If I am interpreting the Inter Lake’s July 22 editorial correctly, Melania Trump’s plagiarism from Michelle Obama is a mortal sin. She took such unique Michelle Obama thoughts as, “you work hard for what you want in life,” “your word is your bond” and “you treat people with respect.”

Has no one ever used these thoughts in speeches over the millennia? Really? Come on, editorial board, how about doing a little research? And does Michelle Obama, who took one of her thoughts from Saul Alinsky, similarly deserve scorn? Should Obama himself have been publicly humiliated for stealing the words of Deval Patrick, former governor of Massachusetts in 2007? Should Joe Biden for plagiarizing British politician Neil Kinnock in 1998? And I could give four or five other examples of Democratic plagiarism that went unnoticed.

The Inter Lake editorial board points to the severe consequences visited upon a briefly appointed (never elected) Sen. John Walsh, who only achieved that brief title by manipulation of the early retirement of Max Baucus, a scandal unto itself. What the editorial board fails to identify is that Walsh plagiarized an entire page word-for-word from a Harvard paper and that each of his six conclusions was stolen from a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace document and used in a paper written to obtain a master’s degree from the U.S. Army War College without attribution. Also, he did it purposefully. He copied the page word for word with the intent to claim it as his own.

Hardly the same level of transgression as the future first lady having a speechwriter closely paraphrase three or four sentences of a decade old speech, which itself was not very original.

Intent is important. I don’t believe Melania Trump wrote her speech, though she did deliver it well. If anyone is guilty, it would be her speechwriters for not using a plagiarism checker. The woman who claimed guilt was dismissed by the drive-by media as “falling on her sword” (I wonder if they attributed this phrase to Plutarch of ancient Rome, who apparently used it in relation to Brutus).

After all, you can’t sully the Trump campaign by condemning a speechwriter. They needed to degrade an outstanding performance by a beautiful woman to derail the success of the Trump convention. I agree the campaign should have apologized, mentioned that the values spoken of in both speeches need to be shared by all, and moved on.

By being defensive, they stoked the fires of the media (apparently including at least some on our editorial board) to find something — anything — about this intelligent, beautiful, accomplished woman to criticize. She will be the envy of every other first lady in the world when she assumes that role as our first lady.

As one of my mentors used to say (and I hope since I am using an attribution, although blinded, the Inter Lake won’t take me to task), “Envy is a terrible thing ... it eats away at the insides!”

Myerowitz is from Columbia Falls