Taking A Whack At The Coleman Pinata
(Editors note: when you read the title of the post please pronounce pinata as Peggy Hill would. Thank you.)
I didn't want to. I knew I shouldn't. I told myself I wouldn't. But God help me I'm only human. And Nick Coleman's latest work is just too tempting to pass on.
After receiving an e-mail this morning from T.S. alerting us to Coleman's column, I was more than happy to let Saint Paul have a go at 'er, as is his usual wont. Then I remembered that he gave up Fisking for Lent and realized that I would have to go in myself.
The impetus for Coleman's manufactured outrage was Vice President Dick Cheney's visit to the Twin Cities on Monday. Part of Cheney's itinerary included a stop in St Paul's West Side, a neighborhood with a large Hispanic population.
This is where Coleman really demonstrates his versatility. Had Cheney elected to visit a school in Woodbury (an affluent suburb east of St. Paul), Coleman would have hammered him for being out of touch with minorities and urban dwellers. But since Cheney came to the city and met with minorities, Coleman had to take a different tack, attacking him for not having the RIGHT kind of meeting.
This was a political drive-by, not a community meeting -- a point that caused grumbling on the West Side.
That line is straight from the column. In the print version of the paper the sub headline to Coleman's column read 'Political drive-by visit ignored St. Paul's Hispanic community'.
Nick Coleman has spent enough time in the barrios and inner city 'hoods of Minneapolis and St. Paul to know full well what a drive-by is. Just ask him. So when he uses the term "political drive-by" it conjures up an image of Cheney's limo cruising through the streets of the West Side, with Cheney giving a quick smile and wave before disappearing over the horizon.
But:
Dick Cheney visited a Mexican market on the West Side of St. Paul the other day. This was an honor the West Side put up with, but it didn't win many Hispanic hearts or minds.
And:
The Neighborhood House is right behind El Burrito Mercado, where Cheney stopped to check out the salsa.
Finally:
So there was much pride at the news that the vice president was coming, and much disappointment when it turned out to be just a photo op and a chance for Cheney to tell a carefully picked audience that the president's tax cuts are good for business.
So let me get this straight. Cheney stopped by a market, tried out some salsa, posed for some pictures, and delivered a speech of some sort to an audience? And THIS is a "political drive-by"?
Apparently it wasn't where Cheney went, it was where he didn't go:
But Cheney ignored the Neighborhood House, maybe because it has a banner hanging on it that includes a word that works on some Republicans like garlic on bats: "Wellstone."
I believe it's like garlic on vampires Nick. But if I can get a smirking sneer out of a bat with garlic it might be worth a try.
Next Nick introduces what has to be one of the best euphemisms for illegal immigrant that I've yet heard:
It's a place where third-generation families recall when their grandparents were punished in school for speaking Spanish and where new Spanish speakers -- many lacking proper paperwork -- work like dogs to make life better for their families.
Lacking proper paperwork. WTF? Makes it sound as if it's just some bureaucratic foul up down at the DMV.
You got a license for that boat?
Yeah, but I'm lacking the proper paperwork.
You a citizen of the United States or do you have a visa?
No, but I'm just lacking the proper paperwork.
The whole issue of illegal immigration is incredibly complicated and nuanced. I'm still not sure where I stand on Bush's plan. Right now I'm reading Victor Davis Hanson's Mexifornia, which is a devastating and frankly depressing look at Mexican immigration in California over the last thirty years. As Hanson makes very clear, there are no easy answers to the problem. But the last thing we need is people like Coleman, who believe that they "care" more than the rest of us, muddying the waters by using terminology like "lacking proper paperwork".
No matter how you couch the words the facts are simple. There are people who are here who are not citizens. Some of them have come here legally. Some have not. This has nothing to do with their motivation for coming to the US nor with their worth as a human being. It is purely and simply a legal distinction. To try to pretend otherwise does not bring us any closer to a solution.
By the way, my grandfather was punished in school for speaking German. You know what happened to him? He learned English.
Thank God we live in more enlightened times now and immigrants aren't forced to learn the language required for them to get anywhere in our society.
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