Nonsequential Links X

As always, all my comments are in parentheses.

Well, no kidding. Every group seen as cruel and repressive has reasons for what it does. Pick the nastiest groups in history, and you can bet that with sufficient study one can come up with reasons why they behaved as they did. And indeed, it’s worth doing that. A view of history in which dangerously bad bogeymen do horrible things simply because they are bad is a shallow view of history that teaches us nothing.

If you say, “Those Mexicans do the jobs Americans won’t do,” what you’re really saying is “We should continue to rip off these foreigners because they have no choice and they have no way to go to court and stop us.”

Don’t get me wrong; it’s not inclusive casting that I’m objecting to. I just want black women to get their own stories.

What’s insulting is the thought that we’re supposed to be happy with whatever representation we get, without understanding that what we crave and demand goes far beyond the simple presence of a person of color on screen. It’s about substance. It’s about the opportunity for an actor or actress of color to be able to stand on their own merit and not in the shadows of their white predecessor. It’s about the importance of highlighting original stories by and featuring talent of color — without presenting it through a white gaze.

2016

Midway through the 2016 Presidential primary season, I started feeling like Michael Corleone in that scene from The Godfather: Part II where he predicted a Cuban rebel victory just based on what he had seen on the street earlier that day. To be fair, I welcomed a Trump presidency about as much as Michael Corleone welcomed a Communist takeover of Cuba but that didn't stop me from noticing that Trump seemed to be becoming increasingly immune to media criticism -- almost as if the voters were deliberately ignoring anything negative said about him, no matter how true it was.

The final proof that my theory was true came when Trump was revealed to have employed illegal aliens for one of his construction projects. Given all the publicity given to his "build a wall" speech and his status as an opponent of illegal immigration, the revelation that he himself hired illegal aliens should have been a vote-killer. But no one who was voting for Trump gave a damn. It seemed as if he could have been exposed as the Antichrist on national TV and he still would have had a substantial following.

And things only got worse by November...

Quote of the Week

The conservatives love their cheap labor; the liberals love their cheap cause. (Neither group, you will notice, ever invites the immigrants to move into their homes. Not into their homes!)
--Edward Abbey, “Immigration and Liberal Taboos”

Trying to Find a Better Life at the Movies

I am always tempted to recuse myself from reviewing movies like the 2011 release A Better Life because it is hard to pretend I can be unbiased about the subject manner. But then it is very hard for me to be very unbiased about many subjects. Besides, it is not like diehard Anglophiles recuse themselves from reviewing English movies. Nor do Francophiles recuse themselves from critiquing the latest Gallic film. If anything, I tend to be a little harder on movies about Mexican-Americans and their immigrant parents because my expectations are higher. I find it ridiculous to pretend that movies about Mexicans should be novelties when there are already so many of us in the American movie-watching population. Moreover, I find it equally ridiculous to pretend that we are incapable of inspiring the same great stories that we take for granted in other segments of the American population.

In any event, A Better Life is not the best movie about Mexican-Americans and immigrants that I have ever seen -- but it is not a bad movie either. After having seen Mexican actor Demián Bichir play a wealthy drug-dealer-turned-politician in the American cable TV series Weeds, I was pleasantly surprised to see how well he played a character on the other end of the class spectrum -- though I am not quite happy to note that his two biggest parts in America thus far involve variations on decades-old stereotypes.

Some parts of the movie were a bit too good to be true. Bichir's character Carlos Galindo, a humble illegal immigrant working as a landscape worker in southern California, seemed at times to be a bit too mellow for a guy who has had so many setbacks in his life. The conflict between him and his American-born son seemed to get resolved almost a tad too easily to be believable. But some areas -- like the relationship between him and his sister -- were all too believable, and even the rather silly event that landed him in trouble was more believable than most illegal immigrant apologists would have you believe. (I am not an expert on illegal immigration but I have met enough such people to know that while some such are more law-abiding than one would expect from their circumstances, still others are not quite as law-abiding as they could be.)

For what it is worth, my own father was never an illegal immigrant but he did have the same air of being wiser than his years that Bichir brings off so well in this movie. Indeed, much of this film's merits lies in the way it focuses on aspects of Mexican and Mexican-American culture that are still invisible to most American movie-goers.

If there is one such drawback to such a movie, it is that we are fast approaching the point where most Anglo-American movie-goers are not likely to welcome future work in this area. Already there is a tendency to see such movies as propaganda more than art, which I find ironic since it can be argued that movies that show the opposite view of illegal immigration are also more propaganda than art. Besides, propaganda tends to be in the eye of the beholder, and while I must admit that my views of illegal immigration are a bit more mixed than those of most Hispanic liberals, I must confess that I grow increasingly wary of those who only cry "Bias!" whenever a particular story is not in their favor.

But then most people rarely go to a movie theatre to have their political opinions challenged. And even more rarely to have them changed.

Cinema Indocumentado

I have seen so many bad illegal alien movies over the years that it often seems like a miracle to come across one that is actually good. This is not to say that such films are rare. I could sing the praises of movies like El Norte and My Family all day but unfortunately, not all films dealing with Mexican illegal aliens are up to the standards of those films.

More often, they are up to the standards of the 1980 exploitation flick Border Cop, which starred Telly Savalas as a tough but kind border patrolman and which featured Michael V. Gazzo as a local crime boss named Chico Suarez who just happened to speak with the same accent Gazzo used for his Mafioso character in The Godfather, Part II. It says something about how bad this particular movie was that one of the most likable characters in this movie -- a Mexican female immigrant, natch -- ended up getting raped for seemingly no other reason than to give the Savalas character an excuse to show what a badass he was when he went after the rapist. In all too many such movies, the Mexican characters seemed to have little reason to exist apart from giving the Anglo heroes a chance to show how brave and noble they were and Border Cop was no different.

Granted, the USA does not have a monopoly on such bad movies. The 1985 Mexican exploitation flick La Tumba del Mojado presented such a downbeat view of the United States and the type of life awaiting those Mexicans who make it here that a Mexican acquaintance theorized that it was part of her government's plan to discourage illegal immigration. The only Anglos shown on-screen spoke with thick Texas accents and were depicted as being just a tad more friendly than the Wehrmacht. One of the few friendly faces the illegal immigrant of the title* met in the US belonged to a drug dealer who befriended the immigrant and eventually involved him in his business -- an involvement which, of course, had tragic results.

Ironically, one of the better movies I have seen concerning this issue is the 1949 drama Border Incident, one of the first American movies that dealt with this subject. Of course, this film was made during the heyday of the bracero program (a government program by which Mexican agricultural workers were transported to the US to help out American farmers). Back then, illegal immigration still seemed like a novelty and while the movie's writers expressed their share of sympathy for the Mexicans who choose to illegally enter the US, the movie still emphasized the importance of immigrating the legal way.

Nevertheless, the movie's villains were not the poor devils who crossed the border without government approval but the Latino and Anglo criminals who smuggled them across and then preyed on them. Indeed, the number of young Mexicans who fell victim to these crooks became so great that the Mexican and American governments teamed up to bring the crooks to justice. The Mexican side was represented by Ricardo Montalbán, who played Pablo Rodriguez, a Mexican policeman who went undercover as a Mexican peon. The American side was represented by future Senator George Murphy, who played Jack Bearnes, the federal agent who assisted Montalbán in his mission.

Contrary to American movie tradition, Rodriguez did not die the traditional early death Hollywood usually reserves for minority characters. Instead he ended up becoming the hero of the movie while Bearnes ended up becoming a victim of the bad guys -- quite a daring plot development when you consider that this movie was made at a time when many restaurants, theatres and public pools in the Southwest still discriminated against Mexicans and Latin heroes were far from the norm in American movies.

Could a film like Border Incident be made today? Not likely, given that the bracero program which partially inspired it no longer exists. For that matter, the idea of the Mexican and American government cooperating today to bust an international ring of immigrant smugglers seems highly unlikely as well. But it would be nice to pretend it was possible, if only in dreams.

* Mojado is a not so nice Spanish word for "illegal immigrant" which usually translates as "wetback" in English. It is often used in the titles of Mexican songs and movies and one relative of mine even claimed to have once seen a T-shirt that pitted a vehicle labeled "Mojado Power" against a vehicle labeled "Chicano Power." However, it is not a word that most Spanish-speaking people knowingly use in polite company.

Disappearing Act

It's funny how movies which imagine an USA without Mexicans never seem to imagine an USA suddenly devoid of Mexican lawyers or doctors or cops or nurses or even computer operators. Nor do they rarely portray an USA devoid of Mexican military men -- which is quite odd, considering the number of Americans of Mexican descent in the U.S. Armed Forces. Instead, it is always Mexican menial workers such as maids, janitors, gardeners and fruit pickers who seem to be the main ones affected by such a situation. At least, that is how it seems in the 2004 movie A Day Without a Mexican.

In a way, I get the movie's point. If we were to deport all the Mexicans who were in the USA illegally, it would create a big hole in our society. And though the movie does tend to overdo it with the melodrama, the movie's subplot involving the one Mexican who didn't mysteriously vanish proved to be quite effective in spite of itself.

Yet as much as I enjoyed the movie's humor, I couldn't help but find the movie's humor all too convenient. After all, all too many non-Mexican people in the USA already have trouble thinking of Mexican-Americans as anything other than illegal aliens. Why encourage them? And don't Mexican-Americans who aren't illegal aliens have stories worth telling too? If so, why do we always pretend that the only Mexican-Americans worth telling stories about are the ones here illegally?

Machete Don't Vex

Every time I've been ready to give up on filmmaker Robert Rodriguez, he managed to come up with a film that was way better than I could have hoped for and last year's Machete was no exception. It is not every one's taza of tea, of course. Indeed, Rodriguez appeared to have gone out of his way in the trailers to tick off a particular type of anti-Hispanic chauvinist who has become quite common on the Internet. Yet the film never came across as the type of boring propaganda piece that appealed only to die-hard political southpaws. Granted, it is not likely to have strong appeal to the type of people who like to congratulate themselves on their dislike of Hispanic illegal aliens but then there are already enough films out there that pander to such folks.

Anyway, Machete had enough humor in it that it could just as easily be seen as a parody of Mexican exploitation films as it could be seen as an example of such. It did not hurt that it starred Rodriguez movie veteran Danny Trejo in the title role. Though Trejo was getting a bit old to play a convincing romantic lead, he was still able to play a convincing action hero, in this case the title character Machete (so-called because his favorite weapon of choice was, of course, a machete). Along for the ride were Michelle Rodriguez as a mysterious taco truck owner, Jessica Alba as a Hispanic border patrol agent and Cheech Marin as a priest. (Yes, you read that last part right.) Opposing Machete were a host of Hispanic and Anglo villains including a Mexican druglord played by Steven Seagal and a Bush-like politico played by Robert De Niro.

Oddly enough, the queasiest part of the movie came not from the shameless ethnic jingoism about which many right-wing critics of this movie had warned. After all, Machete killed almost as many Latino villains as he did Anglo villains and much of the film's most obviously political scenes -- for example, the "big" immigration rally in which Alba's character declared her conversion to Machete's cause -- were played for laughs as often as they were played straight. No, the most worrisome part of the film was the amount of surprisingly graphic violence which bordered -- no pun intended -- on splatterpunk territory. I am not so naive as to pretend that graphic violence is unusual in a mainstream action thriller but it has been a very long time since I have seen disembowelment and finger severing treated so casually in such a movie. It was almost as if Rodriguez was not so much interested in competing with Sergio Leone as he was in competing with Clive Barker.

Quibbles about violence aside, Machete still managed to be more entertaining than I expected. And I suspect a Machete II might be lurking somewhere down the road if Rodriguez has his way. If not, it should be.

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

Eli Stone: “Freedom”

It says something about how much I warmed up to this show since the first episode that I didn't quite mind the inevitable illegal alien subplot that seems to be the first thing American TV writers think of whenever they want to introduce a Hispanic character. (Illegal drug smuggling, of course, is the second.)

Granted, I would have preferred a more original approach to the subject than the one this episode used and it says something about the rest of the episode that I found myself getting attached to the show anyway.

I'm still not happy about all the focus on the white male lawyer character but I like the way actress Julie Gonzalo (an Argentine-born actress best known for playing Veronica's roommate Parker on the last season of Veronica Mars) was introduced as an idealistic associate named Maggie. Granted, it would have been nice if the writers hadn't felt compelled to Anglicize Ms. Gonzalo's character but then Parker wasn't exactly a very Latin character either. Then again the idea that all dark-skinned Hispanics are non-citizens who need the help of white non-Hispanics because they're intellectually incapable of solving legal problems on their own while all light-skinned Hispanics are just Anglos in disguise is not one that I would like this show to encourage. After all, if that is the type of stereotype we can expect from a liberal TV show, God only knows what we can expect if the conservatives ever take over.

On the plus side, I do like the way Loretta Devine's character Pattie was portrayed even though I usually find the sassy black female stereotype as tiresome as the Hispanic illegal alien stereotype. Of course, it would be interesting to imagine how the show would be like if the show was ever written from her point-of-view but I'm not going to hold my breath expecting that to happen.

Bordering on Romance--or Just Crossing Over?


Here’s a thought next time you are tempted to go on a rant about those damn Hollywood liberals: How likely is it that today’s Hollywood liberals would green-light a motion picture in which an entire police department comes to the aid of an illegal alien? Not likely, you say?

True, there has been more than a few movies produced during the last three decades in which individual various members of the law enforcement community -- especially members of the Border Patrol -- went to bat for undocumented individuals -- but most of these were generally characterized as mavericks suffering from a crisis of conscience. Even in the 2009 movie Crossing Over, it was generally understood that the immigration agent who bucked procedure on behalf on such an individual was not likely to expect a whole lot of support from his fellow agents. Indeed, the one agent in that movie who was most successful at “aiding” such an individual was doing so for obviously selfish reasons: the individual in question was a cute young Australian woman and by “helping” her, the agent in question managed to “rent” himself a mistress. (If that sounds like a disgusting plot development to you, rest assured that the screenwriter agreed with you and was not shy about having his characters point that out.)

So imagine my surprise when toward the end of 1935’s Romance in Manhattan, a movie made at a time when sympathy toward undocumented immigrants was hardly greater than it is today, a key plot twist involved an illegal alien getting aid from the local police department. Not just one conscience-stricken maverick helped out; the whole force did. And though it could be argued that their efforts went to a worthy end -- aiding a well-meaning immigrant in his quest to do the right thing and gain U.S. citizenship -- it still seemed like such an unlikely development as to seem like something out of a fairy tale.

Nevertheless, Romance in Manhattan seems more watchable than most entries in the “Lo! The Poor Illegal Immigrant!” school of filmmaking because it does not seem to be concerned with establishing political talking points as much as it is telling a story. In this case, the story involved a pretty young princess named Sylvia Dennis (played by Ginger Rogers) “masquerading” as a chorus girl who one day stumbled upon Czech immigrant Karel Novak (played by Francis Lederer), a hungry beggar who proved to be a handsome prince from across the sea. Okay, in actuality, he was more a pauper than a prince and Dennis really was a chorus girl but he was still handsome and kind-hearted and she was friendly and beautiful and it was no surprise to the movie audience that Novak and Dennis soon became romantically involved.

But, alas, there were obstacles to this couple’s happiness. Novak dared not express serious interest in Dennis because he feared she would be unwilling to marry a non-citizen. But when the landlady discovered that he had been staying at her apartment -- with her kid brother, Frank, around as chaperone, natch -- and local authorities threatened to take custody of Frank away from Sylvia unless she got married, Novak‘s hand was forced. Novak approached a local lawyer in hopes of gaining American citizenship so that he could marry Dennis only to find himself betrayed by the lawyer and slated for deportation. Could anyone prevent such a revolting development?

It could be argued that Novak was a lot more idealistic about America than most real-life immigrants and indeed, some of the funniest scenes in the movie involve the contrast between his immigrant idealism and Dennis’s native-born cynicism. For a change, it was the European newcomer who played the idealist and the American citizen who played the snarky cynic. But in this film, such a turnabout worked because both characters were portrayed as essentially decent types who wanted to do the right thing and who only ended up in trouble due to circumstances beyond their control.


Of course, it is hard to imagine this same scenario working nowadays. Too many American movies and TV shows depicting the darker side of American life are shown to foreign audiences for today’s immigrants to be as believably naïve as Novak. And indeed, one of the few virtues of 2009‘s Crossing Over is its willingness to realistically depict illegal aliens as both victims and victimizers.

One Jewish illegal, for example, attempted to scam the immigration authorities by posing as a Rabbinical student while, ironically, his Australian girlfriend became a victim of the unscrupulous immigration agent mentioned above. Moreover, another subplot involved a family of Iranian immigrants and their children which may or may not have been involved in an honor killing. Unfortunately, these three storylines are forced to interact with other storylines: one involving the adoption of an African refugee by the wife of the unscrupulous immigration agent, another involving the involuntary deportation of an assertive Bangali teenager who made the mistake of defending the 9/11 hijackers to the wrong audience, one involving a Korean-American cholo wanna-be who engaged in one last crime the day before his naturalization ceremony and one involving a dead Hispanic woman. Not all these subplots worked and while I admired the ambition of the filmmaker’s attempt to deal with subjects most Hollywood filmmakers would not touch with a ten-foot green card, I could not help but feel that the individual stories deserved better.

The young Australian immigrant’s story seemed especially underdeveloped. While Ray Liotta managed to be very convincing as the agent who exploited her, there was something about the way the camera focused on almost every square inch of the Aussie that could be legally uncovered in a mainstream Hollywood movie that made it seem as if the filmmaker was sending a mixed message: one that read not so much “oh, look how awful it is for such a nice young woman to be at the mercy of such a scoundrel” as “oh, look how awful such a nice young woman has it -- and how cute she looks without her clothes on.” Let us hope that that message was unintentional. And be glad that such scenes were not possible in 1935.

TV Quote of the Week

I’m sorry, ma’am, illegals only.
--Italia Ricci, House M.D., “House Divided”

Hey, I Remember This Show: I Married Dora

Wow! I used to have such a crush on Elizabeth Peña back in the 1980s and her role as Dora Calderon (the "Dora" of the title, natch) on this show was one reason why. (Her role in 1987's La Bamba was another.)

Unfortunately, the show didn't exactly showcase her abilities to any great extent. And I suppose it says something about how well it showcased the rest of the cast that I keep forgetting Juliette Lewis was on this show too.

Plus there's the whole "Dora is an undocumented immigrant who has to get married to an U.S. citizen to stay in the country" angle which I could have done without. Indeed, it seemed funny that at a time when I was running into Anglo-Hispanic couples all over the place, the only way network TV could conceive of such a pairing on a prime time show was as a green card marriage. Somehow that doesn't say anything flattering about how far we Americans had come in the 1980s from the days of I Love Lucy.

Oh, well. I've seen worse.

All About Sandra

What the heck happened to Sandra Bullock?

It seems like just a decade ago when she was America's sweetheart -- a genuine movie star whose girl-next-door persona seemed a welcome alternative to the artificial glam of a Sharon Stone or Pamela Anderson.

Now Ms. Bullock seems determined to trash her old persona in order to revive her big-screen career, only to create one disaster after another. Granted, most of the films Ms. Bullock made back in the 90s were hardly classics... but they seemed more watchable than her most recent efforts.

First there was The Proposal, a summer movie based on the idea that basing a whole romantic comedy around a variation of the bossy character Ms. Bullock played in Crash would be a good idea. It wasn't.

Not only was Ms. Bullock's “boss from Hell” routine fairly dull compared to Meryl Streep's take as Miranda Priestley in The Devil Wears Prada, but the movie went on to put in her character's mouth the same sort of stereotypical immigrant jokes that should have become obsolete in the year 2009. Not to mention the fact that the movie gave us yet another variation on the old “green card marriage” subplot -- a subplot that might have worked better had the writers not seemed so bound and determined to skip over some of the real-life issues facing modern-day immigrants in order to give Bullock's character a happy ending.

After that came All About Steve, a movie about a woman who travels halfway across the country in pursuit of a would-be boyfriend. Apart from the movie's tabloid news parodies and some scenes featuring Thomas Haden Church as a egotistical newsman -- scenes which get a lot more humor from Mr. Church than the script deserves -- this is not all that funny a movie.

I guess the movie started to lose me that it suggested that Bullock's character (Mary Magdalene Horowitz) was seriously abnormal just because she likes creating crossword puzzles and wearing red boots. Excuse me? Liking crossword puzzles is weird? Wearing bright red boots in an era in which even shy suburban women sometimes go in for tattoos and not so shy women sometimes go in for body piercing is abnormal? Is the screenwriter serious?

Then there is the script's constant attempt to get humor out of stuff that is not all that funny. For example, an incident in which several deaf children fall into a hole is treated as the stuff of high hilarity And an attempt to parody pro-life and pro-choice demonstrations is made which does not actually parody such demonstrations but rather provides a lukewarm and inoffensive imitation of such.

The sad part is that the movie hints at enough potentially interesting themes -- be yourself, diversity is a good thing, conformity is bad -- that it could have been great had the filmmakers put forth some effort.

But they did not.

And I can't help but find it pretty ominous for Ms. Bullocks' future that both movies have tried to sex up the traditional Sandra Bullock image by either showing Ms. Bullock in various scenes of near-nudity or else dressing her up in a red bra and short skirt. In other words, it is no longer enough for Sandra Bullock to act like Sandra Bullock. Now she has to act like Sharon Stone. Which is an odd message, indeed, to include in that second movie -- that movie that supposedly encourages people to be themselves...

Citizen Cheech: Born in East L.A.

Long before Spielberg started taking heat from critics for the opportunities he had wasted with his adaptation of Andrew Niccol's The Terminal, classical film auteur Cheech Marin was wasting an equally promising premise with the 1987 movie version of his song-and-MTV-video “Born in East L.A.”

The main question posed by this movie is quite simple: if you were caught without your driver's license or other ID, how exactly would you prove you're an American citizen? More importantly, how could you keep yourself from getting deported? Granted, this is not the type of question that most Americans have to worry about. But there are unfortunately some Americans who have to worry about this question far more than other Americans. And while much of this film has become dated, this aspect unfortunately has not.

It would be nice to say this is a great film or even a promising comedy. But unfortunately, Marin never quite develops the plot enough to qualify the movie for either description. Too much of the film's running time is wasted on unfunny skits and overly sentimental subplots. And while the movie itself is not painfully bad, it hardly lives up to the promise of the main premise.

So why do I watch it so often?

Perhaps because it's one of the few movies that attempts to make a point about America's Kafkaesque immigration policies.

Or perhaps because of Daniel Stern's performance as a Tijuana conman who reveals in an understated scene that he -- unlike Cheech's character -- can never go back home to the US.

It's certainly not because of Paul Rodriguez, whose performance as a dumb immigrant can be mercifully described as being not much better than it should be.

Anyway, it hardly seems like the type of film that the Bill O'Reillys of the world would approve of, and it's tempting to recommend it for that reason alone.

But only if El Norte or Lone Star are not available...

No Puedo Comprender o Entender Spanglish

Ay, Dios! It was really hard for me to take the 2004 film Spanglish all that seriously. Yes, I know. It was a comedy. But even by comic standards, it was hard to take seriously. What was the main point of this movie anyway?

Anglos can be condescending to the Latins they hire? El Norte covered that same ground better over two decades ago. By now, it's almost a cliché.

Success is a bad thing? Sure, I can see the Mexican-Americans in El Paso and East LA taking that message very seriously...

And in these days of layoffs and downsizing, how many people worry about being "too" successful anyway?

Yes, I know. It's escapism. And some scenes I'll admit were very funny. For example, the scene in which Adam Sandler's character John Clasky argues with his Mexican maid Flor Moreno (played by Spanish actress Paz Vega) while her daughter Cristina (played by Tejana actress Shelbie Bruce) translates for both John and Flor.

But, c'mon. A film that implied you have to go through Texas to get to California from Mexico? A film that implied most Mexicans choose to come to certain parts of the US based on the number of Mexicans already there and not, say, the number of jobs available there?

And since the script chose to make race an issue, why cast a Spanish actress like Paz Vega for the part of a character who considered herself non-white? After all, many Spaniards not only consider themselves white, but have been historically obnoxious about it. And Mexicans of Spanish descent definitely consider themselves white. Indeed, they get insulted if you imply they're anything else.

Why not cast someone who was not European? LA has one of the largest Latino populations in the country. And yet they couldn't find one American-born Latina actress who could play this part? Let's hear it for outsourcing...

Why for that matter was the main Mexican character in this movie a maid? Yes, I know many Mexican women in LA are maids and that it would be unrealistic to see an illegal alien like Flor in an upper-class position.

But why is it that at a time when more and more Latinas are entering the middle and upper classes in this country that so many Hollywood movies see fit to cast Latinas as either servants or illegal aliens, if not both? And why do you so rarely see a Latina character in a Hollywood movie who is anything else?

I'm not the most politically correct person in the world, but I get all so tired of seeing yet another Hollywood movie pretend that the type of Latinas I see every day just don't exist. And yet most of the complaints Anglo film critics have had about this movie have concerned how Clasky's Anglo wife was portrayed. How nice to see how some things never change...

Pensamientos Acerca de Televisión

Dexter: “Love American Style”

It's Dexter Morgan the immigrant avenger as America's favorite serial killer goes after an illegal immigrant smuggler who has a nasty way of reducing overhead.

Okay, this episode doesn't especially claim to have any unique perspective into the illegal immigrant problem, apart from the oh-so-brave position that people who smuggle illegal immigrants are not nice people.

But the series itself does have an interesting take on the whole vigilante issue that has been explored in so many recent movies.

On one hand, Dexter Morgan is a vigilante enthusiast's dream. A self-appointed vigilante who only kills “bad” people and who never ever kills an innocent by mistake.

On the other hand, his story poses unwelcome questions that most vigilante movies would rather not deal with. Questions like, what kind of person would want to kill such people in the first place? Is society really better off with people like Dexter Morgan around? Would any sane person want to encourage a real-life Dexter Morgan, and if so, why?

I'm not sure this show has all the answers to such questions, but at least the show's writers are posing such questions and not merely attempting to portray a right-wing wish-fulfillment fantasy.

More power to them.

What I've Learned Since Last Spring

1. Illegal immigration is the most important issue facing this country.

2. Illegal immigration is the least important issue facing this country.

3. Illegal immigrants are the scum of the earth.

4. Illegal immigrants are the salt of the earth.

5. Illegal immigrants only take jobs Americans don't want.

6. Illegal immigrants only take jobs Americans can't afford to want.

7. The one thing we need is a big strong fence to keep them out.

8. The one thing we don't need is a big strong fence to keep them out.

9. Demographics are changing in Mexico's favor, and that's a bad thing.

10. Demographics are changing in Mexico's favor, and that's a good thing.

11. Mexican illegal immigrants aren't assimilating like other immigrants.

12. Mexican illegal immigrants are assimilating like other immigrants.

13. The last thing we need are more political demonstrations by people who shouldn't be in this country in the first place.

14. Yeah, but those rightwing talk show hosts are all citizens, so what you gonna do?

The Other Side of the Immigration Story

Just when the immigration issue is seeming so simple, it becomes more complicated.

But then only a fool would pretend it wasn't complicated to begin with...

“Immigration--It's a Complicated Subject...”

At least, that's how one Hispanic co-worker put it.

And I must admit that I agree.

After all, I actually met a former illegal alien once. And I also met a Hispanic veteran of the US Army. Interesting enough, they were one and the same person. And somehow I doubt that was a rare example.

Of course, I can't help but wonder how many illegal aliens I know that I don't really know to be illegal aliens. After all, my late paternal grandfather was a migrant worker. My late father was a naturalized citizen whose first job involved helping his father pick cherries in northern Michigan. I'd like to believe that both he and my grandfather came over legally -- after all, my grandfather was supposedly involved with the bracero program -- but sometimes I wonder...

And that's one problem with the illegal alien debate. It's easy enough to go on about the faults and vices of “those” illegal aliens; after all, most of them aren't saints. But once you start dealing with them on an individual basis, the whole question of who or who isn't an illegal alien becomes more problematic.

And yet just sticking with the status quo doesn't seem like an adequate solution either. Every time I hear the same old cliché about illegal aliens only taking jobs that Americans don't want to do, I can't help but think about the black-owned janitorial service that gave me my first job back in the 1980s -- and what the people who own that service must think about the Walmart janitorial scandal a few years back. After all, janitorial work wasn't considered a “job Americans don't want to do” back in the 1980s. Why is it considered that way now? What happens to the Americans who used to do it? And how many Americans have quit doing it because they couldn't afford to compete with firms that employed illegal aliens?

And why don't those Hispanics who defend illegal aliens ever seem to consider the questions I just asked? Would we be as quick to defend illegal aliens if they were, say, Irish? Or Nigerian? And if not, why not?

History In The Making?

Writer/blogger Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez aka Queen Sucia probably summed up it best: wow.