Robin Williams' Plan for Peace

For several years, the emails with Robin Williams' Peace Plan make their way to our email boxes. I got one just couple of days ago. To make the point stronger, there was also a photo attached, where Robin was wearing a T-shirt with writing in Arabic. It is really him. But is the entire story true?

First, let’s reproduce the received email.

You gotta love Robin Williams…… Even if he’s nuts! 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 one plan."

1. "The US will apologize to the world for our "interference" in their affairs, past & present. You know, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Tojo, Noriega, Milosevic, Hussein, and the rest of those "good ‘ole’ boys", we will never "interfere" again.

2. We will withdraw our troops from all over the world, starting with Germany , South Korea , the Middle East, and the Philippines. They don’t want us there. We would station troops at our borders. No one allowed sneaking through holes in the fence.

3. All illegal aliens have 90 days to get their affairs together and leave. We’ll give them a free trip home. After 90 days the remainder will be gathered up and deported immediately, regardless of whom or where they are. They’re illegal!!! France will welcome them.

4. All future visitors will be thoroughly checked and limited to 90 days unless given a special permit!!!! No one from a terrorist nation will 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.

5. No foreign "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.

6. The US will make a strong effort to become self-sufficient energy wise. 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.

7. Offer Saudi Arabia and other oil producing countries $10 a barrel for their oil. If they don’t like it, we go someplace else. They can go somewhere else to sell their production. (About a week of the wells filling up the storage sites would be enough.)

8. 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 very little, if anything.

9. Ship the UN Headquarters to an isolated island someplace. 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.

10. 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, isn’t that a winner of a plan?

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

If you agree with the above forward it to friends…If not, and I would be amazed, DELETE it!!

Analysis

So, did Robin Williams indeed deliver his own “peace plan” while wearing a shirt that read “I Love New York” written in Arabic? The answer is YES only partially. He did wear the shirt, at least once, but he never delivered a speech, which has been attributed to him.

The Shirt

Photos of the Arabic shirt in which Williams is wearing date from a December 19, 2003 appearance he made on the USS Enterprise. According to the Navy News Service account of his appearance, he delivered “a half hour stand-up routine, and then signed autographs and took photos with many crew members.”

The Speech

Apart from the final quotation about Statue of Liberty (an actual quip, sans original context, from his comedy act), Williams — a so-called "San Francisco liberal" whose left-leaning political views have riled folks at the other end of the spectrum and earned him billing on at least one online "Celebrity Blacklist" — clearly did not write the thing.

Final Point

We do consider the final for the hoax exposure the remark from the Robin Williams fan site:

The plan is NOT written by Robin! We don't know who is responsible for the piece, but it definitely wasn't actor/comedian Robin Williams. 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 the eleventh entry was dropped and a genuine Robin Williams quote appended in its place: "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.

The 'Robin Williams' attribution for the final item was interpreted as applying to the list as a whole, so now the entire piece circulates as 'the Robin Williams plan.'