The Price of a Footnote

Well this is an interesting change of events! For all of you academics out there, who thought that no one would ever notice that you cut and pasted some one's work, take a look at this guy! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12608083
Photo: Reuters (This is me, properly footnoting photo!)
Talk about a fall from grace. Karl Theodor zu Guttenberg is a thirty-nine year old lawyer, descended from a noble Bavarian family. It was openly talked about, in the German political circles, that we would someday become the Chancellor of Germany. Now, in the course of two weeks, he's been publicly denounced as a plagiarist, renounced his PhD from Bayreuth University, and following the protest of nearly 50,000 legitimate German academics has decided to resign his post as German Defence Minister. The way I see it, he has a couple of choices; 1) return to the family homestead, as a recluse, and live off of the wealth that your forefathers built for you, 2) move to a different country, and write a book about how everyone is out to get you, or 3) prove yourself, the right way this time, by working on a PhD that you did yourself. Admit your mistakes and move on, he's already hit bottom, unless someone runs over his dog tomorrow.