One-time liberal hero Dennis Kucinich, now a Fox News contributor, didn’t just dismiss concerns about Melania Trump’s plagiarism at the Republican convention, he outright praised her speech for having shown a “very loving” spirit.
The segment began as a discussion about the national debt. Kucinich gave some decently liberal comments. For example, he argued that we need to have “a close inspection” of our spending policies that give “a blank check that goes for creating wars abroad and the cost comes home and suddenly people are expected to take cutbacks in their standard of living.”
But then, after host Stuart Varney allowed Fox Business host Trish Regan to declare that we “desperately” need “entitlement reform,” Varney changed the subject to Melania Trump’s plagiarism.
An excellent article in Slate explains why Trump’s plagiarism matters:
It’s not just that the Trump campaign allowed this to happen. It’s that, when it became undeniable that Melania Trump had plagiarized Michelle Obama, Trump’s operatives and surrogates denied it, vociferously and repeatedly. You could make a reasonable argument that the plagiarism itself was amusing but ultimately pointless. The cover-up has been much worse than the crime. It’s true that we shouldn’t normalize Trump’s racism. It’s also true that we need to pay attention to how the Trump operation disdains the truth. If they’re willing to lie about something as dumb as this, when the cost of coming clean is relatively low, then what do you think they’ll tell us about the “real issues”?
Kucinich either didn’t seem to have considered this about our possible next president or else he didn’t care. But what’s far worse is that he allowed himself to become a vessel of pro-Trump propaganda on Fox News.
KUCINICH: Well, if there's a couple of stanzas from her performance that represented somebody else's sheet music, I don't think that's such a big deal. I will say this, I listened to the speech, and I thought that a lot of what she said was very moving without regard to the hyper-partisanship right now, and that you can’t, we can't just keep knocking people because they have a faux pas here and miss the deeper meaning of her presence there, which communicated to the American people a spirit that I thought was very loving.
It’s telling that Regan and the other guest, Fox’s Charles Gasparino pointed out how the plagiarism incident reflected poorly on the Trump campaign’s competence.
But Kucinich didn’t even seem to think that worth mentioning.
Kucinich is allowed to have his own opinions, of course. But when you're a liberal under contract to Fox News, you're presumably doing it to advance liberal causes and counter the Fox spin that makes up the overwhelming bulk of the programming. There are plenty of ways to do that without compromising your own views or principles. But Kucinich didn't even seem to have tried. And this is not the first time we have seen him help promote Fox’s Republican agenda.
Kuchinich's motives? We report, you decide. But we do predict Kucinich will be back on Fox for the Democratic convention, probably so he can help criticize it.
Watch it below, from the July 19 Your World.
To top it all off, the said wannabe Flotus made a point of telling interviewers that she wrote almost all of it herself. So unutterably delicious :)
I do feel some sympathy for the woman who apparently wants to be Jackie Kennedy and obviously worked hard to make this her moment in the spotlight.
But she can cry all the way to a Trump casino where surely her husband has ripped off some contractor who’s not as big a bully as he and she are.
FWIW.
The simple fact is if you actually listen to “Blurred Lines” and Gaye’s “Got to Give It Up,” you don’t actually hear any COPIED notes or measures. The feel of the Gaye song is certainly there but a “feel” is NOT a copyrightable musical element. Copyright can legally only extend to specific lyrics or musical notes and passages. But NOT the “feel.”
If a “feel” were copyrightable, then John Lennon and Paul McCartney’s early songs should be credited to Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers since Lennon and McCartney were both trying to “copy” the “feel” of those earlier performers (Holly for the songs, the Everlys for the harmonies). It’s true that both Lennon and McCartney did acknowledge they were “inspired” by the earlier artists but Thicke has ALWAYS looked to Gaye as an “inspiration.”
No, Thicke’s big “crime” (if there really was one) was being a white artist doing unabashed R&B music and daring to state he wanted to do something with the “feel” of “Got to Give It Up.” Compare his case to the recent Led Zeppelin case over “Stairway to Heaven.” Ultimately, the Zeppelin won by acknowledging they’d “stolen” a musical progression that was centuries old (so, they beat a plagiarism rap by admitting to plagiarizing—just not the specific song for which they were on trial).
(Just to note: I hate virtually every copyright infringement/plagiarism case that comes along because the “aggrieved party” bringing the claim seems to want to wait for YEARS after the song or work has been a big hit. Some guy in Belgium, for instance, brought a lawsuit against Madonna over her 1998 hit, “Frozen.” The guy filed suit in 2005—for a song that had been a big hit, even in Belgium, 7 years earlier; it was a Top 5 chart hit in both parts of Belgium in 1998 and ended the year in as one of the year’s Top 20 songs in both parts. He claimed she’d plagiarized a song he’d written in the early 1990s—supposedly; there were also reports that the guy’s song had been written back in the late 70s. Or like the Men at Work song, “Down Under.” That was a hit in the early 80s but a copyright infringement suit only came about in 2002—that the flute solo improperly used the old Australian song, “Kookaburra.” Had the copyright owners of “Kookaburra” seriously never heard “Down Under”—a #1 hit in Australia in 1981 and #1 in the US in early 1983—before 2002? There seriously should be a statute of limitations of say 5 years or the person bringing the suit needs to prove that he’d never heard the song before bringing the suit. After all, it is a bit funny that you almost never hear of plagiarism/copyright infringement cases involving “flops” or “minor hits”—only big hits.)
Our choice ought to kick ass!!
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Please, people everywhere. As far as possible, forget the rewards you imagine you can gain through twisting and dissembling, face down the risks involved in speaking truth in a hostile environment. You have the unique privilege and bear the awesome responsibility of wielding the most powerful instrument in the known universe – a conscious human mind. Use it well.
Memo to Ailes [before you go]: You can buy me off real cheap [say 10% of your $40 million severance package] and I’ll daily post on Newhounds how great Fox News is and Ellen is the anti-Christ. Though can we have 2 anti-Christs since Obama already is one? 😆
You might want to ask Robin Thicke about that, Dennis . . .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6XuRaFvsyk
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I wish a lawyer would take Christie aside and point out that any musician or screenwriter or author who used that to defend themselves against plagiarism (“Well, 93% of the content is original to my work”) would find themselves owing great deals of money to the person or persons whom they plagiarized.
Oh. Does anyone else remember the 2012 GOP freak out over Obama’s “you didn’t build it yourself” comment? Obviously, the GOP doesn’t.
Simple as that, really.
I agree with Kevin. I thought Melania’s speech was a snorer. It has nothing to do with her accent which I actual enjoy. Like so many of the #RNCinCLE speeches we get no insight into The Donald or his policies. Which is leaving much of the #RNCinCLE hall empty seats while those on the floor look bored milling about, chatting, or playing with their phones.
The only effective speech I’ve seen is Trump, Jr. who broke tradition Tuesday and actually mentioned some ideas linked to the day’s theme: job creation.
Chris Christie was clever and rousing but his extreme lying (refer to Slate) coaxed the crowd into a chilling hate chant of “lock her up” revealing to America how much conservatives have lost their minds.
I expected #RNCinCLE to be theater of the absurd and it hardly disappoints. The most incompetent and crazy convention I’ve ever witnessed. A complete freak show.
The Trumpsters have found a fall girl (a low-level staffer) to take the blame for stealing from Michelle Obama. She apologized to the Trumpsters but not to Mrs. Obama. That’s like a thief apologizing to her fence but not to her victim.
It doesn’t matter anyhow, because whatever it is, it’s Hillary’s fault.
I do have to say about this speech that I wasn’t that impressed by it, regardless of the plagiarism. I realize this was a huge challenge for Melania Trump and that it had to be seriously intimidating for anyone to get up and speak publicly for a large audience. I also realize that English is not her first language and she therefore had a double challenge in making this speech. I applaud her courage in getting up to do so, and her wish to support her family. But the actual delivery of the speech to me was essentially an act of reading from the teleprompters, which made it very difficult for me to watch.
