Obama’s speech that whole sentences somehow stuck in memory, to be reproduced as if original.Please understand: I have heard some extraordinarily far-fetched defenses of plagiarism. “I read the Cliffs Notes, but I didn’t buy them!” “I was taught to memorize whole pages from this intro text on literary theory!” The three defenses I have imagined here seem to me wholly implausible.
Because she was giving a speech, Ms. Trump was quoting and paraphrasing without quotation marks or endnotes.
Ms. Trump (or her speechwriter) doesn’t understand persnickety academic or journalistic protocols when working with sources.
“In writing her beautiful speech, Melania’s team of writers took notes on her life’s inspirations, and in some instances included fragments that reflected her own thinking.”“Included fragments”: well, that’s plagiarism.
Our trip to hear our state representative speak on funding for our university turned out to be an interesting waste of time. We arrived about ten minutes late — Google Maps gave two locations for the venue, miles apart, and we chose the wrong one first. What we missed: all but a minute or two of someone from state government explaining how to create a household budget. (Metaphor? Parable?) She gave up, saying that she felt that she was lecturing. But we heard every word of our rep’s presentation, a meandering, ill-organized combination of plain-folks talk, high dudgeon, and cynicism. Though the event had been advertised as a discussion of university funding, that subject came up only briefly. The main purpose of our rep’s presentation seemed to be to run down the clock — he even joked that he was leaving about “one minute” for questions. Ha ha.
Key words: billion , billions . Yes, Illinois spends billions and billions of dollars (which, really, are no laughing matter). Our rep failed to mention though that Illinois has one of the lowest rates of per capita spending of all states. Other key words: Chicago , Democrats , them , they . The last two words referred to Democrats.
Low point: our rep holding up and then thumbing through a binder-clipped, printed version of a stack of PowerPoint slides. (He was not using a computer or projector.) As he explained at another point in his presentation, he is “not yet technically savvy.”
I was disappointed to see so few members of my university community in attendance. Perhaps they had concluded that they would be wasting their time. I did my bit by talking (at some length) about our rep’s dubious arithmetic and about public higher education and the national attention that our state’s manufactured budget crisis has drawn. One older man stared at me angrily when I mentioned a recent Daily Show skit and its advice for students: “Get the fuck out of Illinois.” I left the fuck out: I respect decorum, at least at public meetings. This man had turned around angrily at my mere mention of The Daily Show .
Elaine and I had ice cream and strawberries when we got home.
Related reading
All OCA Illinois budget crisis posts (Pinboard)
Roger Rosenblatt:
You are likely to work for some company or other, but keep a safe distance. There is no contempt as bitter as that felt by compromised minds for the independent ones that have joined them. Grin broadly at the water cooler, and go home to where you live.Years ago I clipped these sentences and pasted them into a commonplace book. I think they offer good advice for any worker, despite the scornful tone (“compromised minds”), despite the possible absence of a water cooler. It’s necessary to have a life apart.
“Speech for a High School Graduate,” Time (June 9, 1997).
