A Coincidence or a Bit of Imitation?

Today the NYT had an essay on the Obama New Yorker cover. It was well written and thought provoking. There was such a similarity to a post I made yesterday, it seemed strange. Especially since it came up the day after I posted...

it could just be a coincidence... or a bit of imitation...

dreamacttexas post:

"It is ever ok to say stupid Mexicans?" July 19, 2008

Maybe (I am hoping) someone else would probably handle this type of situation differently - with a drawing of the boys playing ball while two kids and their mother (who are Latino) walk by. A bubble with a few words would be next to the boys, depicting what they actually said twenty years ago.

Each image would present an entirely different story. Which would be more accurate? If you draw Mexicans then all you see are three people walking down a sidewalk - if you want to present them as "stupid" there are many ways to depict this, but they all focus on the negative evaluation of the two kids and their mother. If you draw little boys screaming nasty things as the Mexican kids walk by, then you depict an interaction starts in the mouths of the boys playing - it is the boy's nasty language - there is no connection with anyone around them, except for their own imagination.

NY Times essay:

"We're Not Laughing at You, or With You," July 20, 2008

But if that very same New Yorker cover had been drawn in a balloon over the head of a deranged citizen — or a ruthless political operative — it would have appeared as plausible only in the mind of that person. The image would have come across as absurd and unjust — a version of reality exaggerated to the point of madness.

When a Joke is not a Joke

The New Yorker pulled off it's own sophisticated Swift Boat operation this week. It published an issue cover of a cartoon of Barack and Michelle Obama as political extremists and anti-American. The editors argue that it is only satire and they are making fun of how these rumors develop - maybe they think their elite, erudite readers will figure it out themselves. But there is not commentary on the cartoon inside the issue... it is just dropped on the cover of this week's edition and we are all expected to figure it out and not make any misinformed assumptions.

Have you ever had a friend that teased you frequently? Did you ever wonder if the teasing had anything to do with some ambivalent hostility that person has towards you? Use that example for the magazine's latest cover. The New Yorker is Obama's ambivalent friend -

In an essay titled "Humor" published by the head of the Antropology department at Brown University, Dr. William Beeman analyzes humor - his comments can inform us on the real nature of the New Yorker's so-called satirical cartoon:

Freud theorized that jokes have only two purposes: aggression and exposure. The first purpose (which includes satire and defense) is fulfilled through the hostile joke, and the second through the dirty joke.

(for link to Beeman essay click here)

To interpret academic speak, what Beeman is saying is that Sigmund Freud proposed there are only two reasons for jokes, 1) hostility, insult, verbal assault and 2) to expose the person who is the subject of the joke - tell a secret, or tell people something the subject is ashamed of or will embarrass him/her.

The question in the TNY remains - to whom is the hostility directed? Obama, his wife? Bin Laden? our Congressional fear mongers? Since there is no accompanying explanation - the magazine left itself wide open for indulging in dirty business.

Normally I would post the image - but I feel if I do that, I will perpetuate the rumor/stereotype/mis-information.

The New Yorker and the Nativist: Part III

Lindsay Graham: "There’s a fine line between being upset about violating the law and appearing to be upset about someone’s last name.”

Graham has it right, or almost so. The line between immigration law and racism has been blurred. Since when is it ok to lash out at children, call people names (publicly) and tell everyone the apocalypse is coming because all the Mexicans are here? The United States is ill with a virus that is spreading so quickly, we can't tell who is ill and who is not anymore. Some immigrants who have been here a while are saying nasty things about more recent immigrants (see post "The Righteous Immigrant") - the caustic atmosphere is just about everywhere. There is no vaccination that can stop the epidemic. Almost all of us have been contaminated with hatred. What is even more unfortunate is that we are not even aware this has happened. We think it's about the law, limited resources, and national cohesion - but it's really about the fear of darker skinned people and what they might do to (what we perceive as) our pristine country. If this would not be true, the undocumented Irish would be rounded up in hoards...

The Political Scene
Return of the Nativist
Behind the Republicans’ anti-immigration frenzy.
by Ryan Lizza December 17, 2007
The New Yorker


Continued


Besides McCain, who was the original Republican sponsor of the comprehensive immigration bill, South Carolina’s Lindsey Graham is the Republican most associated with the legislation. Graham negotiated the details of the final version of the bill, which went down to defeat, and as a consequence he has become a target of ridicule on the talk-radio right. On the afternoon of the YouTube debate, Buddy Witherspoon, a Republican National Committeeman, was finishing a two-day tour of South Carolina, announcing his campaign to run against Graham in the June Republican primary. Witherspoon’s sole issue is immigration. After watching McCain’s testy forum at Clemson, I travelled a hundred and twenty miles to see Witherspoon in Aiken, a town of about thirty thousand. I found him setting up for his speech in front of a government office building at the end of an alley that abutted a shopping thoroughfare where tourists occasionally passed in a horse-and-buggy, casting curious glances. Exactly thirteen people were there to listen to him, including a ten-year-old who had accompanied his grandmother.

Dean Allen, a plump and friendly fellow sporting an American-flag tie, told me that he runs something called Spirit of Liberty; he’s also helping Witherspoon’s campaign. “Some of these people may be coming in here to get jobs washing dishes, but some of them are coming in here to hijack airplanes,” he explained. “If you’re down there trying to look at the people coming across the border, maybe a lot of them are just motivated by economics, and they want a job washing dishes or cutting grass. But I can’t tell Jose Cuervo from the Al Qaeda operatives by looking at them, because they cut their beard off. It’s like trying to get fly manure out of pepper without your glasses on, you know? I mean, not a racist thing, but they’re all brown with black hair and they don’t speak English and I don’t speak Arabic or Spanish, so if they don’t belong here and they don’t come here legally, I want to know who’s here.” He echoed McCain’s observation that the anti-immigrant feeling is strongest in states with new Hispanic populations. “The illegal Hispanic population, it’s definitely growing,” he said. “I can tell you just from how many you see when you walk in Wal-Mart, and you drive down the street and you see buildings now with writing in Spanish that says ‘tienda,’ which is Mexican for ‘store.’ You didn’t see that even a year or two ago.”

After speaking for forty-five minutes, Witherspoon walked across the street with me to Tako Sushi and we sat outside, where heat lamps warmed us. Witherspoon is tall and bald, and he spoke quickly, like a man full of opinions he’s been eager to vent. In his speech, he had run through many of the issues that have been festering on the right: the Law of the Sea treaty; an alleged plan to combine Canada, the United States, and Mexico into a super-state; the Patriot Act. But he was most exercised about immigration and about Lindsey Graham’s betrayal on that issue. “There’s a lot of unrest in South Carolina,” he told me gravely. “And people are concerned that the Senator no longer represents the views of mainstream South Carolinians in a lot of ways. Immigration is the No. 1 issue, no question there. We’re concerned about illegal immigrants coming in here and—well, under the Bush Administration, it’s now seven years into his term, and he hasn’t done a lot about it.” He was not impressed by Bush’s big-tent philosophy of courting Hispanics as the future of the Republican Party. “The big tent is great. But that doesn’t mean ’cause it’s a big tent you should include everything under the tent.”

When I talked to Graham a couple of days later, he did not sound alarmed by the Witherspoon challenge. With more than four million dollars in his campaign account, he can afford to be somewhat, but perhaps not entirely, relaxed. His pollster, Whit Ayres, has been monitoring the issue closely, and Graham was eager to share the results. His role in the immigration debate has indeed hurt him. “What’s happened for me is my negatives have gone up about ten points,” he told me. “My approval rating has come down about eight or nine points. That’s the consequence to me.”

But the numbers told another story, too. Graham read me one of the questions that his pollster asked about immigration. The poll tested voters’ opinion of three different proposals to deal with illegal immigrants: “arrest and deport”; “allow them to be temporary workers, as long as they have a job”; “fine them and allow them to become citizens only if they learn English and get to the back of the line.” In two separate polls, the majority supported the third option. The average for the first option was only twenty-six per cent.

“What it tells me is that the emotion of the twenty-six per cent is real, somewhat understandable, but if not contained could destroy our ability to grow the Party,” he said. “And I don’t think you need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that if you’re going to win a general election you have to do well with Hispanic voters as a Republican.” He continued, “My concern is that we’re going to have an honest but overly emotional debate about immigration, and we’ll say things for the moment, in the primary chase, that will make it very difficult for us to win in November. There’s a fine line between being upset about violating the law and appearing to be upset about someone’s last name.”

Graham, who is one of McCain’s staunchest supporters, had not yet seen a new poll by the Pew Hispanic Center, which reported that the gains made among Hispanic voters during the Bush era have now been erased. Nevertheless, he had a warning for Republicans: “Those politicians that are able to craft a message tailored to the moment but understanding of the long-term consequences to the country and to the Party are the ones that are a blessing. And the ones who live for the moment and don’t think about long-term consequences, demographic changes, over time have proven to have been more of a liability than an asset.” He added, “Be careful of chasing the rabbit down a hole here.” ♦

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/17/071217fa_fact_lizz

The New Yorker and the Nativist: Part I

Perhaps this cartoon should read "The GOP read books beyond it's capacity; and this was the result." Will the GOP be smashed for mis-reading the U.S. Constitution?

The Political Scene
Return of the Nativist
Behind the Republicans’ anti-immigration frenzy.
by Ryan Lizza December 17, 2007
The New Yorker

Once upon a time, John McCain was favored to win the Republican nomination. His straight-talking appeal and his cultivation of the Republican Party’s right wing put him first—at least in the early conventional wisdom. Then, last summer, his campaign seemed to spontaneously combust in a puff of fund-raising troubles and staff intrigue. But McCain has slowly made his way back into contention. The usual line is that he has done it by being “the old McCain,” the one that New Hampshire voters (and many journalists) fell for during his 2000 Presidential run. Unlike Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, or Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor, two of his chief competitors, he holds a press conference after nearly every campaign event. Just before a recent trip to South Carolina, he invited a dozen reporters for lunch at his Arlington, Virginia, campaign headquarters (on the thirteenth floor, naturally).

Rather than trying to woo religious conservatives, an awkward alliance at best, McCain is focussing more on his natural base of independents (in New Hampshire) and veterans (in South Carolina). Instead of trying to run a by-the-numbers conservative campaign, he is emphasizing issues on which he has taken what he believes to be principled but unpopular positions. He is the only one in the Republican field who seems eager to talk about Iraq. “My friends, here’s the news,” he told a small crowd in Seneca, South Carolina, a few days after returning from Thanksgiving with the troops. “We are winning in Iraq. We are winning in Iraq. We are winning in Iraq.”

Over lunch in Arlington, McCain had given the stock explanation for what caused last summer’s difficulties. “The problem, which was my problem, was that our fiscal expectations weren’t met by reality,” he said—in other words, he couldn’t raise enough money. But the next day, as I travelled with McCain around South Carolina, he told me that his campaign’s brush with death had less to do with fund-raising than with his role in championing the ambitious immigration-reform bill, supported by the White House, that died in Congress this year. “It wasn’t the budgetary problems. That was an inside-the-Beltway thing,” he said, referring to press coverage of his campaign’s setbacks. McCain gets animated whenever he discusses the immigration issue. After a town-hall meeting in Anderson, South Carolina, he recalled how the Irish were discriminated against in America. As he quoted a placard that hangs on the wall of an aide’s office (“Help Wanted—No Irish Need Apply”), he jabbed his finger in the air with such emphasis that he knocked my voice recorder to the ground and erased our conversation. “It was immigration” that hurt his campaign, he said when he continued, after a series of apologies on both sides. “I understand that. I was told by one of the pollsters, ‘We see real bleeding.’ ”

There were two major factions in the immigration debate in Congress. A bipartisan coalition wanted a bill that included tough border-security measures, which everyone favored, as well as more controversial provisions concerning temporary-worker permits for undocumented aliens and a way for them to attain citizenship. Conservatives, led by Tom Tancredo, a Colorado congressman and Presidential candidate, demanded a bill that dealt only with security. McCain seems torn by how to address the issue, and he makes a small but telling concession to the Tancredo faction when he argues that security legislation must indeed come first. “You’ve got to do what’s right, O.K.?” he told me. “But, if you want to succeed, you have to adjust to the American people’s desires and priorities.”

During another conversation, when I asked McCain what he had learned from the arguments about immigration, he said, “I think the main lesson is that Americans had no trust or confidence in the government. So when we said, as part of this comprehensive solution, we need to secure the borders, add temporary workers, and address the twelve million people here, they just didn’t believe us, O.K.?” He argued that the mismanaged response after Hurricane Katrina, the Washington corruption scandals such as those involving the lobbyist Jack Abramoff, and unchecked government spending had undermined public confidence. “So what you have to do is prove to them that you’re going to secure the borders. And then I think that at least most of them—except for the Tancredos, who want to stop all immigration—would say, ‘O.K., I’m going to address these other issues.’ ”

McCain’s standard answer to immigration questions is that he “got the message.” But every so often this practical McCain, bending to the mood of the primary electorate, gets shoved aside by the quixotic McCain, the one who never seems happier than when he’s championing a lost cause. At one stop in South Carolina, at Clemson University, a student engaged McCain in an argument about whether his plan rewarded illegal immigrants for breaking the law. McCain was by then in a combative mood. Minutes earlier, a professor had asked about a piece of Internet-crime legislation that he argued would group terrorism researchers with actual terrorists. “Am I a terrorist?” the professor asked, his querulous tone suggesting that McCain hadn’t answered the original question. The questioner was wearing tennis shoes, jeans, a pink polo shirt, and a gray blazer, and McCain looked at him carefully. “With those sneakers, you’re not a snappy dresser,” McCain replied after a pause, as audience members gasped and laughed. “That doesn’t mean you’re a terrorist. Though you terrorize the senses.” To the student with the immigration question, McCain patiently explained that some illegal immigrants had faced unusual circumstances, and he mentioned a woman who has lived in the United States for decades and has a son and a grandson serving in Iraq. When the student said that he wanted to see punishment meted out to anyone who has broken the law, McCain stopped trying to find common ground. “If you’re prepared to send an eighty-year-old grandmother who’s been here seventy years back to some country, then frankly you’re not quite as compassionate as maybe I am,” he said. Next question.

McCain could stop discussing the controversial parts of his immigration plan or he could drop his support for them altogether, admitting that he was simply wrong, as Romney has done with abortion and other issues. I asked McCain about Romney, who had once expressed support for the comprehensive legislation backed by the Bush Administration—it sounded “reasonable,” he’d said—but now rails against it as “amnesty.” McCain said, “Both he and Rudy had the same position I did. In fact, Rudy was even more liberal. But, look, if that—” He paused and shrugged. “I don’t want to be President that bad.”

Later that night, at the CNN/YouTube debate in St. Petersburg, Florida, immigration declared itself the dominant and obsessive issue of the Republican primaries, and the issue also clarified some essential differences among the candidates. The two formerly moderate Northeasterners, Romney and Giuliani, taunted each other about who was tougher on illegal immigrants. On the other side were McCain and Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, who told their opponents that illegal immigrants “need some of our love and compassion” (McCain) and that “we are a better country than to punish children for what their parents did” (Huckabee). The Romney-Giuliani exchange prompted Tancredo, whose platform calls for restrictions even on legal immigration, to giddily declare that his opponents were trying to “out-Tancredo Tancredo.”

The emergence of Trancredoism as an ideological touchstone for two Republican front-runners is a stunning development, another indication of the Party’s rejection of nearly everything associated with the approach taken by George W. Bush. As a border-state governor, Bush boasted of his relationship with Vicente Fox, who became the President of Mexico, and he and his political adviser Karl Rove later argued that Republicans needed a pro-Latino vision for immigration reform. His strategy of cultivating immigrants as integral to the future of the Party seemed to work, and Bush did surprisingly well with Latino voters: in 2004, he won some forty per cent of their vote—double what Bob Dole achieved just eight years earlier.

In the late nineteen-nineties, when the Republican Party began embracing Bush’s pro-immigrant message, Tom Tancredo was a relatively anonymous backbencher. “When I first started on this, when I came to Congress, nine years ago, I found that I could get few, if anyone, to pay attention to the issue,” Tancredo told me as he was being ferried between campaign events in New Hampshire. “I remember going into a Republican conference meeting and asking if I could show a video that a night-vision camera had taken of people coming across the border in Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, in Arizona. You had all of these campers parked, people sleeping, and in between were probably hundreds and hundreds of people, most of them carrying guns. And I was showing this and it was two hundred and twenty-two members of the Republican conference, and there were four left at the end of it. And it was a three-minute video. They walked out murmuring things, you know”—he made a mumbling sound—“ ‘immigration, immigration, immigration.’ ”

When I asked Tancredo about Bush’s argument that Republicans risked losing a generation of Hispanic voters if they adopted an immigration policy that many regard as nativist, he laughed and said, “It doesn’t seem to be holding its own very well, considering what happened the other night at the debate. If you think for a moment that Romney, Giuliani, and Thompson”—Fred Thompson, the former Tennessee senator—“haven’t polled the heck out of this thing, you’re wrong. They have. And they are there now because the polls tell them this is where they should be.”

The rise of Tancredoism has been aided and abetted by a number of factors, including an absence of strong leadership in the Republican Party and the greatly diminished power and popularity of the President, whose approval ratings fell as the war in Iraq went wrong and the government failed to act effectively after Hurricane Katrina struck the Gulf Coast. In December, 2005, the nativist wing of the G.O.P. in the House—marginalized by Bush’s semi-successful rebranding of his party as progressive on immigration—passed legislation requiring seven hundred miles of fence along the Mexican border, and reclassified as felons illegal immigrants. (The bill set off huge immigrants’-rights protests in dozens of cities in 2006.) The post-Bush, pre-Tancredo era of the Republican Party had begun...

Continued in "The New Yorker and the Nativist: Part II"

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/12/17/071217fa_fact_lizza?printable=true

cartoon: http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/impeach/Cartoon-Constit.jpg