Do you remember when Melania Trump got caught out using a speech that sounded awfully like one Michelle Obama had given? Uncannily so.
Well it turns out that Abraham Lincoln is to Winston Peters as Michelle was to Melania. With the ANZAC speech Uncle Winston gave at Gallipoli having much in common, word wise, with a famous speech of the former US President.
Winston didn’t mention Lincoln during his speech, he just used some of his phrases. He didn’t say he was going to deliver it in the style of the famous address. It was an anonymous tribute, a new speech in it’s own right. Albeit heavily sampling an old one.
For example:
Peters: “We meet at dawn at the site of a great battlefield. We meet here to commemorate the ground around us as the final resting place of far too many of our young men.”
Where 150 years earlier…
Lincoln: “We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives.”
Did he generate the speech using AI? Was it prepared by a junior staffer who thought it sounded like good stuff, and no one would notice? Or was Winston simply remembering events of his youth?
Another example:
Peters: “We must leave this ground dedicated to making our worlds better. Then the men buried here will not have died in vain.”
Lincoln: “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us ... that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.”
Those are just two examples of similar passages, you can see the full list here.
A spokesperson for Peters said, “The minister was very hands on in all aspects of the Dawn Address, utilising his wide knowledge of history and historical speeches/eulogies, including the Gettysburg Address.”
That sounded like one of Trump’s lackeys to me, boasting of his boss’s incredible talents.
What next? Will he tell us that Winston’s a fine hands-on Cabbage Boat Skipper, utilising his vast knowledge of river navigation and brassicas?
The next passage is from the same article that’s linked above.
Professor Stephen Marshall, an expert in learning and plagiarism from Victoria University of Wellington, believed that, far from plagiarising the speech, Peters was deliberately evoking its symbolism “in order to align himself with that narrative, that message”.
“I don’t think he or anyone in his speech writing team would have expected anyone to not realise that he was using direct references to the speech.”
Marshall said Lincoln’s speech had become so famous that you didn’t have to tell your audience when referencing it because they most likely already knew.
Some interesting logic there. That because the audience, which in this case will have included a large contingent of Kiwi backpackers on OE, know the speech - it’s not plagiarism.
I reckon Prof. Marshall rather over estimates the degree to which many of those present will have been familiar with the great speeches of the American Civil War.
That’s not meant as any disrespect to the young people making the pilgrimage. Like many NZers I’ve been there myself, although not on ANZAC day. It’s just that there’s a good chance that many of them won’t have known the words.
If Winston had gotten up there and said “You’re not in Guatemala now”, “Always blow on the pie”, or “Deez Nuts” that would have been fine. The audience would’ve gotten the references. But the Gettysburg address? Yeah Nah. Maybe the opening line?
How does it go again? Let’s give it the Winston treatment…
Four score and seven years ago my father brought forth on another continent a new man, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Then later I realised that people weren’t as keen on equality as I’d been led to believe, so I said bugger it, let’s just pretend we have equality already - there’s nothing to see here.
Heather Kavan, a senior lecturer who teaches speech writing at Massey University, said “It’s really embarrassing, it’s definitely a speaker’s nightmare for a writer to hand them a speech with copied sentences in it.”
She said all Peters had to do in the speech was add in a phrase like: “As Lincoln said ...” or “Like Lincoln, I think this ...”.
I’m not being flippant about the famous address. It’s a very good one. It’s not even the fact that Winston hasn’t acknowledged his use of it that bothers me.
What annoys me is that it’s a bit rich for someone who has wallowed in the lowest denominator of populism for votes, ever willing to stoke racial division, to base his speech on that great call for equality.
Winston, and his coalition chums, oppose affirmative action and are busy unwinding anything that looks like it. Whereas you’d have to say that the American Civil War was pretty much affirmative action on steroids.
For goodness sake, it was only six weeks ago that Peters was giving his State of the Nation speech comparing co-governance with Nazi Germany.
That’s not the language of someone that ought to be representing us on the world stage, at a time when real statesmanship is required. You won’t find good candidates for that role from those burrowing in rabbit holes for votes.
It made me think of another famous speech Winston could have plagiarised. Or not plagiarised, I’m sure most of us know this one.
“I have a dream that one day down in Aotearoa, little brown boys and brown girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. Ignoring all past grievances and current inequalities.”
I’m kidding, of course. Winston would never say “Aotearoa”.
What do you think? Was it disrespectful to borrow parts of another speech, to duplicate it’s structure, at such a sombre and significant moment?
Or was it smart to reuse something that’s worked before? Perhaps a tactic this government should try more often?
A bit of Iron Maiden today. A band who, as you’ll see from the start of this track, were inspired by Winston’s speeches.
Winston Peters goes all statesmanlike overseas but is such a growly, destructive and abusive old bastard at home. I say we keep him away even if it means pinching other speeches because he has the imagination of a flea.
Maybe this was his first attempt at AI? Siri, give me a statesmanlike speech commemorating a great battle, but don’t mention vaccination…