Let me count the ways…
1. The tweeter, a veteran Salon writer, assumes that nobody rationally supports enforcing the law unless they personally benefit from it. In other words, “Integrity? What’s that?”
2. Williams adopts the stereotype that Hispanics are all nannies, drivers and gardeners, and that this is their sole value to U.S. society.
Nice. Boy, if we didn’t have African Americans, where would we get our NBA stars, tap-dancers and banjo players?
3. Who’s advocating killing illegal immigrants?
4. And my favorite: Williams, who is as Hispanic as I am….
….refers to the group risking deportation as “we” to cover her condescension, or try to. Dishonest and cowardly. Also stupid.
The tweet is, however, accurately representative of the quality of thought being used by open-border advocates to justify the unjustifiable.
_______________
Pointer: Instapundit
Ethics Alarms 
She can’t be too intelligent. She wears her house key around her neck like an elementary school kid.
Though…isn’t it kinda racist to think she was limiting herself to Hispanics? Especially since, as you pointed out, she said “we” and not “they”? Perhaps she is saying that members of the GOP see other nonmembers as either servants or disposable?
No, just as it wouldn’t be anti-gay to speak about a minority being stereotyped as poodle groomers, interior decorators and male figure-skaters as referring to homosexual males.
Be serious. Asians are nannies and gardeners in popular culture? Muslims are frequently employed in those jobs? She’s talking about Mexicans, and obviously so.
Yes, asian women are often stereotyped as nannies. I also had no idea that Mexicans were stereotyped as limo drivers.
But, the thing is, she doesn’t mention race or ethnicity at all. From a quick perusal of her Twitter account, it looks like she feels personally imperiled by the proposed changes in the health care law. Perhaps she really did mean “we.”
I think deery may have a semi valid point here.
But if he’s right about the tweet it only means the tweet is just as dumb but for different reasons.
Yes, to me it was clear she was referring not only to illegal immigrants, but also people in poverty who will be negatively impacted by the ACHA. That still doesn’t justify her use of “we,” as she belongs to neither group.
And I didn’t see it as stereotyping Hispanics. It’s about illegal immigrants, not Hispanics, and they are more likely to be in service jobs of the type she mentions. It DOES stereotype Republicans as rich, which is its own brand of bigotry (unless she’s just talking about the congressional GOP). And it promotes hysteria (we’re “ALL” gonna die!).
So, yes, an unethical and incompetent tweet.
Jack,
For more on this story:
I’m not suggesting she’s right or even that this is what she meant — only that this particular narrative has gained the most traction among resistance-minded folk. (i.e. “They’re criminals, but they don’t deserve to DIE!”. I have a feeling you’ve got a rationalization that encompasses that idea, but the number and moniker escape me).
I think this also adds credence to your theory that she’s shooting wildly and covering her clumsiness by making it sound universal. “ALL immigrants face the same struggle! The HUMAN STRUGGLE!” or something.
I miss the days when you used to tell me I was full of crap.
You’re just an incurable nostalgia addict…
When I imagine a map showing the population densities of nannies and limo drivers, it pretty much corresponds to the maps of counties or congressional districts that voted for Clinton. Is it possible that there are still people who think that the Monopoly Man is a pretty good representation of the average Republican?
Having slept on this, I think that I might have the answer: “the GOP” is the Administration, the Republicans in Congress, the Koch brothers and a few other financial supporters in polluting industries, and the right-of-center media. “We” is everyone else, including the misguided souls who vote for the above. Immigrants will be deported, everyone else will die from lack of health insurance.
Mary Beth sent this tweet to provide an example of using projection as a defense mechanism.
She’s obviously rendered stupid by bias and hate. It seems to me to be equally stupid to make any claims about her tweet except that she IS stupid and therefore her tweets unworthy of analysis. Similarly any analysis of tweets made by Trump. Twitter has to be in the top ten of the most insipid ways social media has ruined our social discourse and made us all less intelligent and more in need of real lives.
Before we get too hasty: neither surname nor appearance are necessarily accurate indicators of whether someone identifies as Hispanic or Latinx. I have a friend–pale skin, curly reddish brown hair–with a Scottish surname who regards herself as Latina. Nor is she a variation on the theme of Rachel Dolezal, The fact that her name and looks point only to her father’s side of family does not make her identification with her mother’s side inauthentic.
But unless she’s an illegal immigrant, she isn’t at any risk of being deported.
Agreed. But she might realistically regard herself as a representative of a community which could include illegal immigrants. That doesn’t legitimize her argument, of course. My comment was solely in response to Jack’s claim that she is “as Hispanic as [he is].”
Curmie,
I don’t mean to seem obtuse but why would your friend realistically regard herself a representative of a community which could include illegal immigrants simply because she has Latin American roots? The idea that Hispanics are the under class toiling in the economic shadows of Cristobal Colón, Ponce De Leon, and assorted other conquistadores wishing to trample them under their boots is as annoying as it is frustrating/offensive. Somewhere along the line the leaders of the Hispanic community sold the idea that Hispanics are perpetually working class and hovering around poverty, forever holding on to the last vestiges of the American Dream.
My wife is Mexican, and immigrated to the US in the mid 1990s. She is a naturalized US citizen of Mexican descent but does not feel a required affinity for everything that might have an impact on other people from that region in the US. She, actually, is quite offended that the prevailing wisdom is that all Hispanics are illegal aliens doing the good works of nannying, gardening, kitchening and cookerying, and handyworkering. She wonders why the doctors, dentists, engineers, fire fighters and law enforcement and other first responders, judges and lawyers, accountants, and other professionals are never asked what they think about US immigration policy. She thinks their responses might be quite different from the prevailing winds of social justice.
jvb
I was mixing up threads. My friend does not claim that, at least to my knowledge. I was suggesting that Ms. Williams might make such a claim, but you wouldn’t know that by what I actually wrote. I apologize for the confusion.
Of course, the notion of “illegality” is vexed in terms of “Dreamers,” some of whom have no memory of having lived anywhere but the US. But that’s an argument for another day.
Thanks for the clarifications. The “Dreamers” issue is a difficult one in my mind. Through no fault of their own, they are in legal limbo. Having represented some of them in various legal matters, it seems that a solution to their status should be something along these lines:
1. Qualifying individuals should get legal status – perhaps a hybrid between permanent residency and temporary/guest visas, with work authorizations and the ability to attend colleges or other post-high school degrees (trades, etc.), etc. Qualifications would clearly include not having been convicted of a violent or aggravated felony or a crime of moral turpitude (which is pretty consistent with present immigration law).
2. Qualified individuals get legal status but cannot apply for permanent residency for 10 years, which then allows them to apply for citizenship after five years. However, in these cases, there is no extension of legal status to the parents or other relatives.
jvb
Absolutely ALL of the liberals have the same character flaw(S). Can spot them a mile away.
If you were trying to show an example of an equally intolerant and unethical comment from a conservative…good job?
Thanks, Chris, I am laughing derisively at the comment you replied to, and I am now laughing harder in the same spirit because of your reply.
Now, if we can just get Gov. Brown of California to be as rough on China as he and his friends in the state legislature are on other states in the U.S…I guess the latest tactic is to remain MORE than a mile away, to avoid being spotted…
I have a relative who once expostulated to me that “they” (referring to illegal aliens) “wash our clothes, clean our houses and serve our food”. He apparently knows little of the law…but then, he is an idiot. He has also knowingly hired illegal aliens (I can offer no proof of this as he has carefully covered his tracks. That, and that alone, assures me he knows EXACTLY what he is doing.). The Key word, here, is “Illegal”, period. The concept, here is much like a vacuum cleaner…shut it off, with crippling fines for those who hire illegals, you stop the ‘flow’ and the influx.
False! They open their own businesses. They contract with other companies. Companies that hire illegals are only a part of the problem.
-Jut
Aren’t most banjo players white? Also, I’ve never seen a Latino limo driver. FWIW — most of the nannies in the D.C. area tend to have English as a second language (but they come from many nationalities). Further, most of the non-nanny childcare workers tend to be African-American.
Maybe she saw that funny-awful movie called “A Day Without a Mexican.” Exclusive to Los Angeles in a time warp — the rest of the population was deemed (implied) to be unaffected.
Crikey! I’m a one-percenter, clean my own toilets, and do many gas tanks’ worth more chauffeuring of grandkids and kids than being chauffeured. I don’t even take a limo to or from the airport. Somebody, please get this Williams gal in touch with me ASAP – I don’t want to be deported, and she sounds like she knows how to keep me in-country. (But I don’t care if I die.)
Totally moronic. How many card-carrying members of the GOP clean their own toilets and houses, take care of their children on their own? How many card-carrying members of the Democrat party clean their own toilets and houses and take care of their children on their own. Williams has no f—ing idea, and doesn’t want to know. This is pure nonsense. hatred, and venom. It’s not going to stop, either. Just throw up something outrageous and you can be guaranteed of attention. It’s not even politics: it’s pure narcissism. So she gets her 10 seconds of fame.
Tweets are the bane our existence — from Trump down to the teenagers and other idiots who think we are all just absolutely fascinated by their moronic thoughts of the moment.