Published March 28, 2002 in issue #0008 of the Hook

BY DAN SAVAGE MAIL @SAVAGE.COM

Aaaaargh! Do you really want to go prancing around Las Vegas with the kind of loser who could win your impossible plagiarism contest? I went online to figure out who you plagiarized, thinking it would only take a day or two to track down the authors of the responses in your plagiarized column. Twelve hours later, I gave up. The only person who could win this contest is some professional research geek! Not cool, Dan! Devise a new, winnable contest, or you'll be heading to Las Vegas with someone who's a total geek! Is that what you want?! Cry Foul

I said the plagiarism contest was tough, CF, and that's why I made the prize package so spectacular. (That prize package again: Three days in Vegas, at the Bellagio, with the flights, food, gambling, booze, and hookers all on me.) I'm certainly not going to take someone to Las Vegas based on their ability to type a few lines into a search engine. Shit, I might as well have a "tie your own shoes" contest. I would rather go to Vegas with a research geek than some whiner who wants Las Vegas handed to him on a platter.

I just want to let you know that there is a website that searches for plagiarized items. It's called "turnitin.com." Schools and universities use it to catch students. Your contest might be a lot easier than you think. Nancy

Read on, Nancy.

I submitted your plagiarized answers to a plagiarism search engine (www.turnitin.com) and ran it through some plagiarism-detecting software (EVE2 available at www.canexus.com/eve), and they both came up blank. Rest assured that the internet will be no help to anybody. Teach

Nice try, Teach.

Where do you get your information? I'm referring to your reply to Montana Momma's letter and your comment that "One of the main features of homosexuality is promiscuity." You are so wrong! My partner and I have been in a monogamous LTR (Life Time Relationship) for 18 years. My partner and I are homosexuals, and you do not have the right to speak on our behalf you are not the spokesperson for our community! Tell Montana Momma that her son can have a monogamous LTR relationship with another man! Itchy & Scratchy

Did you finish reading the column you're complaining about? Apparently not, I&S, or you would know that I didn't write the response to Montana Momma. Like all the responses in that column, the advice to Montana Momma was lifted from a book by some other advice-monger, a fact revealed at the end of the column. The next time you feel your panties crawling up your cracks, I&S, finish reading the column before you bang out an angry letter, okay?

Fitting in with your plagiarism contest and its "catch me committing a crime" theme, Dear Abby turned in one of her readers who wrote to her about his attraction to his girlfriend's young daughters. What do you think about this? Isn't there an assumption of confidentiality between advice columnists and their correspondents? Would you turn in someone who wrote to you about doing something illegal? Safe With Dan

If I called the police every time someone doing something illegal sent me a letter I would be on the phone with the cops 24 hours a day. More than half my mail is about sodomy of one sort or another, SWD, and sodomy is illegal in a lot of the places where my column appears. And, shit, I often read my mail while I'm doing something illegal.

That said, if I were to get a letter from someone who was raping kids I would definitely call the cops. The man Abigail Van Buren turned in wasn't raping kids, however, only fantasizing about raping kids, and while his fantasies were deeply disturbing, his fantasies weren't illegal. I'm torn: In Abby's shoes, I probably wouldn't have called the cops. I don't think we want people with sexual fantasies involving children to feel as if they can't reach out for help without being exposed or arrested. But if someone with access to my four-year-old wrote a letter to Dear Abby about fantasies concerning my son, I would want her to call the cops immediately.

>> Back to The HooK front page