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Rickrolled By Melania?

7/20/2016

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     By yesterday morning the buzz around the Republican National Convention was about Melania Trump,
...and her now classic speech, which turned out to be a badly-disguised knock-off of Michelle Obama's 2008 Democratic Convention speech.
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     Seems poor Melania stepped in it with both high heels as, since she'd claimed  that she wrote the speech herself with almost no help, she was either a plagerizer if she did write the speech or a Fibber McGee  if she didn't.
     However by last night an article in the New Times cleared up the plagerizer-vs-fibber question:  turns out that Donald had hired two of the top political speech writers in the nation to write a speech for Melania, which they did, most of which she threw away, opting to write - or rather copy - her own speech. 
      But by later last night a new question was swirling around Melania's speech:  along with plagerizing, had Melania cleverly rickrolled us as well?

       For all you folks over 50 who have no idea what rickrolling means, well, neither did I until last night when while roving the internet I came across a reference to that activity and to Melania potentially having done it in her speech.
        At first I had a bit of a difficult time understanding exactly what the verb "to rickroll" meant, but after having researched it on several different pop culture and urban slang sites and Wikipedia I think I get it, more or less.

   So back in 1987 singer Rick Astley came out with the catchy pop hit "Never Gonna Give You up",  for which he made a music video as well. 
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      Some time around 2007 some computer whiz kid for God knows what reason thought up an internet prank that involved embedding a link to Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" into links to random other sites.  In other words,  say you were looking for, I don't know, the Benihana's  in Peoria Illinois, but when you opened the link instead of a sushi menu popping up you got the video of Rick Astley singing and dancing.  That would mean you'd been rickrolled. 
     I guess it's supposed to be funny.  Actually it kind of is.
     Anyway, I guess the hip, internet savvy youngsters know all about and are into that sort of thing.    
      But in more recent times rickrolling has been expanded to include finding a sneaky way to smoothly work lyrics of "Never Gonna Give You Up" into a conversation, lecture, speech, etc.
      The lyrics are as follows:
       Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around or desert you;
       Never gonna say good-by, never gonna make you cry, never gonna tell a lie or hurt you.
    
Thus when Melania said at one point between the Michell Obama parts,  “He will never, ever give up.  And, most importantly, he will never, ever, let you down,”  the young internet intelegensia sat up and took notice and the "did she or didn't she" debate has been roiling online ever since, though the major consensus seems to be that she did.  After all, as Brian Flood, a writer for the Hollywood blog "The Wrap" pointed out in his article,"Forget Plagerism - Did Melannia Trump Rickroll Us With Her RNC Speech?":  "...It's too bad her next line wasn't, 'He will never run around or desert you', but the reference is still too obvious to ignore."
     Oh, Melania, you prankster!  ;)

References:
1. "How Melania Trump's Speech Veered Offcourse And Caused An Uproar"  http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/20/us/politics/melania-trump-convention-speech.html

2. http://www.vox.com/2016/7/19/12221654/melania-trump-rickroll

3. http://www.thewrap.com/melania-trump-plagiarism-rick-astley-rickroll/

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickrolling

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