| schema:text
| - Example: [Collected via e-mail, August 2011]
I'm 83 and I'm Tired" — by Bill CosbyI'm 83. Except for brief period in the 50's when I was doing my National Service, I've worked hard since I was 17. Despite some health challenges, I still put in 50-hour weeks, and haven't called in sick in seven or eight years. I make a good salary, but I didn't inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, there's no retirement in sight, and I'm tired. Very tired.
I'm tired of being told that I have to "spread the wealth" to people who don't have my work ethic. I'm tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy to earn it.
I'm tired of being told that I have to pay more taxes to "keep people in their homes." Sure, if they lost their jobs or got sick, I’m willing to help. But if they bought McMansions at three times the price of our paid-off, $250,000 condo, on one-third of my salary, then let the leftwing Congresscritters who passed Fannie and Freddie and the Community Reinvestment Act that created the bubble help them — with their own money.
[Rest of article here.]
The above-referenced opinion piece detailing political and social issues the author is "tired of" hearing about was penned by Robert A. Hall, a former Massachusetts state senator and U.S. Marine Corps veteran who is also the author of the 2005 book The Good Bits (The Marines, the Massachusetts Senate and Managing Associations).
Robert Hall blogs as The Old Jarhead at tartanmarine.blogspot.com, and the piece quoted here, titled "I'm Tired," was his blog entry for 19 February 2009.
Since August 2011 this opinion piece has been widely circulated on the Internet in a version that presents it as the work of comedian Bill Cosby. Dr. Cosby (who is actually 75 years old) had nothing to do with writing it, and his own site features a
denial of any association with it:
There’s an email floating around — entitled “I’m 76 and tired” — purportedly sent by me. I did not write the email, I did not send the email, I’m not 76, and I don’t subscribe to the ugly views expressed in the email. We are coming up to an important anniversary on Sunday [the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks], which is a day when we should all come together. Whoever wrote this email is not thinking about our country, or what is important. If you get the email, it’s time to hit DELETE.
Some readers who have viewed a correctly attributed version of this item have nonetheless confused its real author, Robert A. Hall (the former Massachusetts state senator) with Robert David Hall (the actor who plays coroner Dr. Al Robbins on the TV show CSI: Crime Scene Investigation). Though their names are similar, they're very different people. Compounding the problem, one version of the e-mail displayed within it a photograph of the actor, thereby erroneously leading recipients to believe the man pictured was the piece's author.
In form, this item echoes another "I'm Tired" piece written in 2005 by Lt. Col. Joe Repya, who like Robert Hall is also a political candidate and veteran.
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