Dear State Senator:
Next time you're standing on the Senate floor debating a fellow state senator and hoping to make yourself appear big and important and well-informed and stuff, and you describe yourself as a Jesse James aficionado and announce that Jesse James, in an interview, once said he robbed banks because that's where the money is, please be aware of the following:
- Jesse James (the outlaw Jesse James, not Sandra Bullock's husband), one of the most notorious outlaws in United States history, was never interviewed by anyone for any reason. With a $5000 bounty on his head offered by the Missouri governor, no one would have bothered to "interview" him when they only had to bring him in dead or alive to collect a substantial reward.
- The outlaw who supposedly claimed to rob banks because "that's where the money is" was Willie Sutton, 1901-1980.
- Anyone claiming a childhood fascination with Jesse James (the outlaw Jesse James, not Sandra Bullock's husband) ought to know the difference.
- When you bungle a quotation supposedly made by someone on whom you claim a degree of expertise, you make yourself look like a blockhead.




