Bad Attribution, Good Thoughts

I received a chain e-mail today that had an opinion piece supposedly written by Andy Rooney. You may have received a similar e-mail, it's a typical 'Pass this on if you love America' thing.

Well, the problem is, Andy Rooney didn't write it. Snopes.com, the Internet site that looks to prove/disprove all these Internet myths, has the info on the fake statement here.

The thing is, I don't care who may have come up with these statements -- Rooney, Clooney, Looney, Huey or Dewey or Louie -- some of the ideas in that statement, which in the Snopes article Rooney calls "racist" and such, are actually good, solid opinions that I agree with.

So Rooney didn't make the statement, but someone felt strongly enough about the ideas in that statement to wrongly attribute it to him rather than just make the statement themselves, which is sad, so here are the parts of the statement I think people should read, regardless of author:

"I don't think being a minority makes you a victim of anything except numbers. The only things I can think of that are truly discriminatory are things like the United Negro College Fund, Jet Magazine, Black Entertainment Television and Miss Black America. Try to have things like the United Caucasian College Fund, Cloud Magazine, White Entertainment Television or Miss White America and see what happens. ... Jesse Jackson will be knocking down your door."

"Guns do not make you a killer. I think killing makes you a killer. You can kill someone with a baseball bat or a car, but no one is trying to ban you from driving to the ball game."

"I believe they are called the Boy Scouts for a reason, which is why there are no girls allowed. Girls belong in the Girl Scouts!"

"I think that if you feel homosexuality is wrong, it is not a phobia, it is an opinion."

"When 70% of the people who get arrested are black, in cities where 70% of the population is black, that is not racial profiling; it is the Law of Probability.

"I believe that if you are selling me a milkshake, a pack of cigarettes, a newspaper or a hotel room, you must do it in English! As a matter of fact, if you want to be an American citizen, you should have to speak English!

"I don't hate the rich. ... I don't pity the poor."

"I think Bill Gates has every right to keep every penny he made and continue to make more. If it ticks you off, go and invent the next operating system that's better, and put your name on the building."

"It doesn't take a whole village to raise a child right, but it does take a parent to stand up to the kid and smack their little behinds when necessary, and say 'No!'"

Snopes attributes some of these comments to comedian George Carlin. Maybe, it does sound like some of Carlin's post-drug-use material. But it doesn't matter who said these things, they make sense to me.