Some
random thoughts.
Atrios briefly mentions Michelle Malkin and a comment
she made about the "liberal" media.
Being Filipino American myself, I find Malkin
perplexing and disturbing. In October, while at a Borders Books, I
stumbled upon her book
Invasion: How America Still Welcomes Terrorists Criminals &
Other Foreign Menaces to Our Shore, which basically, in a very
venomous manner, explicates why allowing immigration is a bad idea.
I was transfixed and horrified when discovering her cultural
heritage.
I don't know. There's just something about a child of
immigrant parents denouncing and deriding immigrants.
And—not that there's
anything wrong with it (oh yes, I know, those are deadly
words)—she's married to
a white guy. But what really gets me is that she just spouts all
this right-wing propaganda. I mean, it's one thing to stand up for
your political convictions, it's another thing to spew it in such a
rabid and purulent manner. I mean, I don't know, maybe I'm reading
too much into her articles, but I get the sense that she is an
extraordinarily paranoid and insecure reactionary, who has to smear
anything she doesn't agree with, to the point of being inconsistent
and contradicting herself. Seriously, what a fucking mind job.
Yeah. I haven't really finished thinking about the ways
her existence twists my bowels. I mean, there are various blog
posts and comments scattered across the net about how she is an
interesting case of self-hatred, a textbook example of a "sellout
to the Man." Really, it's classic colonial mentality. But it really
is bizarre to me. How the hell do you end up thinking that way?
I don't know. Maybe it's just me, but I can't
understand how you can be against immigration when you wouldn't
exist otherwise. I understand that that might be a self-serving
reason to be for immigration, but still, it boggles my mind.
And I'm not even going discuss at length how coming from the
Philippines is a special case since it was a former colony of the
U.S. Or the fact that (at least in Southern California) the
immigrants being most discriminated against are really trying to
get into territory that used to belong to their country,
seized in an American war of aggression over 150 years ago.
(Seriously, did you ever think about how, in a way, L.A. is
essentially a U.S.-occupied Mexican city? Consider that in a few
years, Chicanos will be the undisputed majority there. It blows the
mind that people can actually be against bilingual education
there, but that's another story entirely.)
In other news, the U.S. prevents Iraqis
from liberating their own city (from the
Agonist) Does anyone remember anything about the
Filipino-American War?
Next stop, Iran?
Quote of the day: Congratulations. You seem to have
about finished your work of civilizing the Filipinos. It is thought
that about eight thousand of them have been completely civilized
and sent to heaven. I hope you like it.
—Andrew Carnegie. Just
replace Filipino with Iraqi, and it becomes clear that people never
fucking learn.