So, my 9th-grade son got in trouble for looking up Arab jokes on-line in Language Arts class. I’m not sure how I should feel about myself in that I wasn’t angry about the racist implications or misuse of time, but rather the fact that he wasn’t coming up with his own material.

Point well taken. Literally.
“When you take stuff from one writer it’s plagiarism, but when you take from many writers it’s called research.” Sounds like research to me. 😉