Senator’s sling (mud, that is)

I was wondering what Senator Tito Sotto was going to do after the latest arrow came in the plagiarism scandal that embroiled him.  To recall, first he was accused of lifting heavily from the works of four bloggers, which he allegedly twisted for his own ends.  There was some artillery fired back and forth, but the Senator was combative, refusing to acknowledge he had transgressed on anyone’s rights.

Then, he was accused of plagiarizing the Day of Affirmation speech of Robert Kennedy for his own speech, which he then defended by arguing he had translated RFK’s speech into Filipino, and therefore that element of  ‘originality’ rescued it from the squalor of plagiarism.  (His killer argument: Does the Kennedys know how to speak Tagalog?)

I had thought the matter was essentially futile, since the Senator was on an entirely different plane from his detractors and would never back down on this one but somehow, the Kennedys got wind of the story and fired off their own missive against the Senator.

In a letter written under the letterhead of the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights, Kerry Kennedy accused the Senator point blank of plagiarism.  Oh, there were other choice words as well, including ‘unethical’ and ‘theft’, which really left no ambiguity about where RFK’s daughter was coming from, but the real irony was, as she pointed out, RFK’s speech had been meant to promote global human rights, and here was Senator Sotto using the very same speech to fight contraception.

Given this ammo, the academicians were all set to file an ethics complaint against the Senator, using not just Kerry’s momentum but real formal statements from the US-based bloggers who had complained of idea theft.  The Senator wasn’t fazed:  he was reported as daring the complainants to come forward and bring it on.

But on the day that they indeed filed, he came out with an apology to the Kennedys.  His exact words: Copying or imitation is the highest form of flattery.  But if it upsets the Kennedy family, then well I’m sorry...but that is not the intention that we had.  (Did that sound appropriately contrite to you?)

So there, I thought that was the end of the issue.  There was a moment when I had thought that the Senator’s mark in history would become, not that he was a great comedian or  even a saint to pro-life advocates, but how he had been called a plagiarist by the all powerful Kennedys, and that would be all that future Filipinos would ever remember of him. But perhaps, the apology had defused this possibility.

Maybe he could go on and do other things to overwrite this sordid chapter in his career.  Maybe he would atone for this transgression.   Maybe the advisers around him (and the speechwriters who just kept on lifting) would relent and let him focus on substantive issues.  Or maybe not.

Just today, we wake up to the news that the Senator has alluded to a book that intimates that RFK’s more famous brother, Jack, had borrowed the “ask not” portion of his inaugural speech of 1961. Maybe ‘alluded’ isn’t even the right word, the Senator is reported as having sent a text message to a newspaper referring to the news link.

So, his researchers have obviously been busy, and they’ve pounced on this tidbit that they somehow found, perhaps through a zealous trolling of the net.  The message: the Senator isn’t the only plagiarist, but a Kennedy also is.  And, we realize, the sordid chapter is far from over.

This is my initial reaction, for sure I’ll have more:  how low can the Senator go, when at a time he had already offered the olive branch, he’ll still stir up the same mess by going after not just RFK or the administrator of his estate, Kerry, but another member of the Kennedy family who’s not just quietly sitting by the wayside, but is actually lying in peace in some cemetery?  (Refer to my earlier question on the sincerity of the apology). Is the Senator harboring ill will against the Kennedys, perhaps for forcing him to utter the dreaded ‘sorry’?  Does he feel the whole Kennedy clan is against him?

Perhaps, now they are.