Shouldering the Burden

It's probably an understatement to say that Miss USA, Rachel Smith, had a rough night on Monday at the Miss Universe pageant held in Mexico.

Not only did the poor girl fall down hard on her bottom during the evening gown competition, but she was roundly booed all night long by the Mexican audience.

Despite the hosts' pleas during commercial breaks that the audience tone down the hostility toward Miss USA, the booing continued and nearly drowned out Smith's responses to the interview questions.

This was clearly not a personal attack against Smith (although I'm sure the 21-year-old from Tennessee was deeply hurt by the public taunts), rather it was an emotional response to Mexico's tense relations with the U.S., due largely to this country's broken immigration laws and the controversial new plan for reform.

Sadly for Smith and her family, it was her slender shoulders that were to bear the weight of the audience's wrath for her nation's government.

Despite the indignant reaction of the broadcast media ("How could the audience be so cruel?"), the treatment Smith got in Mexico is just the latest manifestation of the blazing anti-Americanism that has infected the world.

We should hardly be surprised.

But rather than reacting angrily and condemning the Mexican pageant audience, perhaps the media should take this opportunity to have a discussion about the rampant anti-Americanism that has exploded since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Instead of allowing us to exist in a national bubble without much consideration of the rest of the world, the media should help us understand why we estadounidenses have become so hated - and more importantly, what we can do to regain the respect and admiration of the rest of the world.

Too Kind to Tancredo

Despite the impossible odds, Rep. Tom Tancredo, R-Colo., is wasting our time and reporters' ink with his hopeless run for the presidency. But as it turns out, Tancredo may understand there is more to running the country than giving the boot to 12 million undocumented immigrants and sealing the southern border with a 2,000-mile steel fence.

Over the weekend, Tancredo campaigned in Iowa and touched on school vouchers, healthcare and gasoline taxes between rants on the great peril of the Latin American immigrant invasion of the U.S. However, his rhetoric about how to tackle America’s other domestic quagmires is totally uninspired compared to the ferocity he reserves for the issue of illegal immigration. Karen Crummy, of The Denver Post, was with Tancredo in Iowa and quoted him regarding health care reform, considered a pressing need by many within the medical profession.

“Health care is an individual decision to a large extent. You need to stop looking at the government,” Tancredo said. “I will not propose any huge programs.”

Lucky for us (and especially for the millions of Americans that can’t afford health insurance under the present system), Crummy points out that Tancredo’s odds at becoming president are, at best, a million to one.

To me it is curious that Tancredo, who offers little in the way of fresh ideas on any issue, is considered a respectable voice in the immigration debate. Tancredo bills himself as a tireless advocate of tighter border security and tougher immigration laws, but his comments often reveal a baffling ignorance on the issue he has adopted as his own. For example, if Tancredo were to examine the statistics from Princeton's Mexican Migration Project, as many scholars have, he would find that the border security he lauds is largely responsible for the massive population of permanently settled undocumented immigrants present in all 50 states.

Before the IRCA immigration reform of 1986, MMP data showed that incoming migration from Mexico was set off by the outgoing migration of roughly equal numbers. The tightening of security along the border had an effect, but not the desired one. Rather than keeping people out, the increased security just prevented people from going home. The nature of the work performed by many Mexican migrants has traditionally been seasonal in nature, and in the past, most migrant workers would return home in between jobs in the U.S. But the IRCA reforms put a stop to that practice for most people. The border cross became too hazardous. So rather than risk not being able to get back into the U.S., migrants stayed and worked to bring their families north. Whereas undocumented immigrants were once mostly male and residents in a few southwestern states, the result over time has been a huge increase in settled populations of undocumented immigrants all over the nation.

A studied, nuanced view of the immigration issue is something Tancredo is simply not capable of. I believe at the root of his vehemently anti-immigration stance is a strong desire to keep America a predominantly white nation of European descendants. Xenophobia drips from Tancredo’s lips when he speaks, and unfortunately, it’s a stance that has earned him plenty of friends and admirers. Luckily, there aren’t nearly enough “Tancrazies” out there to give him even a snowball’s chance of getting elected president.

No Scandal Too Scandalous

After the embarrassing personal foibles of Clinton's final years in office, George Bush promised to restore honor and integrity to the executive branch. But seven years on, his administration has weathered and is presently embroiled in dozens upon dozens of scandals; although none of them seem damaging enough to change the course of this disastrous administration.

In early 2005, Salon.com compiled a list of 34 Republican scandals that began during the Bush administration's first term in office. In the twilight years of Bush's presidency, the scandals continue to pile up; yet the political consequences for Republicans have been relatively light.

The fictitious case made by the White House to invade Iraq will go down in history as this scandalous administration's most monumental screw up. Bush and his top officials lied to the American people, Congress, the UN and the world when they made their case for war with Saddam Hussein. In comparison, the firing of eight U.S. attorneys for political reasons and the conviction of Republicans on corruption and perjury charges pale. Stumbling on to the scene in Iraq opened the door for colossal new scandals like torture perpetrated by U.S. soldiers at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and allegations of prisoner mistreatment at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Just to name a few...

-World Bank President Paul Wolfowitz is under pressure to resign after it was revealed he pulled strings to get his girlfriend a lucrative job at the State Department while remaining on the Bank's payroll.

-Scooter Libby, former chief of staff to Dick Cheney, was convicted on perjury and obstruction charges in connection with leaking the name of CIA agent Valerie Plame.

-Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez has lost the confidence of scores of lawmakers for his role in the firing of eight U.S. attorneys, who seem to have been sacked in order to make room for political sympathizers.

The Democrats have not gone after the White House Republicans with even a trace of the rabidity that characterized the Republican legislators' attacks on Clinton. For most of his presidency, Bush has enjoyed a partisan Congress that wouldn't dream of investigating thier cronies in the executive branch. Also, as Salon pointed out, without the "drumbeat of scandal" sustained by the right-wing news media - as we saw during the Clinton-Lewinski debacle - the Bush administration scandals, inexplicably, do not seem to be a defining feature of his reign. While Clinton's adultery was contemptible, his missteps seem utterly trivial compared to this president's slip-ups, which have conservatively cost tens of thousands of civilian lives.