Nonsense of Ruben Navarrette

Today's CNN page has its usual intallement of the usual pro-illegal-immigration hogwash by Mr.Ruben Navarrette. The title of this particular link is "Border security is nonsense".

Now, anybody who's read even a few of Mr.Navarrette's many articles has had a fair chance to realize that with every publication, he is essentially betraying the interests of all Americans in favor of the special interests of the Hispanic groups, legal and illegal, that reside in this country. A full arsenal of demagoguery is deployed to refute a rather simple set of facts. For example, a few million of illegal border crossings per annum is portrayed as an insignificant number when compared to the size of the US population; it is asserted that the pervasive and growing usage of Spanish, despite obviously incoveniencing many Americans and splitting the nation into enclaves, is nothing to worry about; Mr. Navarrette also insists that unless the critically flawed immigration bill, which in the eyes of many amounts to encouraging criminal behavior, is passed, nothing will change (well duh, we need a better bill, -- we the American people, not you, Mr. Navarrette).

But today's article on CNN is just icing on that cake of duplicity, one which borders on the absurd. Wait, I take it back. There is no duplicity after all in that the author advocates, to put it in his words, "Latinization of the United States". How? Mr.Navarrette goes as far as to effectivley chastize people for fearing

that which terrifies many Americans: the Latinization of the United States.

I don't know about you, I like the United States of America just the way they are or at least used to be a few years ago. If Mr. Navarrete is such a big fan of Latinization, he shouldn't just wait till it comes to his doorstep, and move to Mexico instead, where he will have plenty of chances to reconnect with his heritage.

More to the point, Mr.Navarrette's goal in this article seems to be discredit the whole idea of tighter border security. I keep asking myself, what patriot and a sane person can be against that? In the demagoguery-driven and frankly lunatic world of Mr.Navarrette, however, the border security is a bad idea because it hasn't worked in the past. That's a classic reductio ad absurdum trick for you. It hasn't even been tried in earnest, and Mr.Navarrette has the nerve to tell us that's exactly why it's doomed to fail. Well, not being content with just that, he also goes for the ad hominem move, accusing the concerned citizens (including senators, no less) of lying about the importance of the border security because they are, well, afraid of Latinization.

I guess there is no such thing as unbiased journalism. However, when the bias becomes as large as to convey the air of mendacity and with so many parapgraphs in one's writing fall in the category of formal fallacy, it makes me feel sick in the stomach. I have no idea why CNN is even publishing this crap. Appealing to Mr. Navarrete for honesty and common sense, even rhetorically, is a waste of time so I won't do that to close this post.

Flipping off the Common Sense

What do outer-space delinquents have to do with the War on Terror? Judging from the recent news, a lot. Just in case you didn't follow these sensational events, here's the scoop. To promote their cartoon show, the "Adult Swim" TV channel contracted an advertisement agency. The agency developed a campaign plan that included placing a few dosen of small lightboards in various locations in and around Boston. Each lightboard would feature a lighted figure of a 'Mooninite', the character featured in the cartoon. The Mooninite, the "delinquent from outer space", would flash his electronic middle-finger at passers-by. It was meant to be a cute little friendly gesture.

I'm not an expert in advertising and I don't know what results were expected from a promotional campaign focused on flipping off the unsuspecting citizens of Boston. What I do know, is that after initial reports of the lightboards' sightings, the law enforcement responded in force, shutting down major transportation routes and various areas of Boston and sending in the bomb squads to detonate the evil Mooninites. I also know that the mayor and other officials expressed their outrage at the "Adult Swim" channel and their parent company, the TBS, for being so irresponsible as to cause such havoc and disruption. The two young men who actually manufactured and planted the Mooninites are now under arrest, awaiting charges.

Despite a mild comic effect this story had on me, I feel profoundly sad. Apparently, in our day and age, all it takes to shut down a major American city is a handful of LED lights and a box of batteries, all together worth about $20. It also appears that each person who was a willing or unwilling participant of this tragicomedy - from the artists who created the cute blinking Mooninite to the chief of the Boston Police - acted at least somewhat reasonably. The electronic artists were reasonably creative if maybe a little controversial with their auto-flipping device. The public was reasonably cicrumspect in alerting the authorities to the presense of unfamiliar objects in public places. The police was reasonably cautious in making no compromises when it came to ensuring the public safety. The bomb squad acted proficiently with their defusing equipment. And yet, the net result was so utterly moronic.

Beating the Dead Horse, or Irrational Exuberance of the American Psyche

You probably saw the obituary, written in a rather epic style, describing the outpour of public support for the ailing hero, now deseased. You know, the one that was a champion, and whose struggle made him a source of inspiration for the masses.

I'm talking, of course, about the horse that was euthanized earlier in the week. Not the farm animal kind - that particular horse was thoroughbred, but still equally susceptible to the desease "laminitis" and complications thereof. If you didn't know what laminitis was, your probably know now. If not, look it up, it's fascinating stuff.

The horse's name was Barbaro. We've read about Barbaro receiving get-well postcards, flowers and even "religious medals" (I am at loss speculating what religion or confession Barbaro belonged to). He probably appreciated the flowers, even though it's not clear whether he enjoyed them aesthetically or as a part of his diet. What's more important, Barbaro has received gifts totaling $1.2M, which allowed a series of complex surgeries and convalescence procedures to be performed. It's too bad that all that money and effort could not save him and now has to be written off. It's a big chunk of cash, you know.

I know a few people with serious illnesses, who actually need surgeries they can't afford. I can reasonably assume that they are going through pain and suffering of at least same magnitude as the great Barbaro had to endure. It is alarmingly rare, though, that those people get recongnition equal to a minute fraction of that which the horse has received. The surgeon who operated on Barbaro was fighting back tears when he briefed journalists at the press conference. I personally never saw a surgeon reacting this way to a failed procedure performed on humans.

In no way I want to make light of the heroic struggle of Barbaro, the colt who so valiantly won the Kentucky Derby. His legend will live on, complete with the number of stitches he received and details of his painkiller regimen. But I'm questioning our collective sanity in observing how Barbaro, in his death, made some major front pages, while very few of our heros who die almost daily in Iraq and Afghanistan are ever afforded that honor. On the CNN page, the casualty numbers and reports from Iraq often look like small-print links tucked between a few others discussing overarching issues such as body fat index of Tyra Banks or the new season of American Idol.

Now, two days after Barbaro was put out of his misery, there is a follow-up article detailing (again) his injury and the surgery that followed, accompanied by a rather complete biography of the surgeon. Last time I read that much detail about an injury and its treatment was when Ronald Reagan was shot.

It would be a nightmare to reduce one's information intake to analytical reports about war, climate change, healthcare and global competeteiveness of American education and businesses. But it's equally nightmarish to see the landscape of the American public discourse being so polluted with tabloid-grade material and so oblivious to the real issues and events that will shape lives of many generations of Americans to come.