Political plagiarism as a teachable moment.

By now we all know Melania Trump channeled her inner 14-year old high school freshman and played a little verbal Freddy Fast Fingers with her speech at the Republican National Convention the other night.

In it, Trump plagiarized Michelle Obama's Democratic National Convention speech eight years earlier. Words and phrases like hard work, American dream, values--yada, yada, yada--the sort of political speech making where nothing but white noise is said, but it's an easy sell. Americans love a good fairy tale, regardless of political affiliation.

Which leads us to the teachable moment that has American teachers giddy with excitement. They can teach popularized plagiarism! The BBC reached out to various teachers, including Brad Francis, an English teacher at Davis Middle School in Evanston, Wyoming.

"Melania's speech is probably the most blatant example that I have ever seen," Francis told the BBC. "Eighth grade students need very literal examples, and her speech is basically verbatim to Michelle Obama's. It will help them learn absolutely what not to do in their writing."

Admittedly, Francis might need to learn a little bit of nuance. The speech is absolutely a case of plagiarism, but the entire thing isn't "basically verbatim." Francis would get a C+ grade for such hyperbole and exaggeration in his argument.

"I have students who try to copy and paste material from the internet all the time to pass it off as their own," Francis continued telling the BBC. "That speech was Michelle Obama's intellectual property."

The real disappointing angle that's falling through the cracks with all of this is that two different political parties actually wanted to claim that feeble and uninspired speech as either intellectual or property.

Rock, Paper, Scissors is SO amateur hour by Alaskan standards.

A college education decision is riding on you, buddy...

Sometimes you go the rock, paper, scissors route when deciding things. Sometimes you gun down a bear. But this is Alaska we're talking about, so you get one guess where this is going.

High school senior Chase Ferris of Palmer, AK, had the choice of playing football at the University of Mary or attending the University of Wyoming to hit the books. Sports versus academics. Both had advantages for our young charge here, but both left Ferris confused what to do. So Ferris took the logical step, as the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman reports:


(Ferris) picked a spring bear hunt earlier this year to help him make the final decision. If he got the elusive bear he’d tracked before, Ferris would follow the call to play football at the University of Mary. If not, Ferris would turn his focus to academics at the University of Wyoming.

[...]

"I let it all come down to fate, and fate chose University of Mary," Ferris said Monday after he signed his National Letter of Intent to attend the Bismarck, North Dakota, school and play for the Division II Marauders. "We'd gone up for (the bear) once. We hadn't seen it in two days. I said, we kill it, I'll go play football."


Sure, why not? I'm not sure what the correlation is between bear killing and football, unless you're talking about the anemic Chicago Bear variety. But it's Alaska. This sort of rationale is Ph.D. type material.

No word on how Ferris plans to decide upon future life issues, like marriage, kids, or sensible midsized sedans. Animals have been warned to keep their heads on a swivel though.




The University of Mary football team went 1-10 last year. So a lot more bears need to die for that record to change.

Retired ethics professor and pastor busted for sex notes in port-o-potties.

The Rev. Bryant Badger, a former adjunct professor at Casper College in Wyoming, was charged with public indecency, obscene literature, and incitement to a crime after allegedly leaving notes inside a port-a-potty of the hubba-hubba variety.

Being so very helpful with his sexytime propositions, Badger left his phone number where he could be contacted.

Police arrested the former professor after he agreed to meet up, where officers claim Badger got into the backseat of his SUV with an undercover cop and, after some small talk, removed his pants.

According to the Standard-Examiner, a newspaper from Ogden, UT, Badger blamed his high sex drive for his behavior and apologized after being taken into custody.

Ethically, everyone knows it's bad form to leave those sorts of notes in port-o-potties. That's what Craigslist is for.