Group,
I don't know what this has to do with Peugeots, but, for the record,
this was NOT written by Mr. Leno. Please check your facts before
forwarding information like this. The idea of Jay Leno writing a treacly
piece like this seemed so unlikely that I immediately checked with
snopes.com; of course, it is not his work. Here's what Snopes says:
Origins: In September 2005, the U.S. was still reeling from the
physical, emotional, and political fallout of Hurricane Katrina (and
several other recent severe storms), and national debate was ongoing
about the Pledge of Allegiance and the appropriateness of its reference
to the U.S. as one nation "under God." That month, comedian Jay Leno
riffed on the emotional climate of America in one of his Tonight Show
opening monologues:
"As you know Hurricane Rita is headed toward Florida, Texas and
Louisiana. Another hurricane! It's like the ninth hurricane this season.
Maybe this is not a good time to take God out of the Pledge of
Allegiance."
A year later, Craig R. Smith penned the above-reproduced essay exhorting
Americans to focus on the positive aspects of their country rather than
the bad events that typically comprise our daily news fodder. By March
2007 the original had been altered through multiple e-mail forwards,
with the closing paragraphs (which quoted B.C. Forbes) removed and a
paraphrase of Jay Leno's joke (with misplaced quotation marks) appended
to the end, creating the mistaken impression that the talk show host was
the author of the entire piece (as evidenced by its new opening line,
"Jay Leno hits the nail on the head ..."). However, only the last
sentence originated with the lantern-jawed comedian; the rest is the
work of someone else.
Please -- there's so much misinformation out there on the Web; let's not
help to spread it.
Dave
Received on Mon Nov 26 05:07:48 2007
