Quote:

---

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.

---