McCain cribs speech from Wikipedia; life imitates XKCD

News breaking that John McCain seems to have cribbed his latest speech on Georgia from Wikipedia delighted me for many reasons. First that the news was broken for me by the Onion's RSS feed, again earning its claim to be America's Finest News Source. Second because if McCain (or, let's be realistic, some seriously lazy McCain speechwriters) is cribbing speeches off a user-edited encyclopaedia we all have a chance of crafting the next four years of American political rhetoric, a true government of the people by the people. But mostly because it fits so neatly with an old XKCD cartoon, "Wikipedian protestor".

Also, a free tip for other politicians and other public figures - before you read out a speech, run a few bits of it through Google and check it hasn't been lifted wholesale from the web. Because by now some of the kids writing your speeches are probably digital natives, which frankly means they got through a lot of school by knowing more about the copy and paste command than their teachers.