You don’t want to be an ass-hat wearing ass-clown, do you?

Ahh, the Internet. To quote Obi Wan Kenobi, “you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy…” YOU, dear reader, must be cautious.

There are folks who do not understand my hatred of all things Walmart and sometimes these folks will email things trying to prove that a store I do shop at – Target, and other stores – is just as bad, if not worse. So how did we go from the Internet being a wretched hive to retail stores? Patience, all will become clear. This morning I receive an email from a co-worker that contains the following.

“Dick Forrey of the Vietnam Veterans Association wrote. "Recently we asked the local TARGET store to be a proud sponsor of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall during our spring recognition event.
We received the following reply from the local TARGET management:

"Veterans do not meet our area of giving. We only donate to the arts,
social action groups, gay & lesbian causes, and education."
So I'm thinking, if the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall and veterans in
general, do not meet their donation criteria, then something is really
wrong at this TARGET store. We were not asking for thousands of dollars, not even hundreds, just a small sponsorship for a memorial remembrance. As a followup, I Emailed the TARGET U.S. Corporate Headquarters and their response was the same. That's their national policy. Then I looked into the company further. They will not allow
the Marines to collect for 'Toys for Tots' at any of their stores. And
during the recent Iraq deployment, they would not allow families of
employees who were called up for active duty to continue their insurance coverage while they were on military service. Then as I dig further, TARGET is a French?owned corporation. Now, I'm thinking again. If TARGET cannot support American Veterans, then
why should my family and I support their stores by spending our hard
earned American dollars! And, have their profits sent to France.
Without the American Vets, where would France be today? They, most likely would be speaking German and trading in Deutsch Marks.
Sincerely,
Dick Forrey
Veterans Helping Veterans”

Apparently this has been circulating via email and the Internet for a very long time. There was of course no supporting evidence, IE an Internet link to any published article by a reliable source. So, doing what I always do when I receive things like this (and like making $$ from Bill Gates for forwarding emails, and photos of an exploding shuttle, and photos of tsunami victims running gleefully from killer waves) I do some investigating of my own. It’s my investigative skills that made me such a good Call of Cthulhu player both in roleplaying and video games. First, I did a Google search for “Dick Forrey of the Vietnam Veterans Association” and I am lead here and to many supporting links. Very interesting.
My next stop on the Internet is to Snopes.com and I find this. Even more interesting.

How long did it take me to find the truth? It took me under five minutes. There are important lessons here. NEVER accept anything you receive in an email or see on the Internet at face value. NEVER forward anything you receive an email until you have researched it yourself and found the truth. ALWAYS share the truth with others and help to curb the spread of misinformation by those who are villianous scum. ALWAYS provide supporting evidence from multiple reliable sources.

If you send me something that you haven’t researched and that you don’t provide supporting evidence for you can bet that I will, and you can also bet that I will send you the truth. There is also a good chance that I will embarrass you with it as well. The level of embarrassment you receive depends on whom you are, how long I have known you and if I think that you should have known better. I just might even go so far as to put the ass-hat firmly on your ass-clown head. You don’t want to be an ass-hat wearing ass-clown do you?

My co-worker was kindly and politely given the correct information with the links to the truth. I never even considered giving him/her 'the hat'. However, if they do it again...