Other than Christmas and New Year’s, it’s not often that a holiday weekend concurs on both sides of the pond. With that in mind I was looking forward to this US Memorial day/UK’s May bank holiday weekend. I was looking forward to not having to work, I was looking forward to going out with my kids – though the weather took care of that – and mostly I was looking forward to no Palin bashing stories to debunk in my Google Alerts email account.

Stupid me to believe that reporters and bloggers will honour this memorial day by saluting the veterans rather than using a memorial day message that Governor Palin wrote against her. So when the following popped into my email I was more than surprised:

Sarah Palin Plagiarized Memorial Day Message:
Yesterday the Palin tweeted the following: “VETERANS,not reporters,give freedom of the press.VETS,not politicians,give freedom to vote.VETS,not campus radicals,give freedom to assemble.” She did not mention that she’d stolen it from a 1970 poem.

Seeing the source, at first I didn’t really pay much attention to it, and frankly, I don’t really care for this blogger, or even know who he or she is, but the more I was thinking about it I realized that this is much bigger than one single blogger.

This is exactly what the LSM and the Palin bashers are all about. They hide in the shadows ready to pounce on anything Governor Palin says or does, ready to misinterpret it and blow it up way out of proportion.

We’re talking about a single verse out of a renowned poem in a tweet, a platform that’s restricted to 140 characters. Had the writer held their ammo for a mere 12 hours they’d have received the full version on the Governors Facebook page, but why be surprised, the prey was there and the predator was ready to attack. The blogger ends the post with the following:

Does one have to attribute in tweets? We’d say that if you’re a politically active public figure with about 160,000 followers it would probably be the decent thing to do.

I don’t know about that, but I guess the standard rule for Governor Palin is that if she reads Humpty Dumpty to baby Trig she must now throw in its origin, lest should the stalker over hear it and accuse her of plagiarizing a nursery rhyme.

My question though, if this is the rule for Governor Palin, what’s the rule for a presidential candidate who while addressing his devoted followers on national television plagiarizes several speeches, does he have to attribute his lines to the source? It would probably be the decent thing to do.

On this Memorial Day weekend salute the veteran who has given you freedom of the press and, while you’re about it, how about in honor of the American soldier, you quit making things up.