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Article by Rich on August 7th, 2006 at 11:39 am Rosemary My Ass
I got one of those irritating mega-forwarded Emails from an Uncle who has moved to SoCal:
My wife, Rosemary, wrote a wonderful letter to the editor of the Orange County Register which, of course, was not printed. So, I decided to “print” it myself by sending it out on the Internet. Pass it along if you feel so inclined. Dave LaBonte (signed)Written in response to a series of letters to the editor in the Orange County Register:Dear Editor:
So many letter writers have based their arguments on how this land is made up of immigrants. Ernie Lujan for one, suggests we should tear down the Statute of Liberty because the people now in question aren’t being treated the same as those who passed through Ellis Island and other ports of entry.
Maybe we should turn to our history books and point out to people like Mr. Lujan why today’s American is not willing to accept this new kind of immigrant any longer.
And yadda yadda yadda…
…It goes on to say that today’s immigrant (read: Brown and from the South) is an ungrateful lout, waving a Mexican flag and a copy of Das Kapital and not too infrequently squirting out little bambinos…
…I’ll just link to it here, as I Googled it and found it everywhere for you to read.
I’ll wait right here.
But I wasn’t content to simply flush it like I do most bad forwards (sorry, Mom!).
Instead, I added my contribution and sent it out to everyone in the CC field:
…Except that a lot of the sentiments portrayed in this letter towards our ‘new immigrants‘ aren’t particularly new or unique. Over the last century and a half, a lot of immigrants came here and attempted to hang on to some aspect of their national or ethnic identity, only to face hostility, violence or high-pitched political rhetoric. A lot of historical text (especially culturally and politically homogenized school textbooks) have sanitized elements like that, giving lie to the romanticized vision that the melting pot process in ‘the good old days’ was painless and hatred-free. The sentiment conveyed towards Latinos isn’t much different than that directed towards the Irish in turn-of-the-last century Chicago, Boston, New York et. al.; “they’ll take our jobs, take over our neighborhoods, breed like rats and taint our otherwise untainted gene-pool, etc…”.
I think this issue – although fraught with many real problems – is mainly being exploited as a wedge to split the electorate in the 2006-2008 cycles.
With so many other problems facing this nation, why else would this one garner so much corporate news time and so many newspaper column-inches?
I think because its element of xenophobia is successful at keeping people alarmed and agitated.
And I hang around a fairly ‘liberal’ and ‘multi-cultural’ (the horror!) circle, and have yet to hear someone suggest we demolish the the Statue of Liberty, burn a flag, crush fluffy kittens in a hydraulic press, or whatever it is that Fox News says we want to do.
Wake up America, the barbarians aren’t at our gates, they’re tending the gates.
All this set off a flurry of Emails from some of the CC’ees.
My Uncle responded rather indignantly, saying that he only forwarded it because he had issues with illegal immigrants and not legitimate ones and also said I would have a different perspective had I lived in Southern California. He mainly forwarded it as per the message’s request.
But I think that’s what we have to do when someone says or writes (or echoes via Email) something stupid, we have to confront it and set them straight, if possible.
Please, if you receive this Email, add your two cents worth.
It’ll make you feel a lot better than if you didn’t
Article by Rich on August 6th, 2006 at 10:03 pm Colbert takes morning news programs to task, including industrial-grade tool Matt Lauer – for dissing The Colbert Report RE:politicians going on his show and being made fun of. In it, he reveals the inane banality of Good Morning America, etc…
Watch Video (YouTube link)
Article by Rich on August 6th, 2006 at 9:55 pm Rosemary My Ass
I got one of those irritating mega-forwarded Emails from an Uncle who has moved to SoCal:
My wife, Rosemary, wrote a wonderful letter to the editor of the Orange County Register which, of course, was not printed. So, I decided to “print” it myself by sending it out on the Internet. Pass it along if you feel so inclined. Dave LaBonte (signed)
Written in response to a series of letters to the editor in the Orange County Register:
Dear Editor:
So many letter writers have based their arguments on how this land is made up of immigrants. Ernie Lujan for one, suggests we should tear down the Statute of Liberty because the people now in question aren’t being treated the same as those who passed through Ellis Island and other ports of entry.
Maybe we should turn to our history books and point out to people like Mr. Lujan why today’s American is not willing to accept this new kind of immigrant any longer.
And yadda yadda yadda…
…It goes on to say that today’s immigrant (read: Brown and from the South) is an ungrateful lout, waving a Mexican flag and a copy of Das Kapital and not too infrequently squirting out little bambinos…
…I’ll just link to it here, as I Googled it and found it everywhere for you to read.
I’ll wait right here.
But I wasn’t content to simply flush it like I do most bad forwards (sorry, Mom!).
Instead, I added my contribution and sent it out to everyone in the CC field:
…Except that a lot of the sentiments portrayed in this letter towards our ‘new immigrants‘ aren’t particularly new or unique. Over the last century and a half, a lot of immigrants came here and attempted to hang on to some aspect of their national or ethnic identity, only to face hostility, violence or high-pitched political rhetoric. A lot of historical text (especially culturally and politically homogenized school textbooks) have sanitized elements like that, giving lie to the romanticized vision that the melting pot process in ‘the good old days’ was painless and hatred-free. The sentiment conveyed towards Latinos isn’t much different than that directed towards the Irish in turn-of-the-last century Chicago, Boston, New York et. al.; “they’ll take our jobs, take over our neighborhoods, breed like rats and taint our otherwise untainted gene-pool, etc…”.
I think this issue – although fraught with many real problems – is mainly being exploited as a wedge to split the electorate in the 2006-2008 cycles.
With so many other problems facing this nation, why else would this one garner so much corporate news time and so many newspaper column-inches?
I think because its element of xenophobia is successful at keeping people alarmed and agitated.
And I hang around a fairly ‘liberal’ and ‘multi-cultural’ (the horror!) circle, and have yet to hear someone suggest we demolish the Statue of Liberty, burn a flag, crush fluffy kittens in a hydraulic press, or whatever it is that Fox News says we want to do.
Wake up America, the barbarians aren’t at our gates, they’re tending the gates.
All this set off a flurry of Emails from some of the CC’ees.
My Uncle responded rather indignantly, saying that he only forwarded it because he had issues with illegal immigrants and not legitimate ones and also said I would have a different perspective had I lived in Southern California. He mainly forwarded it as per the message’s request.
But I think that’s what we have to do when someone says or writes (or echoes via Email) something stupid, we have to confront it and set them straight, if possible.
Please, if you receive this Email, add your two cents worth.
It’ll make you feel a lot better than if you didn’t
Article by Rich on August 6th, 2006 at 9:43 pm It’s funny to hear folks advocating for the party that uses devisiveness and hatemongering as thier usual MO fling accusations of devisiveness and hatemongering. I think it’s a classic case of projection. Odder still, is when that party (or in this case, conservative newspaper) is defending someone from the other party:
Lieberman race pits moderation versus hatred-politics
This is no exaggeration: The soul of the Democratic Party – and possibly the future of civility in American politics – is on the line in the Aug. 8 Senate primary in Connecticut. Sen. Joe Lieberman, Conn., one of the last “liberal hawks” in the Democratic Party and a leader in efforts to find bipartisan solutions to America’s problems, is being targeted for defeat by an emergent new left that’s using savage, Internet-based attacks to push moderation out of politics. (Source: Black Hills Pioneer)
Lieberman is a moderate like Neville Chamberlain was a peacemaker.
But then, what kind of editorial do you expect from a paper with stories like this one their front page?:
Governor Rounds calls on South Dakota to pray for rain
“whereas many of our rural communities are heavily dependent upon agriculture to sustain their markets and local communities, and many South Dakotans could face wildfire danger if moisture conditions do not improve in the next few weeks, it is appropriate to urge all citizens to join together to pray for rain in our great state of South Dakota.”
Look as long as you like, but there’s no Bat-Boy stories, Dottie or Ed Anger columns.
Article by John on August 6th, 2006 at 9:41 pm The following is certain to never be presented by mainstream media and therefore hardly to be contemplated by the “mainstream” people of the USA. So I am doing my part to present “fair and balanced” here. –bushtool
Stephen Zunes | August 4, 2006
Foreign Policy In Focus
www.fpif.org
The Bush administration and an overwhelming bipartisan majority of
Congress have gone on record defending Israel’s assault on Lebanon’s
civilian infrastructure as a means of attacking Hezbollah
“terrorists.” Unlike the major Palestinian Islamist groups, Hamas and
Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah forces haven’t killed any Israeli civilians
for more than a decade. Indeed, a 2002 Congressional Research Service
report noted, in its analysis of Hezbollah, that “no major terrorist
attacks have been attributed to it since 1994.” The most recent State
Department report on international terrorism also fails to note any
acts of terrorism by Hezbollah since that time except for
unsubstantiated claims that a Hezbollah member was a participant in a
June 1996 attack on the U.S. Air Force dormitory at Khobar Towers in
Saudi Arabia. Continue reading Jihad Against Hezbollah
Article by Rich on August 6th, 2006 at 8:04 pm American Madrassas
Saw a screening of a documentary called Jesus Camp. It focuses on a woman preacher (Becky Fischer) who indoctrinates children in a summer camp in North Dakota. Right wing political agendas and slogans are mixed with born again rituals that end with most of the kids in tears. Tears of release and joy, they would claim — the children are not physically abused. The kids are around 9 or 10 years old, recruited from various churches, and are pliant willing receptacles. They are instructed that evolution is being forced upon us by evil Godless secular humanists, that abortion must be stopped at all costs, that we must form an “army” to defeat the Godless influences, that we must band together to insure that the right judges and politicians get into the courts and office and that global warming is a lie. (This last one is a puzzle — how did accepting the evidence for climate change and global warming become anti-Jesus? Did someone simply conflate all corporate agendas with Jesus and God and these folks accept that? Would Jesus drive an SUV? Is every conclusion responsible scientists make now suspect?)….
Read whole story.
Apparently the film is drawing lots of controversy, even drawing Michael Moore – who was going to screen it at a festival – into the debate.
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