South of the Border

I don’t have much to say at the moment, but I thought I’d say it anyway. We are much confused these days between legal immigrants and undocumented immigrants, whom the press often refer to as undocumented workers, and I thought I might be able to do something to explain the difference.  The first category in the previous sentence is an actual category of people living here in this our Great Republic. Those people are individuals who obeyed American immigration law, applied to come to the United States, and jumped through all the bureaucratic hoops the collective Kafkaesque mind of the immigration bureaucracy could devise to come out on the other side with a legal resident card, the legendary Green Card, which I understand is actually a sort of off-peach color these days. They are, by virtue of their obeying the law and acquiring the off-peach green card, allowed to live and work in our country with all the rights and privileges of citizens of the land. The only privilege not extended to these good folks is that of suffrage, the franchise being limited to actual citizens and those who like KFC’s chicken. This is one of the great mysteries of the modern world to me; I cannot eat more than a few pieces of the Colonel’s cuisine without started to belch uncontrollably. I think I am allergic to at least one of the eleven secret spices in the original recipe. 

On the other hand, the category of undocumented immigrant (or worker) is a euphemism and I think I can say without too much controversy that the point of a euphemism is to not call something by its right name because its right name accurately describes the person or thing described and that accurate description is, for one reason or another, uncomfortable or inconvenient or politically incorrect. In this case, the politically incorrect phrase we are looking for is illegal alien. This is a short phrase, but it clearly shows that the person who bears the name is one, currently living and working in the United States of America in violation of the laws governing immigration to the United States of America, and two, a citizen of a country that is not the United States of America.  Hence, illegal alien. That does not seem so hard to figure out, I think, and when I am confused with the concept, a confusion progressives and capitalists alike choose to foster for reasons both political and mercenary, I simply remember that my mother and her brothers and their wives are legal immigrants to the United States and that the guys who are mowing my neighbor’s lawn as I write this probably are not.  Now, I am sure that the guys mowing the lawn next door are very nice people who want what’s best for their families, but so were my paternal grandparents and my mom and her brothers and their wives and they didn’t see the need to come into the country illegally. What the guys next door mowing the lawn are, in short, line jumpers, people who make the thousands patiently going through the process feel as though they are idiots for showing up for interviews and filling out questionnaires and doing the right thing when all they have to do is cut out the middleman and get across the border one way or another. So why bother doing the right thing? 

The purpose of immigration law, as I understand it, is to give the federal government a chance to look over the people who want to move here and determine whether those people should move here.  This is not controversial: every country in the world, with the possible exception of Germany these days, does the same thing.  There is no inherent right to enter and reside in the United States, unless, of course, you are an American citizen or a legal resident.  For all others, entry to this country is not a human right, it is not a civil right, it is not a constitutional right, it is not a natural right. Entry to this country is a privilege that the government grants and that the government can withdraw at any time the government feels necessary.  A temporary visa is just that: temporary. You get to come in, maybe study at an overpriced college that will be more than happy to charge you twice what they are charging Americans, or go take a look at the Empire State Building and the Grand Canyon, maybe catch a bus tour of the stars’ homes in Hollywood, or hang out in the French Quarter during Mardi Gras and grab some beads and flash your tits to the crowd down on Bourbon Street. And then you go home. I fail to understand what is so complicated about that, but then, I do not need cheap labor to line my pockets—I can mow my own lawn, thank you very much—nor do I feel the need, in Brecht’s catchy phrase, to dissolve the people and elect another in order to make sure I can win elections.  Asking that people obey the law didn’t used to be a matter of such contention; that it is now tells me that people want the law changed but know that such change is not possible; the people who already live here, you see, get to have a say in such matters, which seems to annoy a great many Masters of the Universe no end.

PUFFING THE KERFUFFLE: You may not have noticed this, but those of us who live here in this our Great Republic are very fond of kerfuffles. Yes sirree, if there’s anything we love more than Mom, apple pie, and Chevrolet, and if you actually remember that commercial you’re a lot older than you’re telling people you are, it’s a good kerfuffle. Why, only last week, so it was, there was a wonderful kerfuffle in Washington, DC, and if my guess is right, this is not the last kerfuffle we’ll see from this Administration before it kershuffles off this mortal coil. Now, kerfuffle, for those of you who don’t already know, is a geological term, like butte or monadnock, denoting a mountain that last week was something a little less than a molehill. These sudden mountains occur from time to time; in Mexico, for example, Paricutin began life in 1943 as a smoking hole in the middle of a cornfield and by the end of the year the mountain was over a thousand feet tall and still belching smoke and fire like my Uncle Tommy a couple of hours after he’s finished eating his sixth slice of pepperoni and sausage pizza. Both eruptions are and were amazing sights, I’m sure.

Kerfuffles operate in a similar manner, except they are much more common and even more annoying, if such a thing is possible. And kerfuffles tend to build faster than volcanoes, even a relatively speedy one like Paricutin. Kerfuffles also tend to occur in some places more than others. Hollywood, California, and Washington, D.C., to take just two examples, are famous for the size and speed of their kerfuffles. Only last week, for instance, the thunderous sound of yet another kerfuffle slouching towards the television cameras to be born rocked official Washington, whereas unofficial Washington was unmoved. The source of the kerfuffle was, if the press reports are correct, the former junior Senator from Illinois, who decided, for reasons that seem pretty flimsy to me, but then, no one asked me for my opinion, to hold a press conference.

I do not know why he chose to do this; speaking to the White House press corps always seems a losing proposition to me; it detracts them from their primary function, which is taking dictation, and gives them ideas above their station in life. Trying to be reasonable with a group of egomaniacal clods huffed out of their minds on hair spray is never a winning proposition for the politician who attempts it and any pol who does attempt it deserves the pounding he will get. I did not see this press conference myself—I try to avoid looking at politicians when it isn’t an election year, as the exercise often makes me nauseous and despair of constitutional republicanism as a valid form of self-government—but apparently, the former junior Senator from Illinois brought his trusty teleprompter with him to the press conference.

This simple act sparked last week’s outbreak of kerfuffledom, although I am not sure why this is so. That the distinguished gentleman from Illinois is an excellent orator is one of the great political truths of our time; that he tends to put in his mouth whenever he is not delivering a prepared text was one of the lesser known political truths of our time, or it was, until he chose to put his foot in his mouth in front of several million Tonight Show viewers. So, seeking the comfort of the familiar, he brought a teleprompter to a press conference.

The kerfuffle that arose over this simple piece of machinery went up faster than a mob of Amish guys on meth can put up a barn. Opinions flowed from one end of the political spectrum and out the other like green beer on St. Patrick’s Day, and yet the question remains, why should this be so? Surely, if the distinguished gentleman from Illinois finds having a teleprompter in the room comforting than no one could begrudge him that.

No one, I think, would criticize President Linus Van Pelt if he brought his trusty blanket with him to a press conference. Throughout history, great political leaders have brought their personal talismans with them into the great hurly-burly of political life. The French Revolutionary leader, Georges Danton, always brought his pet gerbil, Etienne, with him to meetings of the French National Assembly for good luck; when his enemy Robespierre had Danton guillotined in 1794, Robespierre fed Etienne to his cat, also named Etienne. While the latter Etienne no doubt enjoyed the former, the act did neither Robespierre nor the feline Etienne any good; Robespierre’s enemies sent him to the guillotine a few months after Danton, and they beheaded the cat too, not for any crime against the Republic, but because several members of the National Assembly were allergic to cat dander and wanted to stop sneezing. Eighty years earlier and at the other end of Europe, Sweden’s Charles XII, a young man with an extremely inflated idea of the capabilities of the Swedish Army and a very bad map of Europe, invaded Russia while sitting on a barrel of pickled herring. The thought of pickled herring made him happy, the King wrote in his largely apocryphal memoirs, and he wanted to make sure that he got his fair share of them when his cook, an untrustworthy sort last seen chasing a sock chicken, opened the barrel. Charles may have lost the Battle of Poltava to Peter the Great, but he did make it out of Russia with his barrel of pickled herring intact, although he did have to concede the area Saint Petersburg now stands on to do so. And the historical examples go on and on.

In the end, however, we must ask why kerfuffles should exist at all, but this, I think, is less a political question than a question of moral philosophy, something akin to what is the meaning of life or why a duck? Clearly, a 24/7 news cycle, a cycle that demands that something, anything, gets put on the air no matter how idiotic it might be has something to do with this; the utterly dubious careers of Paris Hilton and her ilk are hardly explainable otherwise; and I suppose that advertisers must love kerfuffles—they drive ratings up, and what advertiser doesn’t like higher ratings? This, I shouldn’t need to explain, is a purely rhetorical question. If you did feel the need to answer this question, please lay down on a comfortable sofa with a cold compress on your forehead and wait for the need to pass. Take some aspirin too, if you have them. All kidding aside, this will make you feel better and will help prevent heart attacks. It will also remind you not to answer rhetorical questions or to raise kerfuffles for fun and profit in your own home, thereby mixing our poor kerfuffle’s metaphors completely. In any case, the only real good thing about kerfuffles is the way they disappear. Unlike Paricutin, which is still sitting there in Mexico being a volcano, I’m pretty sure that no one even remembers last week’s kerfuffle at all. That’s because everyone is waiting for this week’s kerfuffle to start up. Yes sirree, every day’s a kerfuffling adventure here in this our Great Republic, yes it is.

COMMENTARY: The Rev. Al Sharpton is outraged, which should come as no great surprise to anyone, since outrage is the man’s business, and from the nice three-piece suits he wears I’d say business is pretty good nowadays. I am not sure why this week’s particular bit of nastiness from Don Imus set him off, though; one can hear African-American women called much worse on BET every day of the week and there’s nary a peep from the good Reverend. Now that I think about it, I am not sure how Reverend Sharpton fits into this equation at all; he neither attends Rutgers nor plays basketball for that college, nor is he a woman, and I think it’s been a while since anyone applied the first part of Imus’ insult to him, but only his hairdresser knows for sure.

As for the I-man, well, maybe I’m a bit old-fashioned, but when a man publicly smears a woman’s character in this manner, it behooves the man to make a public apology for his boorish and altogether contemptible behavior to the woman, or in this case, women, whose character he held up to slander and calumny and to do so as quickly as possible. I must admit to a certain malicious happiness in Mr. Imus’ present discomfiture, however. He does not mind insulting the President of the United States whenever he takes the notion to, as well as those of us who support the President, and so the sight of Mr. Imus tripping face first over a liberal shibboleth is, for me at least, an altogether gratifying experience. I mean, really, what was he thinking when he said something so completely stupid? Or was he thinking at all?

In other news, we now know who the father of Anna Nicole Smith’s child is, and the proud father announced the news to the awaiting media not as a man about to take on the most serious task any man can undertake, but as a man who has hit the number in the MegaMillions jackpot. Our condolences to Dannielynn, who is not yet a year old and has, in her short life, lost a brother and a mother and become the meal ticket for a crew of voracious parasites that make tapeworms and bot flies look positively beneficent and beneficial by comparison.

UPDATE: CBS has just fired Don Imus, so yesterday's broadcast was the I-Man's last. I wondered why they went to this extreme, since networks don't usually fire people who make them a lot of money. Usually what happens in such cases is for the dolt who put his foot in his mouth to apologize to everyone you can possibly think of and then announce that he was a drug and/or alcohol abuser, and Imus certainly has the history to back this story up, and then go into rehab for a month while the scandalmongers move on to newer and fresher targets of opportunity. It then occurred to me that most of this country's major media companies are located in New York and have their flagship stations in the eponymous metropolis, and the broadcast licenses of all New York television stations are up for FCC renewal this year. In fact, those licenses are up for renewal in June, and everyone gets a month to file a petition to deny that license. To deny a license a complainant, if there is such a word, has to show that the current licensee is not acting in the public interest, and let's face it, having one of your employees use the air waves you license from the government to defame a mostly African American women's basketball team using a racist and misogynist epithet is not acting in the public interest by any conceivable stretch of the imagination.

Now if the I-Man had had the wit to slander those women in August, he might have saved his career; he might even have survived the loss of all those advertising revenues-advertisers, a noticeably gutless crew, would have stayed away for a while, but would eventually come scurrying back, drawn to Imus's high ratings like ants to that open bag of brown sugar in my mother's cupboard; but he didn't, and when you add the loss of advertising revenue to the cost of defending your license from the Reverend Sharpton and his minions, the obvious recourse is to get rid of the source of the problem. No Imus, no complaints, no petitions to deny license, no bad publicity, no court fights, no problems. All is well in medialand, and here I was, thinking that maybe CBS got rid of Imus because a sudden wave of the idealistic warm and fuzzies swept over the corporate superstructure. I think it's heartening to know that CBS remains a foursquare bastion of moneygrubbing bastards who'd gut their own mothers with a dull fishknife if they thought it'd add five cents to this quarter's profits. Yes indeed, God's in His heaven and all's right with the world.