I was shocked and saddened to to find that a formerly well-respected, nationally syndicated journalist had been accused of plagiarism, i.e., the taking of ideas and writings of others and passing them off as your own.

Any journalist who’d resort to the theft of another’s work should be locked up. As a columnist who has only original ideas, I could never tolerate being locked up. Give me liberty or give me death, is how I would phrase it in my very own words. Unless I was unjustly imprisoned for political activism, in which case I’d regret that I have but one life to give for my country. Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country. That’s what I would say in my own words.

Everything seems so complicated now that I’m an adult. Yesterday, when I was young, the taste of life was sweet, as rain upon my tongue. Yes, back then, life seemed so simple. Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away, now it looks as though they’re here to stay. Oh, I believe in yesterday. Ah, but today is the first day of the rest of your life. That’s the way I would phrase it, but then, I’m a professional wordsmith.

I wish I had a chance to meet with that disgraced journalist. “Oh say can you see, by the dawn’s early light,” I’d scold her, “what a disservice you’ve done to the profession of journalism? You have such talent that if you’d only remained true to yourself, your peers would crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea. Let me tell you something about life, sir, in my very own words. Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what your’re going to get, unless you remove each piece from its wrapper and stick your finger through the bottom and lick the filling out. Come to think of it, life is nothing like a box of chocolates. It’s more like a bowl of cherries.”

I’ll admit I know little about political commentary such as that fellow writes. I just write humor. That’s why I’ve decided to apply for a job as a writer of original jokes on one of those late-night television talk shows.I have a few really good original ones I’ve been working on. One of them that I just thought of starts, “Why did the chicken cross the road?” I’m still working on the punch line. I’ve also come up with a series of jokes based on the original premise of a stranger approaching a door. They all start with the words, “Knock-knock,” and end with a “Who’s there?”- based pun. They’re a scream. As soon as I work the bugs out and tighten it up a bit, I’ll send a resume and some samples to Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Fallon, and Jimmy Kimmel.

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