Frank Rich/NYTimes: HOW HISPANICS BECAME THE NEW GAYS (with free link)

[Nothing Without Hope]

It's a fairly long editorial and I recommend reading it all; the four paragraphs I can quote here really don't convey it. Note the free link for those who can't see through the Times Select wall.

The editorial cartoon of the train becoming derailed to chase a (scape)goat is included with the article in the NY Times. And don't miss the Jen Sorensen cartoon at the end of this opening post!

Free link:
http://64.226.238.78/PA/fr/fr206.shtml

Times Select link:

http://select.nytimes.com/2006/06/11/opinion/11rich.html?th&emc=th
Op-Ed Columnist

How Hispanics Became the New Gays

By FRANK RICH
Published: June 11, 2006

HE never promised them the Rose Garden. But that's where America's self-appointed defenders of family values had expected President Bush to take his latest stand against same-sex marriage last week. In the end, without explanation, the event was shunted off to a nondescript auditorium in the Executive Office Building, where the president spoke for a scant 10 minutes at the non-prime-time hour of 1:45 p.m. The subtext was clear: he was embarrassed to be there, a constitutional amendment "protecting" marriage was a loser, and he feared being branded a bigot. "As this debate goes forward, every American deserves to be treated with tolerance and respect and dignity," Mr. Bush said.

(snip)

When young people hear repeatedly that gay couples aspiring to marital commitment are "undermining the moral fabric of the country, that stuff doesn't wash off," says Matt Foreman of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Most concretely, the Washington ruckus trickles down into sweeping assaults on gay partners' employee benefits and parental rights at the state level, as exemplified by a broadly worded referendum on the Virginia ballot this fall outlawing any kind of civil union. Had Mr. Bush really believed that his words had no consequences, he would have spoken in broad daylight at the White House and without any defensive touchy-feely bromides about "tolerance."

(snip)

The stars are in alignment for a new national orgy of rancor because Americans are angry. The government has failed to alleviate gas prices, the economic anxieties of globalization or turmoil in Iraq. Two-thirds of Americans believe their country is on the wrong track. The historical response to that plight is a witch hunt for scapegoats on whom we can project our rage and impotence. Gay people, though traditionally handy for that role, aren't the surefire scapegoats they once were; support for a constitutional marriage amendment, ABC News found, fell to 42 percent just before the Senate vote. Hence the rise of a juicier target: Hispanics. They are the new gays, the foremost political piñata in the election year of 2006.

(snip)

The most pernicious demagogues on immigration often invoke national security as their rationale, but no terrorist has been known to enter the United States from Mexico (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/03/AR2006050302199.html). Even the arguments about immigrants' economic impact are sometimes a smokescreen for a baser animus. As John B. Judis of The New Republic documented (https://ssl.tnr.com/p/docsub.mhtml?i=20060116&s=judis011606) in his account of Arizona's combustible immigration politics, the dominant fear in that border state has less to do with immigrants stealing jobs (which are going begging in construction and agriculture) than with their contaminating the culture through "Mexicanization." It's the same complaint that's been leveled against every immigrant group when the country's in this foul a mood.

(snip)

Jen Sorensen captures it, as she so often does:

(From the Working For Change site - http://www.workingforchange.com/comic.cfm?itemid=20908

[Nothing Without Hope]

1. Cross-posted with same opening post in the EDITORIALS FORUM:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x216614
thread title (6-12-06 Editorials): Frank Rich/NYTimes: HOW HISPANICS BECAME THE NEW GAYS

Ordiinarily I don't repost an entire opening post, but some people only scan Editorials for such columns.

[libodem]

2. Thanks

good read and great cartoon.

[Nothing Without Hope]

3. kick for visibility n/t

[Nothing Without Hope]

4. Kick n/t

[Nothing Without Hope]

5. kick n/t