My boss just sent me and every other person in the district

[TN al]

this e-mail.

Leave it to Robin Williams to come up with the perfect plan.
What we need now is for our UN Ambassador to stand up and repeat this message.

Robin Williams' plan...(Hard to argue with this logic!)
I see a lot of people yelling for peace, but I have not heard of a plan for peace. So, here's my plan:

The US will apologize to the world for our "interference" in the affairs of other countries, past &present. You know, Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Noriega, Milosovich and the rest of those 'good ole boys.' We will never "interfere" again.

We will withdraw our troops from all over the world, starting with Germany, South Korea and the Philippines. They don't want us there anyway. We would station troops at our borders and allow no one to sneak through holes in the fence.

We will allow all illegal aliens 90 days to get their affairs together and leave this country and will give them a free trip home. After 90 days the remainder will be gathered up and deported immediately, regardless of who or where they are. I'm sure France would welcome them.

All future visitors will be thoroughly checked and limited to 90 days, unless given a special permit. No one from a
terrorist nation would be allowed in. If you don't like it there, change it yourself and don't hide here. Asylum would never be
available to anyone. We don't need any more cab drivers or 7-11 cashiers.

No "students" over age 21. The older ones are the bombers. If they don't attend classes, they get a "D" and it's back home, baby.

Energy wise, the US will make a strong effort to become
self-sufficient. This will include developing non-polluting sources of energy but will require a temporary drilling of oil in the Alaskan wilderness. The caribou will have to cope for a while.
Offer Saudi Arabia and other oil producing countries $10 a barrel for their oil. If they don't like it, we go some place
else. They can go somewhere else to sell their production.(About a week of the wells filling up the storage sites would be enough.)

If there is a famine or other natural catastrophe in the
world, we will not "interfere." They can pray to Allah or whomever, for seeds, rain, cement, or whatever they need. Besides, most of what we give them is stolen or given to the army. The
people who need it most get little or nothing.

Ship the UN Headquarters to an isolated island some place. We don't need the spies and fair weather friends here. Besides, the building would make a good homeless shelter or lockup for illegal aliens.

All Americans must go to charm and beauty school. That way, no one can call us "Ugly Americans" any longer.

The Language we speak is ENGLISH.....learn it...or LEAVE...
Now, ain't that a winner of a plan.

"The Statue of Liberty is no longer saying 'Give me your poor,
your tired, your huddled masses." She's got a baseball bat and she's yelling, 'You want a piece of me?'" -

First, did Robin Williams really say this?

Second, help me with a response

[Gasolinedream]

1. Check out Snopes...

or about.urbanlegends. com. It's not Williams and it's not true if I remember right. At least not most of it.

http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/williams.asp

[teach1st]

2. Our friend Snopes again

http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/williams.asp

False

Origins: We don't yet know who is responsible for the piece quoted above, but it definitely wasn't actor-comedian Robin Williams (of Mork & Mindy fame). This item's debut appears to have been a 20 March 2003 posting to the USENET newsgroup alt.motorcycles.harley, and from there it was rapidly disseminated via e-mail and blogs, credited to either "author unknown" or no one at all. The Robin Williams attribution wasn't tacked on until several weeks later, apparently because along the way someone appended a genuine Robin Williams quote to the list as an eleventh item:

"The Statue of Liberty is no longer saying 'Give me your poor, your tired, your huddled masses.' She's got a baseball bat and she's yelling, 'You want a piece of me?'" - Robin Williams.

Obviously the Robin Williams attribution for the final item was interpreted as applying to the list as a whole, so now the entire piece is making the rounds as 'the Robin Williams plan.'

[Caution]

3. not surprisingly, this is BS

http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl-williams-plan.htm

[Spentastic]

4. It's not Williams

http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/williams.asp

Also any non WASPS in your comapany? Your boss may well have just got himself fired.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

5. I'm going to check Snopes... SNOPED! Yeah!

http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/williams.asp

If memory serves me, RW is not RW. Or is he?

[TNDemo]

6. Respond with a "reply all"

and post the information from Snopes. And add you are sure he did not mean to do that intentionally and it is so easy to get fooled on the internet, yada yada.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

7. Will your job be in danger...

...if you reply with the Snopes link to everybody?

boss.face.apply(egg); /* :evilgrin: */

[Killarney]

8. Reply all

and link to snopes, urbanlegends, and truthorfiction.

[havocmom]

9. When in doubt about such tripe, 'snopes it'.

When you get the ammo you need to debunk, hit the 'reply all' button and do you part for helping people get grounded in reality instead of the wonderland so many reside in.

Of course, it will piss some off. People who are truly delusional can get pretty hostile when you don't accept their delusions as your reality.
Too bad for them :evilgrin:

[klook]

10. Hoax

Williams apparently did say that last part about the Statue of Liberty (according to my research; I haven't seen or heard him saying it).

But according to these references, the rest of it was added by somebody else and attributed to RW:
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl-williams-plan.htm
http://www.truthorfiction.com/rumors/r/robinwilliamspeaceplan.htm
http://www.breakthechain.org/exclusives/robinwilliams.html

How long did it take me to find out this was a hoax? About five seconds. I went to http://www.google.com and entered these terms: "Robin Williams" hoax "plan for peace"

Tell your boss, in as diplomatic a way as possible, that he's wasting bandwidth by sending an email like this without first checking to see if it's a hoax. Here are some good resources, in addition to the three I've cited above --
http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/
http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html
http://vil.mcafee.com/hoax.asp
http://www.nonprofit.net/hoax/default.htm
http://www.stiller.com/hoaxes.htm

I've found that responding quickly to people who send me hoaxes, and including these links, trains them to check for themselves in the future. Good luck!

[TN al]

11. I sent him response #2

and he just sent this back to me:

Doesn’t really matter who gets the credit but there is a lot of true feelings from, I would say, most Americans with the way the world feels about us.

I was going to reply " you can thank your president for that." but then decided I probably needed something a little more tactful. More help please or should I just let it drop?

[booksenkatz]

12. I'd follow up with this

"Yeah, it's sad that the world feels this way about us. Back on 9-11 they were so supportive of us, it breaks my heart that things have gone downhill since then with our foreign relationships." Let him figure out why!
:evilgrin:

[TreasonousBastard]

13. Drop it...

unless everyone can find a way to just joke about it cuz politics and work usually don't mix well. The boss seems like an asshole, but he's still the boss, and new jobs ain't so easy to get now.

Besides, if you work somewhere else they may be even worse.

Life sucks sometimes.

[philosophie_en_rose]

15. But remember it.

Your boss brought up the politics, not you. If he's not willing to hear criticism, then he's essentially forcing his political (and racist) views upon you.

It might not matter, if it doesn't affect how he treats you as an employee. However, if it does, I would remember this incident and file a complaint.

[George Orwell]

14. Actually, Robin Williams did say it...

But like anything that a comedian says, it was taken completely out of context by your boss. It's a pretty funny bit made to show up the thinking of the neocons and their ilk. And to a certain extent, most Americans, as as a group we can't take a joke, even an obvious one. He makes a lot of fun of the French too, but, guess what, they have a sense of humor and understand it.

[SidDithers]

18. I guess it depends on what the meaning of the word "it" is...

As noted in the many responses above, Williams said a tiny bit of the rant, but has had the whole thing incorrectly attributed to him.

Welcome to DU.

Sid

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

16. How many times is this shit gonna come up? These wingers are pathetic.

The only thing he said was. "The Statue of Liberty is no longer saying 'Give me your poor,
your tired, your huddled masses." She's got a baseball bat and she's yelling, 'You want a piece of me?'" -

And it was taken out of context. This was in his Broadway stand up. It's just like the George Carlin "Ugly American" bullshit. If anything Williams has savaged the maladministration and ignorance in our country more than most comedians.

[BurtWorm]

17. Freepers are always writing this kind of spam philosophy

and putting the names of left-wing comedians on them to legitimize them. Usually it's George Carlin.

[tjwash]

19. What, it's not George Carlin or Andy Rooney this time?

Robin would be extremely insulted, as Carlin has been in the past, to have something this shallow, uncreative, and blatantly jingoistic, looking as if it is a simple cut and paste compilation of free republic member tag lines,to even be remotely attributed to himself.

Williams is an extremely bright, articulate, and creative person, who takes great pride, and care with his writing. This just, and I hate to use a moniker, sucks too bad to be one of his.