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A search for the name 'Maniscalco' on the snopes.com website reveals the
following:
Origins: The origins of "You Worry Me" remain murky â it first appeared on
the Internet in June 2002, but attempts to verify whether its real author is
an American Airlines pilot and/or someone named John Maniscalco have led to
dead ends. According to the FAA Registry, John Maniscalco is indeed a real
pilot, but this item was also printed in a less vitriolic form in the
Hyatsville,
Maryland, Gazette (under the title "An open letter to my Arab-Muslim
neighbors") on 12 October 2001 and credited to a Kevin Daly of Beltsville.
Newspaper
publication of a piece as a letter to the editor is not a reliable indicator of
true authorship, however, as demonstrated by another widely-circulated Internet
piece about President Clinton that was printed in several different
newspapers under the names of at least four different people. The Gazette
letter might
have been based on the Internet version, or the Internet version might be an
altered transcription of the Gazette letter; John Maniscalco might have been
the original author (or alterer), or he might have been someone whose name
became attached to the piece simply because he forwarded it to others.
Aside from the question of authorship, this is not an item that can be
branded "true" or "false," because it's merely someone's expression of his
opinions. Thematically, it's a more overt expression of the feelings conveyed
by such
(apocryphal) September 11-related legends as the claim that no taxis were to
be found around the World Trade Center the morning of the terrorist attacks:
the fear and unease generated by the knowledge that the perpetrators were
people
who had been living among us undetected for months; people who, although they
may have been foreigners, were not out of place amidst the cultural diversity
of America. How, then, do we now distinguish friend from foe? Wouldn't it be
so much easier if â as advocated here â we could simply assume all
ARAB-MUSLIMS to be guilty and demand them to demonstrate otherwise?
But such an approach is not only inimical to many of the principles American
stands for, it is also logically flawed. What terrorists bent on the
destruction of the USA would hesitate to camouflage themselves by
hypocritically waving
American flags or professing a false love for the USA? We cannot judge people
by outward appearances alone, and that realization leaves us feeling scared
and powerless.
Last updated: 4 September 2002
The URL for this page is http://www.snopes.com/rumors/worryme.htm
Click here to e-mail this page to a friend
Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2004
by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson
This material may not be reproduced without permission
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