A bunch of people out there owe me money, favors and commitments to serious dares. Because swine have finally flu.
Some right wing talk radio hosts have also “flu,“ over the cuckoo‘s nest.
I could do this all day.
On a more serious note, Jay Severin, a Boston talk radio host has recently been suspended for saying just about the most blatantly racist shit I‘ve ever heard. The Palin/McCain fan club was an extremely close second, but judges agreed that claiming Mexicans are “primitives“ and “leeches“ wins because, well, nobody really cares about the Muslims anyway.
Other comments included the coining of the term “crimaliens,“ which refers specifically to Mexican immigrants and in case you didn‘t catch it, implies that they are all undocumented and criminals. It becomes tiring and redundant to point out that America‘s racist minority is becoming more and more mainstream. But desensitization is the first step toward brainwashing.
Speaking of brainwashing, the recent swine flu scare, which fellow columnist K.C. Cody‘s column last Friday points out, is creepily similar to the anthrax scare, the bird flu scare, the SARS scare, the West Nile scare …
See where this is going? And when there is a will, there is a way to scapegoat a minority group for a problem that in some sense or another the United States started anyway. Officials have determined that the new virus strain originated in Mexico – from a pork farm owned by Smithfield Foods, an American pork producer and processor whose headquarters are located in Virginia.
And yet some sector of American society will be ready to accept the inherently deep-seated racist propaganda in comments like suggestions that venereal disease is one of “the leading exports of Mexico.“ Other radios‘ hosts have compared Severin‘s comments to Nazi Germany‘s depiction of the Jews. The first step toward convincing a population to rid themselves of a particular group of people is to dehumanize them.
Observe: “We are the magnet for primitives around the world – and it’s not the primitives‘ fault by the way, I’m not blaming them for being primitives – I’m merely observing: They’re primitive. … It’s millions of leeches from a primitive country come here to leech off you and, with it, they are ruining the schools, the hospitals and a lot of life in America.“
Severin is not just talking about undocumented people; he uses the leech analogy to refer to Mexicans as a whole. This is similar to the terrorist generalization of Muslim people, but, again, who really cares about the Muslims? The thought of Mexicans as leeches is unbelievable because it adds to and makes apparent the already popular attitude that all people of Mexican decent are some how “illegal,“ and here to take good-hearted American jobs. He amps up the paranoia by adding that “schools, hospitals and a lot of life“ are all at stake. Quickly! Grab your children and lock your doors! The swine flu infested Mexicans are here to kill us off and take our jobs!
Perhaps if there wasn‘t a wall being built between the United States and Mexico, if it wasn‘t already public opinion that undocumented people are taking the jobs that Americans deserve, and if we weren‘t so fucking prone to buying this kind of bullshit, this guy could just be dismissed. But Middle America surprises us all the time.
Hopefully everyone on a college campus would be able to realize this racist propaganda, but then I am reminded of the Davis College Republicans “Capture the Illegal Immigrant“ game on the Quad a few years ago, and type just a little faster.
SARA KOHGADAI thinks there are more relevant problems that college students should worry about: meningitis from beer pong, STDs from intercourse with strangers and malnutrition from Easy Mac and Cup‘o‘Noodles. So wash your hands often, drink some OJ, and be nice to each other. Contact her at sbkohgadai@ucdavis.edu.
