I am for open immigration, but that sign we have on the front of the Statue of Liberty, "Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses..." can't we just say, "Hey, the door's open, we'll take whoever you got"? Do we have to specify the wretched refuse? I mean, why don't we just say, "Give us the unhappy, the sad, the slow, the ugly, people that can't drive, that they have trouble merging, if they can't stay in their lane, if they don't signal, they can't parallel park, if they're sneezing, if they're stuffed up, if they're clogged, if they have bad penmanship, don't return calls, if they have dandruff, food between their teeth, if they have bad credit, if they have no credit, missed a spot shaving, in other words any dysfunctional defective slob that you can somehow cattle prod onto a wagon, send them over, we want 'em."
Seinfeld
Broadcast date: January 27, 1993
Posts
47 comments:
In defense of the poem those huddled masses are modified by yearning to be free. So much of our immigrantion problem is that freedom simply isn't a part of the current immigrants calculus. I know the pop-Nietzschean freedom is will to power pap is popular here as it is anywhere social misfits congregate, but railing against a poem, which if used as the basis for our immigration would yield a far saner policy than we have now, is super petty.
And this Seinfeld quote perfectly encapsulates the leftist self-indulgence that creates many of the negative traits in our elite. It wants to have its cake and eat it too and the way the modern works an undecided voter will hear this joke laugh and then think funny people support open immigration so maybe i should too. In a way this is the Urtext of the Sarah Silverman et al comedy method. When politics becomes about status signaling the disclaimer at the beginning of the joke negates the entire truth potential of the joke.
It's weird. The 2007 bill saw far more organization from the right.
This time, it's mostly coming from the left.
EPI, the flagship think tank of the left, has done yeoman's work on the H1-B visa exploitation for months leading up to the Grand Amnesty.
And the New York Times have begun to have coverage on this issue much like their coverage of genetics. Their news reporting is mostly excellent and thoroughly refutes their silly editorial stance.
Their editorial positions('Downes syndrome' as you call it, named after Lawrence Downes) is continually undercut by their reporting, recently by Bronner.
And let's not forget that recent 8-page, A1 story about the racial hoax that black farmers have used to game the system. That they even went with the story is remarkable, that they went with the frontpage splash and for eight epic pages in total is beyond reason.
Now, the Zuck's getting creamed, again from the left mostly. The right-wing hasn't been doing that well. True, National Review has been a voice of reason(bizarrely enough).
If you're pro-immigration, the way forward is essentially Romney-style self-deportation and then stamp a green card on every PhD and master's student in STEM sciences as well as reorient the system massively towards skilled(with means Asian in our time due to their massive population advantage and still-not-great countries, China's per capita GDP is still below Turkey for instance).
The left is too polite to tell the truth about the mestizos/amerindians coming from Mexico. They're usually at the bottom of their own societies. So they bash the H1-B billionaire crowd.
The right rightly understands that the Hispanics are not "natural conservatives", not even on social issues anymore like gay marriage or abortion and on economic issues they're much closer to blacks (due to their poverty and lack of advancement).
So what will give? The right's distaste for the 'natural conversatives', yet another addition of to the ever-growing black/brown underclass, or the left's distaste for plutocratic cynicism, personified by the Zuck?
Right now, the bill seems on life support. Even Rubio recently admitted that it won't get past the house. What a mess.
In defense of the poem those huddled masses are modified by yearning to be free. So much of our immigrantion problem is that freedom simply isn't a part of the current immigrants calculus.
Our immigration problem exists because the interests of existing U.S. citizens and their progeny aren't part of the current calculus.
I noted that this was from a 1993 routine as Seinfeld would never, ever dream of doing a joke that might offend liberal sensibilities. Twenty years ago inviting in the unwashed was not as sacred a topic. Things have changed. Twenty years ago Newsweek--Newsweek!--had a cover story about racial differences in intelligence that actually acknowledged the facts.
Time to rewrite the poem and discredit Emma Lazarus in the eyes of her most ardent admirers.
Lazarus once referred to the Hasidim as "a mass of semi-oriental kabbalists".
Keep, o yea ancient lands, your mass of semi-oriental kabbalists!
Well anon then I'm going to have to respond like DR did.0 to my ancestors your ancestors were the teeming masses so perhaps you'd like to make a different argument. If we left the issue up to the DAR you wouldn't like the results either so maybe lets focus on the motivations of immigrants rather than just I got mine (at my ancestors expense) screw the rest.
Jerry Seinfeld, Emma Lazarus, Dana Milbank, David Brooks - all Jewish.
You gotta love the diversity of voices on immigration to the good ole USA.
jerry isn't for open immigration. he got babu deported.
HE'S BAD MAN. HE'S A VERY BAD MAN.
Derek Brown said: a poem, which if used as the basis for our immigration would yield a far saner policy than we have now . . .
Hunsdon asked: How would using this poem as a basis for our immigration policy be better?
Anonymous said...
Our immigration problem exists because the interests of existing U.S. citizens and their progeny aren't part of the current calculus.
===============
and it's all the fault of those durned leftists...who just happen to be plutocrats....huh?
If we left the issue up to the DAR you wouldn't like the results either so maybe lets focus on the motivations of immigrants rather than just I got mine (at my ancestors expense) screw the rest.
How about we focus instead on the best interests of existing Americans and their progeny? Why should the "motivations of immigrants" have any significant weight?
Oh, well, the description of the "huddled masses" on the statue pretty well describes my ne'er-do-well immigrant ancestors.
In that episode Babu, an unlucky Pakistani restauranteur, gets apprehended and eventually deported because his visa paperwork accidentally gets delivered to Jerry's mailbox while Jerry is out of town, and Elaine fails to correct the mistake even though she is charged with collecting Jerry's mail. Clever stuff.
Back in Pakistan, Babu declares he will get revenge on Jerry someday. On one hand, mortal vengefulness isn't a desirable quality in an immigrant. On the other hand, it is pretty funny in this context.
Babu's character was introduced in an earlier episode, "The Cafe," which dealt rather matter-of-factly with the subject of IQ. Even when race isn't involved, I find it hard to imagine a new sitcom today dealing with IQ at all. Then again, I don't watch any new sitcoms, so what do I know.
Twenty years ago inviting in the unwashed was not as sacred a topic. Things have changed. Twenty years ago Newsweek--Newsweek!--had a cover story about racial differences in intelligence that actually acknowledged the facts.
That's interesting. Gotta link?
OT -- but the NumbersUSA Action Board has been out of commission off and on all day today.
Either so many people sending faxes to Congress it can't keep up, or it's experiencing a DoS attack.
...so maybe lets focus on the motivations of immigrants rather than just I got mine (at my ancestors expense) screw the rest.
There is nothing to be ashamed of about "I got mine, screw the rest."
That is how the world works, Derek.
If I find a nice neighborhood, or build a vacation home on a lovely stretch of secluded beach, that does not mean I'm morally obligated to accept a limitless number of other people moving into my neighborhood or beach.
My ancestors on both sides of my family have been here since the seventeenth century. They were not part of any "teeming masses."
A nation is based on shared ancestry, shared history, shared culture, shared beliefs, and shared relgion. America, which has none of these things, is a pseudo-nation.
"I explained to him that the Civil War was—and is—to the United States what the Trojan War was to the Greeks; the great single tragic event that continues to give resonance to our republic. 'Well, to me,' said Poddy [Norman Podheretz], 'the Civil War is as remote and as irrelevant as the War of the Roses.'
That's from Gore Vidal, and is a sterling example of what happens when you let in large numbers of people who do not share your history
Amazing that libtards can't see the statue for the sign.
Sane folk may see a gigantic monument to the human desire to escape the oppressive elites and the oppressive mob, but modern PC junkies only see and believe the sign endorsed by elites inviting in that same mob to latch on to us and suck us dry.
How free is any man with a bunch of parasites clinging to him?
Derek Brown: In defense of the poem those huddled masses are modified by yearning to be free. So much of our immigrantion problem is that freedom simply isn't a part of the current immigrants calculus...which if used as the basis for our immigration would yield a far saner policy than we have now[...]
So you have a policy in mind that restricts immigration on your preferred basis of (as far as I can make out) those "yearning to be free". However,
to my ancestors your ancestors were the teeming masses so perhaps you'd like to make a different argument. If we left the issue up to the DAR you wouldn't like the results either so maybe lets focus on the motivations of immigrants...
Mmm, sorry, but any variant of the vacuous "but but but your ancestors were immigrants, too!" argument can be just as consistently and logically used against your preferred immigrant-restricting policy as it can against anybody else's. So perhaps you'd like to drop that particular mindless line of attack.
In defense of the poem those huddled masses are modified by yearning to be free
That's no defense. Everybody wants to be "free" to do what they want to do. In the case of certain Muslim-Americans, that means "free" to blow things up. In the case of many "Hispanics" it means the freedom of WIC and welfare checks. The word "free" is not a magical talisman which transmutes base metal into gold.
No, Derek, the poem is evil and destructive, and that should be hammered home whenever possible. And everybody years to be free, but very few of them yearn for OTHER people to be free also. Big difference.
You're firing on all cylinders lately, Steve, and Ex-Army is heaping praise all over you here:
http://ex-army.blogspot.com/2013/05/steve-sailer-rules.html
If the 3 Castro brothers who kept those girls captive in Cleveland aren't 100%, red/white/blue, born-in-the-USA, English-speaking, American citizens, then the Gang of Eight's bill is toast.
Some diversity celebrations are in order. It appears they have arrested the bad, the bad, and the ugly. Well technically all three are bad and ugly, but only one looks like Eli Wallach.
http://news.lalate.com/2013/05/07/ariel-castro-pedro-castro-onil-castro-mugshot-photos-released-by-police/
Anonymous said...
That's interesting. Gotta link?
No link, but a cite:
Tom Morganthau, "IQ, Is It Destiny?" Newsweek 24 October 1994, 52-55. It focuses on Murray's book, and on second reading I see it does its best to obfuscate the reality and implications. Nevertheless, the IQ difference is acknowledged and discussed.
Paul Mendez,
The NYT's story mentions that he went to high school in Cleveland, so he's probably home-grown (as he's 52).
Paul Mendez,
The NYT's story mentions that he went to high school in Cleveland, so he's probably home-grown (as he's 52).
Could be home grown. But he flew a Puerto Rican flag off the front of his house.
"HE'S BAD MAN. HE'S A VERY BAD MAN."
The wheels are in motion!
Check out these pictures of the Castro's (the kidnapping suspect's) house. All except one show a Puerto Rican flag flying off the deck. The odd one out, the lead one, shows an American flag. Was the lead photo a download from, say Google Street view, that had been taken at a different time? Or was this photoshopped?
Photos here.
ot...
paul mendez brought up the ohio kidnappings: "If the 3 Castro brothers who kept those girls captive in Cleveland...."
now we learn that ariel castro's daughter is in jail for trying to kill her daughter. i'm wondering, now that we know her father's history, if the child isn't ariel's kid (and that's why his daughter flipped and tried to kill her). (did you follow that?)
in any case, nice family! =/
Yearning to be free our their old culture is the explicit message of the poem. The huddled masses is contrasting imagery with the pomp and glories of the cultures the immigrants are leaving. It is a literary device she doesn't actually want decrepit immigrants she's simply using exaggerated contrast as a literary device. when you argue with statistics you have to think mathematically when you are arguing with a poem you have to consider the logic of poetry
I didn't make the point well but I should have emphasized that element of yearning to be free of ones dysfunctional culture. It's obvious that your average Mexican doesn't want to be free of his culture at all he simply wants to make more money. There was a time when Germans came her explicitly to avoid conscription not because their home was dump. The Puritans came here to be free in a way that simply doesn't resonate with out average immigrant.
Rohan how is my argument invalid when it is exactly the argument everyone on this board is making. I'm not making the but but argument I'm simply pointing out that it is an effective counter attack to the I have mine screw you argument. I get that some people on this board think that argument works but it doesn't.
"If the 3 Castro brothers who kept those girls captive in Cleveland aren't 100%, red/white/blue, born-in-the-USA, English-speaking, American citizens, then the Gang of Eight's bill is toast."
They were interviewing a neighbor of the Castros. The neighbor was a black woman who needed an interpreter to do the interview.
The USA is now as benighted by utopian ideology as the Soviet Union once was. Perhaps more so -- since most Soviets knew the score. Our elites have drunk their own egalitarian Kool-Aid for so long that no one has noticed the flavor changed and we're minutes from Jonestown.
The left's opposition to immigration comes from the impact it may have on workers. The left is pro-amnesty, anti-guest worker. The right is less pro-amnesty, but very pro-guest worker.
1993 was a different world entirely.
Puerto Ricans are probably the worst Hispanic ethnic group I can think of.
My mother was an impoverished immigrant, my husband's father was too. One white, one mestizo, descendants more or less equal in success though with a streak of criminality in the latter.
Sill, when the forebears came here circa 1930 it was not a welfare state. That's still a good defense, no? I don't know what else to use. God knows I can't use race, though the dull clannishness of the mestizo family has not been a joy to me.
Anonymous said...
Some diversity celebrations are in order. It appears they have arrested the bad, the bad, and the ugly. Well technically all three are bad and ugly, but only one looks like Eli Wallach.
http://news.lalate.com/2013/05/07/ariel-castro-pedro-castro-onil-castro-mugshot-photos-released-by-police/
The guy on the right looks like the Most Interesting Man in The World from the Dos Equis commercials.
Twenty years ago Newsweek--Newsweek!--had a cover story about racial differences in intelligence that actually acknowledged the facts.
That's interesting. Gotta link?
I don't have the Newsweek link from 20 years ago, but I do have an interesting link from the Chicago Tribune from April 1991, that featured competing op-eds on immigration, which would probably not be allowed today.
The first is called Melting Pot Meltdown in the US, and was written by a Japanese academic, Yuji Aida. In this short essay, he argues that the US would no longer be able to compete as a first world nation if our nation became more black and hispanic. Keep in mind this was written in 1991. So people back then could see the writing on the wall.
A week later, after Aida received some PC blowback, a counter essay was published called Minority Workers by Irma Claudio. In this essay the author assured America that Hispanics were great:
Our commitment to bring excellence to the American economy is supported by our population growth. Hispanics will remain a vital part of this economy. Our solid values and our desire to excel uniquely prepare us, contrary to Mr. Aida`s thinking, to meet the American demand and need for talented, specialized human resources and for a diverse base of knowledge.
Of course we now have 20 plus years of actual data to see that Hispanics have a 50% high school drop out rate and are not a talented human resource.
It's too bad we cannot bring these two authors before Congress today to argue their 1991 positions. Everything the Japanese guy said would happen did. And everything the Latino wrote was fiction, the same fiction used by the Gang of 8 today.
Sometimes I wish we could post the Michael Jackson eating popcorn gif as is done on other forums for moments just like these, e.g. when the bomb brothers and now the bondage brothers make their appearance.
http://gifaday.blogspot.com/2009/02/michael-jackson-eating-popcorn-gif.html
Given the current amnesty bill, the timing of these news items is about as fortuitous as the various storms that sunk the Mongol attempts to invade Japan.
The statue of liberty was given to America by France to celebrate its centennial. It had absolutely NOTHING to do with immigration at all. It was HIJACKED as a symbol of immigration by the open doors lobby.
The Radical Centrist said...
...
Well, third(?) time's a charm. This time you didn't steal someone's photo so you could pretend to be a hawt chick who loves guns.
Was that hard? Doesn't being less dishonest make you feel cleaner?
Anonymous, thank you for the Melting Pot Meltdown link. He was the Delphic Oracle.
There was another Japanese prophecy of around that era that was also laughed of when it was made. As Time magazine recalls:
"Michio Watanabe, a senior strategist in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, publicly suggested that U.S. blacks were irresponsible: in a speech he noted that Japanese would "escape into the night or commit family suicide" rather than fail to pay their debts. But in the U.S., Watanabe said, "where credit cards are much in use, a lot of blacks, and so on, think, 'We're bankrupt. We don't have to pay anything starting tomorrow.' "
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,149882,00.html#ixzz2Sgbrqt9X
The recent mortgage unpleasantness comes to mind.
"Sill, when the forebears came here circa 1930 it was not a welfare state. That's still a good defense, no? I don't know what else to use. God knows I can't use race, though the dull clannishness of the mestizo family has not been a joy to me."
Why can't you use race? I would think that mestizos who prefer to live in the U.S. over Latin America should certainly want this country to remain majority white.
Sometimes I wish we could post the Michael Jackson eating popcorn gif as is done on other forums for moments just like these, e.g. when the bomb brothers and now the bondage brothers make their appearance.
The bomb brothers and the bondage brothers remind us that organized crine is a family affair. Another reason to maintain a homogeneous population.
"Some diversity celebrations are in order. It appears they have arrested the bad, the bad, and the ugly. Well technically all three are bad and ugly, but only one looks like Eli Wallach."
http://news.lalate.com/2013/05/07/ariel-castro-pedro-castro-onil-castro-mugshot-photos-released-by-police/
The guy on the right looks like the Most Interesting Man in The World from the Dos Equis commercials.
Eli Wallach? Jonathan Goldsmith? Are you two implying the "bondage brothers" are of Jewish ancestry?
The bomb brothers and the bondage brothers remind us that organized crine is a family affair. Another reason to maintain a homogeneous population.
I don't see the connection.
"Was that hard? Doesn't being less dishonest make you feel cleaner?"
I doubt it does. One thing I have learned about con men, kind of like studying an alien lifeform, is that they actually enjoy and take pride in their dishonesty. Not only that, but they enjoy refining their technical skill at the art and study other conmen of renown. If anything, DL 3.0 (remember that PAG was DL 2.0) is irritated that he wasn't smart or skillful enough to pull the wool over the eyes of the rubes in this case.
I've always felt that Seinfeld was a profoundly reactionary show, coated with enough irony and liberal showmanship to be acceptable to a mainstream American audience.
Anonymous said...
"Was that hard? Doesn't being less dishonest make you feel cleaner?"
I doubt it does. One thing I have learned about con men, kind of like studying an alien lifeform, is that they actually enjoy and take pride in their dishonesty. Not only that, but they enjoy refining their technical skill at the art and study other conmen of renown. If anything, DL 3.0 (remember that PAG was DL 2.0) is irritated that he wasn't smart or skillful enough to pull the wool over the eyes of the rubes in this case.
Hmm. That probably means I should stop giving advice to people who don't realize that I'm actually trying to make them feel ashamed.
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