There is a new issue in the Wisconsin governor's race. It claims that Mary Burke plagiarized parts of her jobs program document. Except that Burke didn't write the document. She hired a professional to do it. He was using parts of documents for other governors THAT HE WROTE. Burke readily acknowledges that this was not her writing - I doubt any politician writes these types of documents - let alone their speeches. But here is the thing - the person writing the document was using his own words from previous documents. Buzzfeed calls this plagiarism. I am going to say this very slowly so the people as Buzzfeed can understand.
You cannot plagiarize yourself.
Plagiarism is stealing somebody else's work. You cannot by definition steal your own work (well you can if somebody else owns the copyright, but that is still not plagiarism).
Now you might say that person should have moved some words around. That would have been an incredibly stupid thing to do. He had already figured out the best possible way to say it and he literally owns that form of expression and he can use it any way he likes. There is no reason not to express that idea that way if it is already his expression.
It is like if you opened a cookie store and came up with a great recipe. And then you opened up another store in a different town and you used the same recipe. And somebody accused you of stealing the recipe.
So let's end this once and for all. Find out who Scott Walker's speech writer is (and you can do this for any politician). Find out who the speech writer worked for previously. Go through the speeches and compare them. I guarantee you will find "plagiarism."
Aaaaaarrrrrgggggghhhhhhh