Wednesday, June 22, 2011

The Swan of Dogpatch

You've probably seen or heard about this New York Times piece (My Life as an Undocumented Immigrant), in which Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Jose Antonio Vargas writes about the DREAM Act from the non-Republican, non-Tea Party perspective; that is to say, from experience.

Put on a plane at age 12, and sent from the Philippines to the U.S., Vargas grew up in California (as I did) and worked exceptionally hard in school (as I did not), assimilating with a vengeance.  It was only when he rode his bike down to the DMV to obtain a learner's permit (an all but inescapable rite of passage in California) that he discovered the adults in his life had left him in a legal limbo:
 I decided then that I could never give anyone reason to doubt I was an American. I convinced myself that if I worked enough, if I achieved enough, I would be rewarded with citizenship. I felt I could earn it.
As I say, you've probably read the story, but you likely didn't make the same mistake I did by following up with a visit to the cream of natural born punditry, West Virginia's own Don Surber (last seen here, daring liberals to bite him):
The 1st Amendment isn’t a get-out-of-jail card

Good reporter or not, kick the lying, illegal alien Jose Antonio Vargas out.

True, Vargas was brought here as a child through no fault of his own, and knows no other country, but he gamed the system using a deceitful combination of studiousness, hard work, and an almost quaint dedication to the American Dream; and now he's taking the journalism jobs and winning the Pulitzer Prizes that would otherwise go to ambitious natives who've been grinding out anti-immigrant screeds in Charleston, West Virgina for the past 27 years, so don't say the White Man hasn't paid his goddamn dues!
He wrote:
"There are believed to be 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States. We’re not always who you think we are. Some pick your strawberries or care for your children. Some are in high school or college. And some, it turns out, write news articles you might read. I grew up here. This is my home. Yet even though I think of myself as an American and consider America my country, my country doesn’t think of me as one of its own."
No, this is not his country.
This country belongs to those who were born here.  Unless they were born in Hawaii, because that's way out in the middle of the ocean, and as it turns out, birthright citizenship is water-soluble.
He did not come here legally.
He lied to stay here.
If he'd had any respect for this country he claims to love he would have gotten on a plane the day he turned 18 and flown back to that country he doesn't remember.  And if  he couldn't scare up the couple grand for the flight, then he should have skipped college and gone to work so he could save up, thereby compounding the felony.
He lied to get in the White House.
But unlike Jeff Gannon, he didn't have to blow anyone once he was there.
Not only should he be prosecuted, but his bosses as well because they should have checked his citizenship,
How about we leave him here and deport the HR Department?  Unlike the overachieving Vargas, they seem kind of lazy.
Liberals can pretend they have a perfect example of someone to symbolize this cause but actually he is an example of why we need to protect our borders.
Illegal aliens...If they're not starting forest fires, or beheading white people in Scottsdale, then they're writing for The New Yorker.
He is a journalist who lies. I put him alongside Janet Cooke and Jayson Blair.
Except in Vargas' case, it was his life that was a lie, while his reporting appears entirely factual.  Meanwhile, Don is the man who, in perhaps his most famous blog post, wrote:
For two years now, I have been called ignorant, racist, angry and violent by the left. The very foul-mouthed protesters of Bush dare to now label my words as “hate speech.”
To which WO'C veteran Chris Vosburg responded:  Would it surprise you to learn that a Google of "Don Surber" "hate speech" produces not a single incidence of anyone referring to Surber's writing as such, but instead endless examples of Surber referring to others' as such?

As Don's ideological forebears in 19th Century Germany were fond of declaring, nationality is determined by "blood and soil" (Blut und Boden) and the kind of "overripe bullshit only someone born in America could naturally produce (Blut und Boden und Kuhscheiße)."

8 comments:

Brian Schlosser said...

So, people who have done more to be Americans but who aren't, due to the actions of their parents need to be booted out forthwith, but mendacious cretins such as Cuzzin JoeBob need to do nothing to justify their citizenship because they were squeezed out of their mother's filth in the Maternity Ward of the Eyesocket County West Virginia General Hospital and Goat Surgery. I'm sure Thomas Jefferson, Ben Franklin et al., would applaud this logic.

Anonymous said...

I think the solution to the problem is to keep Jose Vargas here, and to send "Dogpatch" Don Surber somewhere where he won't bother the rest of us...say, like the Dry Tortugas.....

Spearhafoc said...

I can think of another person who wasn't born in America, lied about who he was his entire life, and became a reporter.

Weren't cons complaining about the whole "Superman renounces his citizenship" thing just a few months ago? Didn't they whinge about the "tarnishing of an American icon"?

Just saying.

trashfire said...

Illegals started the Wallow Fire? As likely as Palin seeing Putin's naked ass out her kitchen window. McCain knows that Bear Wallow, where the half million acre Wallow Fire started, is an absurd distance from any route taken by illegals, a place where white patriotic americans exercise their god-given right to hunt, fish, drink, and leave campfires unattended. Re the Monument fire, USFS said "We don't speculate on causes until our investigation is complete." (Can you please wrap that up before the Iowa carcasses?) Rodeo Chedeski (at the time blamed on environmentalists, who are no longer a choice target because they lack fundraising ability in a down economy) was set by a part time Apache firefighter in need of work and a ditzy blond on an ATV. Dry lightning caused most of the other recent fires in AZ.

But screw the facts. Let's start a new ad campaign. Give Smokey the Bear a pair of binoculars, a rifle, and a new slogan: "Only You Can Prevent Forest Fires By Fixing the Dang Fence."

Jay B. said...

Or, Vargas could kill all the white people or put them in barren wastelands and give them diseases. Maybe then surber would honor him as a true American.

Carl said...

Surber is just jealous because that would have been his Pulitzer.

No. Really! I'm serious! Vargas stole his entitlement! (along with about a million other bloggers, columnists and fourth grade essayists)! That would TOTALLY have been Surber's prize!

Anonymous said...

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist writing for the NY Times. Surber already hated him.

Anonymous said...

RE border-crossers starting fires -- not to mention, trashfire, that if people could cross the border openly, they wouldn't be out there in the wilderness to be scapegoated for setting--ooooh, now I get it!!!!!

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