Jessica Zafra posted this in her blog, thank goodness for her, as I had been putting it off, even when it has been in my public Facebook account since yesterday morning.
here is the list of three speeches and their sources that’s been going around, with an additional one — the first one — which hasn’t been posted before.
1. at the ateneo family congress, 2009 — MVP’s speech, original 1, original 2
2. at the opening of the new Ateneo lib, 2010 — MVP speech, original
3. post-Ondoy speech on corporate social responsibility, 2009 — MVP speech, original 1, http://www.google.com.ph/search?hl=tl&source=hp&q=These+trials+also+remind+us+that+we+are+tied+together+in+this+life,+in+this+nation+%E2%80%93+that+the+despair+of+one+touches+us+all.+&meta=&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=”>original 2, original 3
4. commencement speech in Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan, 2007 — MVP speech, original 1, original 2, original 3
why did i think twice about posting it here? i didn’t, still don’t, want it to seem like 1) i’m out to do MVP in and 2) i’m being a hypocrite here.
the hypocrisy, I’m told, comes from my own personal knowledge of how plagiarism happens all the time, in the academe in particular, maybe within the walls of the institutions that I have served as student/researcher/writer in U.P. Diliman, and teacher/writer in the AdMU. hypocrisy has to do with this: to make MVP resign, tell him at this point to leave Ateneo, is to pretend that we — the academic community — are clean.
I beg to disagree. I don’t understand why we can’t work from the big fish that’s caught and let the smaller fish freak out and come out, of their own volition, about their own intellectual dishonesties.
i do not doubt this truth: the moment MVP’s plagiarized speeches are proven to matter because the academe kicks him out despite all his money, then every other academic and scholar will be scared shitless about his or her own intellectual dishonesties. MVP himself says it:
i think at this point, what would be hypocritical is to deny that money is talking pretty loudly in this case of plagiarism versus MVP. and please, read these speeches, read the originals. you will find that it isn’t true that what he was reading/saying was essentially about him. some of the more emotional/personal/beautiful lines weren’t his at all.
and now for other lessons in citing your sources, Abs-cbnnews.com, when your source quotes another source, then please revert to the primary source, i.e., me. Jessica had the grace to say that her source about the MVP speeches was my public FB note. the least you could’ve done was to cite me the way she did, diba? if not find that original site where the information first appeared.
as with MVP’s plagiarized speeches, all you needed to do was Google me.
winner ang ABS-CBN. kumain lang ako ng hapunan, pagbalik ko, maayos na ang citation! congratulations! http://abs-cbnnews.com/lifestyle/04/14/10/more-plagiarized-speeches-mvp
May I ask your opinion on a hypothetical? Just suppose, after Cory’s magnificent speech to the US Congress, it was found that parts of her speech were plagiarized by Teddy Boy? Should our people and world leaders have insisted then for Cory to step down?
@danding, good question. one of the things that was first said about this issue was that barack obama had admitted to using someone else’s words in his campaign speech and he won the US presidency anyway. would cory be asked to step down? i doubt it. would teddy boy be made to pay? absolutely. he would also lose all credibility.
maybe the difference between cory and mvp is this: we knew who cory’s speechwriter was, and while they would’ve been talking about what needed to be said, teddyboy was our man, he had a face, we had someone to blame. maybe this is why we would’ve asked for teddyboy’s head, instead of cory’s.
mvp’s case is more complicated i think. for one thing it happened in the context of the academe, an institution that is presumed to be even more credible than government and media. but also, what this plagiarism issue has revealed is that mvp was pretending to begin with that he was the one writing his speeches. in this sense, he didn’t have a speechwriter, he had a ghostwriter. that in fact is already enough reason for him to pay, i think.
Thanks. You have pointed out aspects of this that I had not considered. For a while, i could not see clearly why we would have exempted Cory, but not MVP, from stepping down.
The idea to tar and feather the impish Teddy Boy? I relish the thought, but too easy. Off with his head, I’d say. Cheers!