For a high government official, there is no honor more sacred than that of delivering a commencement address to a bunch of hungover college students. And for college students who spend four or five or sometimes, yes, even six years toiling away at their degrees, it's all so that someday they can sit baking in a polyester gown and an unflattering hat and listen to some obscure dignitary mumble some platitudes about achievement.
The point is, commencements are very important things and most college graduates agree that they could not function as healthy adults were it not for the nuggets of wisdom they accumulated listening to their addresses.
White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel has thus betrayed the nation and perverted the goals of thousands of American youngsters by delivering virtually the same commencement address at two of our nation's finest institutions: Sarah Lawrence College and George Washington University.
This explosive news was recently revealed on the GW Hatchet:
Aside from sharing some personal memories from his undergraduate experience at Sarah Lawrence, his alma mater, Emanuel’s speech was exactly the same.
America does not look fondly on cheaters, and it looks even less fondly on plagiarists. Why, look what happened to Maureen Dowd after she copied a sentence out of a friend's email, not realizing that the friend was copying a sentence from Josh Marshall's blog! She still has her job, if she can make it to the office covered in tar and feathers.
Joe Biden got busted for plagiarizing a British leader's speech back in the 1980s, and look what happened to him -- he's just a lonely hobo, riding the rails from town to town until the sheriff finds out he's that no-good plagiarizer, and then it's back on the road again.
Rahm Emanuel may not be a plagiarist, any more than somebody who chews their own fingernails is a cannibal. But he should probably be given a slap on the wrist, or sent to bed without dinner or something, for telling the same jokes to two college classes.
The train-hopping hobo Sara K. Smith writes for NBC and Wonkette.
