(John Ransom, Headline USA) The case trying to bar Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., from the ballot descended into farce as a Democrat attorney charged that Greene “plagiarized” the movie “Independence Day” in a J6 speech.
Attorney Andrew Celli, who represents a group of voters who want to kick Greene off the ballot, charged that Greene stole one of her lines from an actor playing the US President in the movie.
During her J6 speech Greene called upon supporters to “not go quietly into the night,” a phrase in the movie, which itself is borrowed from another text.
Poet Dylan Thomas penned a poem titled “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night,” that “shakes an angry fist at death,” according to NPR.
Subsequent versions of the phrase have been used in various works of literature and theatrics, including by Iggy Pop, Michael Caine in the movie “Interstellar,” and in the movie “Independence Day,” said NPR.
In an interview with NPR, US poet laureate Billy Collins said the phrase was especially poignant, as the COVID pandemic forced many people to die alone, without a “deathbed scene.”
Celli, however, mistakenly tied the phrase to the US Revolutionary War, “one of several references he made to the United States’ violent fight for independence from Great Britain in 1776,” according to Bloomberg Law, which blasted the attorney for being “long on theatrics.”
It would hardly be the first time that a US politician paraphrased a movie or a work of literature in speech.
In a 2014 speech, then-President Obama quoted from the violent police drama “The Departed.”
Prior to that, in a 2013 speech, Obama lifted a line from the movie “The American President,” when the president of the United States, played by actor Michael Douglas, brags that he has a “Rose Garden” where he can get his girlfriend a lot of flowers, said the Washington Examiner.
Celli’s charges of plagiarism drew laughter from the court’s gallery and from Greene herself.
“I haven’t watched movies in a long time but from what I recall it’s a great movie,” Greene said, with a broad smirk on her face.
