[BallyBill]

No, it was the same mysterious person that always emails me with “MUST READ” in the Subject Box.

[Pookee]

If you forward it to 100 Freepers Bill Gates will come mow your lawn.

[Raycpa]

Nope, it was Abe Lincoln.

[wbill]

"Shut off the TV"...Jay Leno didn't write this.

But, it's a good editorial, nonetheless.

[Badeye]

Internet myth.

[vetvetdoug]

Nick Gholson of the Wichita Falls Times and Record News wrote the "I am A Bad American" that was circulated several years ago. I wouldn't doubt that he wrote this too.

[higgmeister]

I see others provided the link.

Snopes has this clarification of the confusion:

Origins:   In October 2005, the U.S. was still reeling from the physical, emotional, and political fallout of Hurricane Katrina (and several other recent severe storms); fears involving terrorism and the bird flu were in the air; and national debate was ongoing about the Pledge of Allegiance and the appropriateness of its reference to the U.S. as one nation "under God."

That month, comedian Jay Leno riffed on the emotional climate of America in one of his Tonight Show opening monologues:

With hurricanes, tornados, fires out of control, mud slides, flooding, severe thunderstorms tearing up the country from one end to another, and with the threat of bird flu and terrorist attacks, are we sure this is a good time to take God out of the Pledge of Allegiance?

A year later, Craig R. Smith penned the above-reproduced essay exhorting Americans to focus on the positive aspects of their country rather than the bad events that typically comprise our daily news fodder. By March 2007 the original had been altered through multiple e-mail forwards, with the closing paragraphs (which quoted B.C. Forbes) removed and Jay Leno's joke (with misplaced quotation marks) appended to the end, creating the mistaken impression that the talk show host was the author of the entire piece (as evidenced by its new opening line, "Jay Leno hits the nail on the head ..."). However, only the last sentence originated with the lantern-jawed comedian; the rest is the work of someone else.