Mishri let me know about
this editorial on illegal immigration. I refuse to post any of the text of it here because of its vile, repugnant content. I will, however, post my response, which I sent in to
The Observer this afternoon:
"I take umbrage at Natalie Toomey’s editorial, “In Immigration Battle, English is Losing.” The list of hypocrisies, logical holes the size of Mack trucks, and contradictions is too numerous to go through, so I’ll try and stick to a few.
I was unaware that people speaking Spanish was mutually exclusive with “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” I had no idea that Belgium, a nation with two very large and distinct language groups, expected their citizens to speak their “national” language. Or that Brazil would choose Arabic to print on its ballots when its four languages are Portuguese (the official language), Spanish, English, and French.
Ms. Toomey makes the contention that English is the “primary” language of the United States. Sure, English is the language that’s spoken by nearly all Americans, but it’s never been the only one. Ever heard of Germantown, Pennsylvania? Guess what the “primary” language was when German settlers moved there in the 18th and 19th centuries?
It wasn’t English. Same is true for most of the Upper Midwest.
When I’m not in school, I live in California. Southern California, to be precise. That nest of vipers that are seething with illegal immigrants who hate English, if you believe Ms. Toomey. Just to give you an idea of my proximity, my coworker this past summer told me that his father was “disappointed” in him for not joining the Minutemen, whereas all his friends had. Despite that, I don’t feel like I live in Mexico. There is law, order, and signs in English. People have jobs and even if I have trouble ordering a quesadilla at the local Rubio’s Fresh Mexican Grill (something I am comfortable enough to do without feeling like my American identity is threatened), the server can generally speak enough broken English so that I never have to send my order back.
Make no mistake: immigrants are learning English. No one wants to be a cashier or a manual laborer forever. To succeed, really succeed in America, you need to learn English.
But that’s not even my main point. Many of these immigrants have children. Children go to school. Ms. Toomey seems to see this as something wrong and immoral, but she fails to realize that children learn a great deal at school. California leads the way in providing English as a Second Language (ESL) programs to kids. No one is suggesting that students should be learning classes in Spanish, but it takes some time for kids to learn an entirely new language. And they are learning English.
Ms. Toomey laced her editorial with hyperbole and remarks that make me wonder how tolerant a person she truly is. Name one state legislature, Ms. Toomey, that is seriously considering making Spanish-only road signs, or Spanish-only ballots, and I will gladly retract this entire letter.
Until then, keep your ignorant hatemongering to yourself.
Josh Kaushansky is an undergraduate student at American University."
I'll post a less fortune-cookie-logic one-liner entry on my deeper thoughts concerning education a little later.
18 Comments:
Hey Josh, Wow..."keep your ignorant hatemongering to yourself"
boy that sounds just like a typical, liberal response. Don't feel bad, your not the only one, most of the emotional responces to Natalies article came from people like you...don't agree with someones ideas, or opinions, Shut up! your a hate monger, you hurt my feelings, and so on. Grow up,
who do you people think you kids are? Willing to give our country away, allow same sex marriage, or any sex marriage for that matter. and on and on. Last I new this was America, home of free speech and self expression, or is that just for the liberals, when you have to start taking care of yourself, maybe we can talk, for now, splash on a little patroulie, hug your tree, oh yeah, don't foget to call your Mom and Dad and see if they put the deposit into your account.
Hello anonymous.
This 'Amurr'ka' you speak of entices me. Is it a place where people like I and the Josh will also be free of the hypocrisy of you and your ilk, boyo? You know, like getting to say what we want without you whining about how our opinions don't conform to your ideals? Please enclose further information on this wonderful country in your imagination in an envelope stamped with your ass. Either one of them is fine, the one you think with or the one that lets all that bullshit out.
"Hug a tree and blah, blah, something with how envious I am that I wasn't born a jew, too." That sounds like redneck talk there, son.
Maybe you should just go cry us a big, fat river of misery and polish your commemorative Dale Earnhardt plates. Or, you know, join the rest of us in the 21st century. I bet you're the kind of christian that gives the rest of us a bad name. If you aren't just posturing to get attention.
Barring that, you can go see if your social security check cleared yet.
Anonymous posting is just another way of saying "my opinion doesn't count, lol intarwebs gimme attentions!1!@£". ^_^
Welcome to the internet, fuckbag.
Kthxby.
P.S. Suck my big, norse, socialist cock. You toothless fucking yokel. See? Two can play at this game. :)
Hey "anonymous",
The next time you decide to diss someone's legitimate and logical criticism of an editorial, please make sure to:
a) Spell correctly ( that means you need to proof-read).
b)Give us your name! We want to know who you are. Right now you just seem like a wuss hiding behind an "anonymous" tagline.
I wouldn't say wuss as much as I would say someone with a few chromosomes shifted around and put on a computer to wreak havoc where he can.
His reasoning and all that shite reminds me of some of the really bad aspberger kids I've worked with for a short period of time.
Good morning everyone,
Natalie Toomey here.
I just googled my name and this forum showed up on list.
I was hoping to see more positive discussion towards innovative and reasonable ideas for a solution.
Let's get back on track and lose the name-calling and f-bomb dropping.
Let's remember that we have a major issue with illegal immigration at hand and we should be trying to brainstorm ideas that could potentially be the key that Congress is looking for.
Let me remind you of the major fact
here; that we are talking about something that is illegal.
Ultimately, you should ask yourself 'which mind set do I possess?' The one that just wants to bash and belittle? Or the one here to present and share ideas for a solution?
~Natalie Toomey
Hi Natalie.
When did a blog turn into a 'forum'? This is where Josh expresses his individual opinions, not where they are discussed by his peers.
This is not a classroom discussion with you as the monitoring teacher, so please don't try to make it sound like it. ^_^
Furthermore, when one such individual as 'anonymous' posts comments like that, he is saying that he willingly subjects himself to ridicule and mocking from people who can do magic things like use punctuation and spell. As any north european politician would tell you; ripping someone who obviously never should have opened their mouth verbally to shreds and then presenting a solution to a problem is never mutually exclusive. I'm personally just lazy and I don't live in America, so I'm content making fun of people who are stupid and should not be allowed on the internet.
Let me remind you again; this isn't a forum for public discussion. If you want to assume the 'teacher' persona and lecture on the correctness of giving someone their own medicine in hopes of curing their disease, feel free to find one such webpage. I also strongly doubt that the congress, with their own think-tanks, would spend time browsing around on the internet for ideas to steal after having googled your name.
It also steals some credibility to your wanting to be some kind of moderator or whatnot, with your mentioning the highly narcissistic act of googling your own name to see which things you get associated with, not a good basis for discourse on the state of western or american society.
Leave your soapbox at home and feel free to open a discussion on level with the rest of us who read Josh's blog or refrain from commenting at all would be my advice.
Like I told anonymous: "Welcome to the internet."
P.S. You're also not the mother of any of us, so please don't try to moderate our language; something reserved for the one who has the blog. I'll lose the name-calling when I lose my will to live. And to be fair, if I get to drop some H-bombs, I'll stop dropping as many F-bombs. Even trade I'd say.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Wow, pretty bad when a comment has to be removed from the site by the blog administrator, (obviously because of the childish and vulgar content I assume it contained). You should be very proud of yourself.
Take a look at any of the op ed material that Natalie Toomey wrote,
or the posting by anonymous, and I don't think you can honestly say you would find anything but inteligent, common sense, opinion.
I don't see them resoting to potty mouth.
I agree with anonymous, grow up!
Signed,
Ann Honymos
Spelling corrections,
I should have proof read before I hit the publish button.
Judging from your past responses, I figured if I did not retract and correct, you would childishly attack me for the misspellings instead of focusing on the real issue at hand.
Such a liberal trait....
*resorting
*intelligent
Goodness Josh, you pull in quite the feedback for a fortune-cookie-logic one-liner opinion.
Can hardly wait to see the reaction to the deep thoughts. Providing, of course, that anonymous people comprehend them.
To Natalie:
On googling your own name - what Bjorn said.
As for innovative and reasonable brainstorms, you're presuming a common agreement on what the problem is. I don't see any agreement, myself, so try defining the problem before looking for answers.
Jen,
First, you are assuming that Josh is capable of deep thought!
Second, in reference to your responce to Natalie, THE PROBLEM IS, people with your mind set don't see a problem with "Illegal" imigration.
I honestly think that you can't even begin to criticize anyone before you at very least learn how to employ proper grammar. Your response is laden with fifth grade errors and reads as if someone younger wrote it.
Umm...to be honest, the deleted comment was an auto-generated message redirecting readers to a paysite. I deleted it because it wasn't germane to the discussion.
I realize this is a tangent, but I will address it anyway:
Good grammar and spelling matter. Without these two things, even the strongest argument lacks credibility. That's not a liberal or conservative issue. In fact, I know plenty of conservatives who are disgusted by how poorly people write these days. Honestly, it irritates me that people try to politicize the idea of writing English correctly! Isn't that ironic in a debate about immigrants learning English?
I agree with Jen that you cannot find solutions to a problem unless you define the problem itself.
Again, I want to reiterate that I notice a pattern here of resorting to Fox News-esque tactics of referring to any criticism as a "liberal" trait or a "typically liberal" attitude. No matter how easy it is to label something, it doesn't bring us any closer to defining or understanding issues.
As long as we're going tangential:
Mishri's thoughts on grammar and spelling are invaluable. It's one thing to misuse English as a child out of ignorance. It's another to butcher it as an adult, and the thought-content of the comments reveal that these are, in fact, adults - or at least, not 5th graders.
Her thoughts on stereotypes are equally true. You cannot dismiss an idea by negatively categorizing it. Leave off with the hot-button word-trading and deal with the concept behind the terms. Everything is typical in some way, but nothing is typical, really. Get past the polarization, people.
"A patriot":
Your capitalization is the only thing I can respect you for in that comment, and even that, you overdid. "Illegal" doesn't need to be capitalized unless you use it at the beginning of a sentence, as I just did.
Technically, it's "response" and "mindset" (as long as we're using proper English here).
Content-wise, if you actually deduced my opinion on the matter from that comment, you're downright telepathic, though I'm going with "laughable," myself. Look at the content of the arguments so far - if you have a tenth of Josh's mental capacities, you'll pick up on the fundamental disparity I was referring to.
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