Glossing over the obvious

The omnipresent Sewell Chan writes Immigrants’ Children Find Better Lives, Study Shows off a panel presentation by the study's authors he moderated, that raises a question:

A decade-long study of adult children of immigrants to the New York region has concluded that they are rapidly entering the mainstream and doing better than their parents in terms of education and earnings — even outperforming native-born Americans in many cases. ...

It focused on five groups: Dominicans, Chinese, Russian Jews, South Americans (consisting of Colombians, Ecuadoreans and Peruvians) and West Indians, defined as immigrants from the English-speaking Caribbean, including Belize and Guyana. The researchers also interviewed native-born whites, blacks and Puerto Ricans (those born on the mainland) in the New York area for comparison purposes. ...

The authors acknowledged that it was hard in some cases to explain why some of the five groups studied appeared to do better than others. The relative success of Russian Jews seemed clear: They immigrated with high levels of education, benefited from government programs because they came as refugees and received aid from established Jewish organizations.

The authors said it was more difficult to explain why “Chinese youngsters have achieved the greatest educational and economic success relative to their parents’ often humble origins.” The Chinese have a fairly cohesive community with “a high degree of social connection between its better- and worse-off members,” the book argued, while ethnic newspapers, churches and media served as a link between middle- and working-class immigrants and helped share “cultural capital,” like information on how to get into the city’s best schools.

Finally, Chinese parents were less likely to divorce, and they encouraged their children to put off marriage and children until their education was completed.

Sure, those are all reasons--wonder why the famously productive Chan doesn't also note that maybe the Chinese Americans kids just worked harder, too.

They've got the time, after all, as Dylan Loeb McClain's article, Brooklyn Public School Is a Big Winner at National Championships alludes to:

At the elementary school national championships in Pittsburgh last weekend, public schools won many of the top prizes. ...

Among the public schools that did well was Intermediate School 318 in Brooklyn. For the second year, the school won the section for players in kindergarten through the sixth grade. ...

Elizabeth Vicary is the school’s chess coach. She worked for Chess-in-the-Schools but is now on staff at I.S. 318, where she teaches English and chess.

“I am not sure that this will come across the way I mean it,” Vicary said, “but there are some advantages to teaching kids who don’t have a lot of opportunities in their lives. They are not also going to soccer games.”

Well

Los Niños

So let's say there's a group that makes up about 20% of the people in your country; and which happens to be the fastest-growing group.

You'd want to bend over backwards to get to know this group, right? I mean, they're likely to have significant power, which is only going to grow, right?

If nothing else, you'd conclude whatever such a sizable part of your country cares about is likely to be something the entire nation should care about too, right?

Which is why all this anti-immigrant sentiment is idiotic. Hispanics are that group; and even though the vast majority of them are here legally, the anti-illegal immigration 'outcry' is being used as a stick by racists to beat them all with (after all, you can't tell someone's immigration status by looking at them on the street, and most proponents of immigration 'reform' don't care).

Yeah, sure, for a while longer racist whites can probably form a working majority in some parts of the country to push through their fears; but that day is dwindling fast.

Which means whoever you think 'won' the 'debate' between Bill O'Reilly and Geraldo Rivera on FOX, I can tell you who's gonna win the war.



And whichever copy editor at the Washington Post who thinks Hispanics need to 'plead' for anything in this country has a pretty poor grasp of politics. You'll see how much pleading Hispanics are gonna do when you look out your window on May 1.

Pleading to Stay a Family

N.C. Aizenman in the Washington Post: As the government's crackdown on illegal immigrant workers has intensified in recent months, so have the consequences for a large subgroup of U.S. citizens: American-born children of illegal immigrants.

Numbering at least 3.1 million, according to an analysis by the Urban Institute and the Pew Hispanic Center, such children range from teenagers steeped in iTunes and MySpace to toddlers just learning their ABCs.

Until recently, their parents' illegal status had limited impact on these children's lives, because, although every year hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants are detained attempting to cross the U.S. border, once they make it in, they are rarely caught.

But the increase in raids against companies employing illegal workers is beginning to change that. ...

Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies, which seeks to limit immigration, said he has sympathy for children in Jessica's situation -- but no more so than for any other child victimized by a parent's mistakes.

"Kids often pay for the bad decisions of their parents. If you do something wrong that sends you to jail, well, your kids suffer for that. If you are careless with your mortgage and lose your house, your kids suffer along with you," he said. The parents "knew what they were doing when they had kids here, knowing that they were still illegal immigrants."

Krikorian applauded the new efforts against employers of illegal workers as a welcome departure from years of lax enforcement of immigration laws within U.S. territory.

In fiscal 2004, for instance, the government deported about 51,000 immigrants who had been in the United States for more than a year, accounting for just 3 percent of the number of immigrants expelled and less than 1 percent of the nation's estimated 12 million illegal immigrants.

Krikorian said lawmakers would only make matters worse by granting judges more discretion to allow those now being arrested to remain in the United States if they have U.S. citizen children, as proposed in a bill recently introduced by Rep. Jose E. Serrano (D-N.Y.).

"You'd be making having a kid an automatic get-out-of-jail-free card," Krikorian said. "You'd basically be saying that every illegal alien gets to stay permanently just because they had a kid once they crossed the border."

Krikorian also cautioned that by pushing the issue, immigrant advocates will strengthen sentiment in favor of revoking the automatic citizenship granted to nearly anyone born on U.S. soil -- a right set forth in the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. ...

Oh yes, listen to the wise white man, who cautions us how to proceed--language is so interesting in cases like this, where some still believe they're the lords in a feudal society. As Stephen Biko said, "Not only are whites kicking us; they are telling us how to react to being kicked."

This country was built on the simple premise that if you could make it here, you were free; and if you were lucky enough to be born here, you're an American; "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

It's a concept that for most of the world is still tricky--I'll tell you right now we will never amend our 14th Amendment to take away that right; you may as well white-out 'We the People'.

Krikorian and his ilk are the same people who set up and tried to maintain Jim Crow in the South; the Nietzschean outgrowth of that is likely to be repeated here, as the Post article concludes about one of the immigrant kids:

His mother, Consuelo Castellanos, watching from a pew nearby, dabbed at her own tears and admitted to mixed emotions.

"I'm really worried that this is going to traumatize him even more," she said in Spanish. "But I'm also amazed and proud. I don't know where he gets this bravery. Normally, he's so shy, but he's so determined to fight for us."

Habla hysteria

The sign tells you right away Pizza Patron's not your normal fast-food chain. Just how special it is comes out in Texas-based pizza chain accepts pesos, takes heat.

It's startling to me that people who are bigoted against immigrants care so much that they'll spend time and energy going after an entrepeneur like this. What the hell do they care how a fast-food joint accepts payment?

Maybe these haters should instead try and contribute to this country.

Chicago Tribune: A pizza chain has been hit with death threats and hate mail after offering to accept Mexican pesos, becoming another flash point in the nation's debate over immigrants.

"This is the United States of America, not the United States of Mexico," one e-mail read. "Quit catering to the ... illegal Mexicans," another said.

Dallas-based Pizza Patron said it was not trying to inject itself into a larger political debate about illegal immigration when it posted signs this week saying "Aceptamos pesos"--or "We accept pesos"--at its 59 stores across Texas, Colorado, Arizona, Nevada and California.

Pizza Patron spokesman Andy Gamm said the company was just trying to sell more pizza to its customers, 60 percent of whom are Hispanic.

Wal-Mart, H-E-B supermarkets and other American businesses in towns along the Mexican border accept pesos. Some businesses in New York and Minnesota along the northern border accept Canadian dollars. ...

The company said it has received hundreds of e-mails, some supportive, most critical.

While praising the pesos plan as an innovative way to appeal to Hispanics, a partner in the nation's largest Hispanic public-relations firm said a backlash was inevitable.

"Right now there's a lot of anti-immigrant rhetoric going around that could make them a lightning rod," said Patricia Perez, a partner at Valencia, Perez & Echeveste in Los Angeles.

Pizza Patron proclaims on its Web site that "to serve the Hispanic community is our passion." Its restaurants are in mostly Hispanic neighborhoods, and each manager must be bilingual and live nearby, said Pizza Patron founder Antonio Swad, who is part-Italian, part-Lebanese.

Is this the American dream, or what?! Immigrant starts an innovative small business which fulfills a need and becomes a national chain; comes up with a twist, draws fire, perseveres, and before you know it everyone else is copying the idea.

At least that's how I hope this story ends.

Pizza Patron sign photo via Austin Chronicle

Not quite red, not quite blue

Jennifer Steinhauer has a funny article in Sunday's Times, Twins, Not Really. But Not Far Off., in which she points out the interesting similiarities between the dimunitive Michael Bloomberg and the once-pumped Arnold Schwarzenegger. She notes:

Both men are moderate centrists, estranged from their party’s mainstream, who first ran for office on what seemed like a lark. After making a slew of goofy comments and odd policy pronouncements, they both found themselves, shockingly, in their first political jobs.

Both watched their popularity sink mid-term to embarrassing levels. Mr. Bloomberg came back to beat handily — and greatly outspend — a Democratic machine politician whose attempts to claw away at the mayor and paint him as the president’s buddy flopped.

Mr. Schwarzenegger’s re-election bid does not end until next month, but his campaign has uncannily mirrored Mr. Bloomberg’s 2005 race. Like the mayor, he distanced himself from his party, cut deals with lawmakers, and outspent his opponent while also more or less ignoring him. The outcome, polls show, is likely to be the same.

Each had two careers that made him buckets of money before settling into a $1-a-year job as a high-profile public servant, their old lives informing how they govern. ...

And they like each other. Mr. Bloomberg is hosting a fund-raiser for the governor in his home on Monday; the mayor’s recent visit here to promote environmental legislation was like one big buddy movie. During one news conference, Mr. Schwarzenegger announced that the mayor was, “My soul mate. He’s the man.”

It is not terribly surprising that the re-election campaigns of Mr. Bloomberg and Mr. Schwarzenegger are so similar. The week after Mr. Bloomberg won reelection last year, Maria Shriver, Mr. Schwarzenegger’s wife, called Kevin Sheekey, Mr. Bloomberg’s campaign manager, and said that she wanted her husband’s re-election campaign to be just like the mayor’s.

Makes you wonder how much of Shriver's Kennedy shrewdness is behind Arnold's success.

I like both men, although I disagree with a lot of Schwarzenegger's policies, and think Bloomberg post-transit strike and landslide re-election has become increasingly petty and at times surly.

I like them because they're not afraid to think big, and refuse to be held hostage to 'that's the way it's done.' I also like them because they understand the importance of, and seem to enjoy acting like, leaders--making speeches, using the bully pulpit, cajoling and even threatening.

A lot of who they are, and why they could be considered soulmates, is due to both being self-made, highly successful men. Unlike a lot of other politicians, when stacked up against businessmen they seem to suffer neither envy nor harbor an inferiority complex. As Steinhauer notes,

Mr. Bloomberg, who is sometimes mentioned as a 2008 presidential candidate, and Mr. Schwarzenegger, who by law cannot be, both see themselves as the answer to gridlock. “Perhaps fame and money sets them free to set their own course,” said Bruce E. Cain, director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. “Maybe plutocracy is the answer to our partisan problems.”

Together, they promote causes (like environmental programs), raise cash (for the governor) and offer moral support in a political arena with few natural allies. “The Republican Party does not really meet either of their needs,” said Louis DeSipio, a professor of political science at the University of California, Irvine. “They learn from each other’s mistakes.”

Not only do they learn from mistakes, but because they're not really bound to any party they can act on them too. They speak plainly, expect their staffs to deliver measureable results, and see government as about fixing fixable problems.

Neither of them, of course, will be president; Arnold because he wasn't born here, Bloomberg because of bad timing--at 64 he'll be too old after the 2008 election, which already has three New Yorkers who've been running for a long time.

But Barack Obama will. He's Colin Powell before Powell joined the second Bush administration, the perfect way for America in 2016, when he'll be 55, to vote for hope, for history, for competence over ideology.

And for one of their own--immigrants are already 12.4% of the total population, toss in the sons and daughters of immigrants and a sizeable chunk of America will directly relate to Obama, whose father came from Kenya.

Like Schwarzenegger and Blomberg, Obama has the basic likeability that John Kerry will tell you is critical in presidential candidates. He comes across as real, as sincere and as highly competent. [I've written before about why he shouldn't run in 2008, though.]

The Times' famously tough Michiko Kakutani touches upon all of these traits in her laudatory (but poorly-headline) review of Obama's The Audacity of Hope, Obama’s Foursquare Politics, With a Dab of Dijon :

... But while Mr. Obama occasionally slips into the flabby platitudes favored by politicians, enough of the narrative voice in this volume is recognizably similar to the one in “Dreams From My Father,” an elastic, personable voice that is capable of accommodating everything from dense discussions of foreign policy to streetwise reminiscences, incisive comments on constitutional law to New-Agey personal asides. The reader comes away with a feeling that Mr. Obama has not reinvented himself as he has moved from job to job (community organizer in Chicago, editor of The Harvard Law Review, professor of constitutional law, civil rights lawyer, state senator) but has instead internalized all those roles, embracing rather than shrugging off whatever contradictions they might have produced.

Reporters and politicians continually use the word authenticity to describe Mr. Obama, pointing to his ability to come across to voters as a regular person, not a prepackaged pol. And in these pages he often speaks to the reader as if he were an old friend from back in the day, salting policy recommendations with colorful asides about the absurdities of political life. ...

Mr. Obama eschews the Manichean language that has come to inform political discourse, and he rejects what he sees as the either-or formulations of his elders who came of age in the 60’s: “In the back-and-forth between Clinton and Gingrich, and in the elections of 2000 and 2004,” he writes, “I sometimes felt as if I were watching the psychodrama of the Baby Boom generation — a tale rooted in old grudges and revenge plots hatched on a handful of college campuses long ago — played out on the national stage. The victories that the 60’s generation brought about — the admission of minorities and women into full citizenship, the strengthening of individual liberties and the healthy willingness to question authority — have made America a far better place for all its citizens. But what has been lost in the process, and has yet to be replaced, are those shared assumptions — that quality of trust and fellow feeling — that bring us together as Americans.”

I think he gets this just about right--so much of the political fights of the last two decades have been about rehashing Vietnam, a last shot at framing the arguments for the history books, an effort to shoehorn old wines into new bottles.

The baby boomers will, I think, go down as a maddening generation, capable of great idealistic good, but also oh-so-petty and selfish behavior. It's definitely time enough for them to retire--for new leaders, either too young or too newly-arrived to have been tainted by the scorched earth legacy of recent years--to sprout forth.

Getty Images pool photo of Schwarzenegger and Bloomberg at an environmental meeting in NYC by Susan Watts.

Uncredited photo of Obama posing in front of the Superman Statue in downtown Metropolis, Illinois from Obama's website.

Nightfall for the wasps

What makes the Times great? Certainly the big things, like great reporters, editors and news judgment.

But also little things, like keeping editorial calendars where they make sure to follow up on their own stories.

Nine months ago, the Times' Sam Roberts wrote a story that started:

If the experts are right, some time this month, perhaps somewhere in the suburban South or West, a couple, most likely white Anglo-Saxon Protestants or Hispanic, will conceive a baby who, when born in October, will become the 300 millionth American.

That day, apparently, has come. And, like clockwork, Sam's back with
The 300 Millionth Footprint on U.S. Soil:

By one count, more than half of all the people who have ever lived in the United States are living today. And their ranks are expanding. On any given day, 11,000 babies are born and 3,000 immigrants arrive, outnumbering the people who die or emigrate.

At the current rate, the person who tips the population past 300 million will emerge in a week or so.

The recent surge of immigrants actually makes America’s diversity closer to what it was in 1915, when the 100 millionth arrived, than in 1967, when the 200 millionth was born (chances are nearly even that a baby born today will be Hispanic). At all three milestones, the nation was either on the verge of war or already in one.

This second story is shorter than the first, but its accompanying charts are well worth checking out.

That first story inspired a post, One day 1/5th the Size of China, about the 200th million American, an Asian American according to Life magazine in 1967.

Too bad a magazine of Life's stature isn't around today to annoint the 300th millionth American. Whoever he or she is, it's a fair bet that they'll grow up speaking more than one language--maybe Spanish, or one day Chinese.

To again quote what might well be the unofficial anthem of our epoch, the times indeed are a changing. As the Times found out shortly after the first piece ran--an appended correction online reads:

A front-page article on Jan. 13 about the expectation that the United States population would reach 300 million in October misstated the proportion of Americans who are Anglo-Saxon Protestants. According to current surveys, about 40 percent of the population is white Protestant. Anglo-Saxon Protestants, therefore, do not account for "most Americans."

Photo of non-Anglo-Saxon Protestant baby found online.

Numbers don't lie

Sometimes I wonder who's running the Times. There's in article in today's Arts section, headlined We Are a Band, and We Play One on TV .

Somewhere in the first 10 paragraphs was something that jumped out at me.

Josh Kun: Maite Perroni was having trouble with the word "you're." Ms. Perroni, a 23-year-old Mexican singer and actress, gripped her headphones in the vocal booth of a posh recording studio high above Sunset Boulevard and tried it again. "Even in your sleep, when you're dreaming," she sang in a faltering voice, and then threw her hands up in desperation.

"The 'you're' is more quick, right?" she asked the song's producer, Peter Stengaard, who urged her on as a few bars of the mid-tempo ballad, "I Wanna Be The Rain," blasted through the studio on a repeating loop. Ten takes later, she finally nailed it.

"I was so nervous," Ms. Perroni said in heavily accented English, looking a little pale and breathless, "This album is so important for us."

Ms. Perroni is a member of RBD (known by the Spanish pronounciation, "erre beh deh"), a photogenic Mexican sextet that started out as a soap opera spin-off but now rules the world of Latin pop with feel-good teen anthems and Las Vegas-style concert productions. Yet the group remains all but unknown among English speakers, a problem its members are hoping to solve by recording their first English-language album. Due this fall, the album is being aimed at non-Latinos in the United States, as well as markets in Canada and even Asia. And on Saturday, they're playing Madison Square Garden.

"We're trying to start from scratch with a whole new audience," said Christian Chávez, a member of RBD who was raised along the Texas-Mexico border and lives, like the rest of the group, in Mexico City. "We don't want to stop with Spanish songs. We want to keep reaching for more and share our music with as many people as possible."

In other words, this is not just another Latin crossover attempt. This is the making of Mexico's first worldwide pop brand.

"For the Mexican industry this is all totally new," said Camilo Lara, president of EMI Mexico, who signed RBD to the label in 2004. "They are the first Mexican artists to be exploded on a global scale."

Mexico has had plenty of teen-pop crazes before — Timbiriche in the 1980's, and Magneto and OV 7 in the 1990's — but none ever touched RBD's international popularity. (Among Spanish-language acts, only the Puerto Rican boy band Menudo came close). RBD's four albums have together sold five million copies worldwide, a staggering figure for a Mexican pop act. Its most recent single, "Mexico, Mexico," was commissioned as the nation's official World Cup anthem.

As for the United States, Mexican pop artists have not typically fared well here in English translation. But with "Hips Don't Lie," the song by the Colombian singer Shakira, becoming the most played pop song in American radio history — not to mention one of the most downloaded songs in iTunes history — RBD might be plotting their linguistic makeover at just the right time.

"Everybody wants to buy into Latin culture, whether it's Wal-Mart, Dr Pepper or Verizon," said Chris Anokute, the Virgin Records executive who signed up the English-language album. "The only music that increased in sales last year was country and Latin. To me it's a no-brainer. It's just a matter of putting RBD in the market."

So KDKA, the first radio station in America, started broadcasting 86 years ago; most people agree that rock n'roll started shortly thereafter. According to the Times, in all that time, 'Hips Don't Lie' is the pop song that's been played the most?

So why's this factoid buried in some article about some Mexican band? If true, why doesn't the Times write an article about Shakira's song?! If not true--who's doing the fact-checking at the old grey lady?

The hallmark of a bad newspaper article is when the reporter drops something in, then goes running off while you're hanging behind waiting for the other shoe to drop. A sign of bad editing is when that fact's left in (not to mention the lack of attribution in this case).

What we have here, though, is the greatest sin--which is when you miss the story altogether. And not just miss it in the sense of never finding it, but in this case the Times is clearly aware of the fact, but has such a poor sense of its significance that they use it to set up a minor point about a mundane subject.

Sheesh. So, let's do the Times' work for it.

First, Wikipedia, which is probably where the Times reporter took the factoid from to begin with (it's scary how people think of Wikipedia as like the dictionary or an encyclopedia, when literally any liar can go in and add anything to it at anytime).

The entry on 'Hips Don't Lie' reads:

"Hips Don't Lie" is a latin-pop song performed by Colombian singer Shakira. The song was written by Wyclef Jean (who is a featured artist on the song), although Shakira assisted in writing and producing. The song was released as the second single from Shakira's second English album Oral Fixation Vol. 2 in 2006. "Hips Don't Lie" became a global success and was Shakira and Wyclef Jean's first (and to date, only) number-one single in the U.S. and the UK. ...

"Hips Don't Lie" debuted on the L.A.-based radio station KIIS-FM (on the Ryan Seacrest Morning Show) on February 14, 2006. Shakira and Wyclef Jean performed the song on the following TV shows: American Idol, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Live With Regis and Kelly, The Today Show and Total Request Live. The song can be heard in the EA Sports video game MVP 06 NCAA Baseball, the film soundtrack to Ice Age: The Meltdown, and on MySpace records. ...

A Spanish version entitled "Será, Será (Las Caderas No Mienten)" was also released. This version is sung in Spanish, except for Wyclef Jean's rap part, which remains in English. Shakira also sang another version of "Hips Don't Lie" (called "The Bamboo Version") at the half-time show of the last game of the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Berlin, Germany. ...

In February 2006, "Hips Don't Lie" was released to airplay in the United States. It entered the U.S. Billboard Hot 100's top-forty in its fourth week on the chart and received the "greatest airplay gainer" title on the Hot 100 for three weeks in a row. The song achieved a peak position of #13 until it was released digitally on May 27, 2006. Shakira's record label Epic Records originally held back the release of the song's digital download to boost sales of Oral Fixation Vol. 2. When Epic finally chose to release the single digitally, the track hit #1 in the United Sates.

The single jumped from number nine to one on the Billboard Hot 100 for the week ending June 17, 2006 due to the song's strong number-one status on the Hot 100 Airplay chart and nearly 267,000 downloads in its first week (the accomplishment broke D4L's record of 179,000 paid downloads). On the iTunes download chart, the song bumped Nelly Furtado's "Promiscuous" to #2 less than 24 hours after it was digitally released. Within 3 weeks the single managed to move over 670,000 paid digital downloads. The song debuted at number sixty-four on the Canadian BDS Airplay chart on April 13, 2006. It reached a peak position of #2, and is currently in the #3 position. So far, in the six weeks it has been digitally available, the song has sold close to 800,000 downloads.

According to Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems, "Hips Don't Lie" is the most-played pop song in American radio history, being played 9,637 times in a week, breaking Gwen Stefani's previous record with 9,582 plays in a week for her #1 hit single "Hollaback Girl" in 2005.

Aha! An attribution!

The song itself doesn't seem anything special to me. Which makes me think there's a very interesting story here, involving the rising Hispanic culture intersecting with the digital multi-platform world of global pop culture. Not to mention the power of American Idol--maybe there's a perfect storm here.

Shakira's producers seem to have cleverly tapped into at least three macro factors, allowing a micro product ride the wave to record-setting sales, without benefit of the paradigm-busting strength of genius.

The Times did, ironically, sort of do this article, but in a lame way and without a news peg (the article was published before Shakira set the radio record. From For Shakira, First Came the Album, Then Came the Single:

Many music singles are released for sale ahead of their albums to generate early sales and create interest in the full collection. But the opposite was true for the Shakira single "Hips Don't Lie," which broke a digital sales record last week thanks to a cross-media marketing strategy.

"Hips Don't Lie," which features the hip-hop artist Wyclef Jean, set a record for selling the most copies of a digital song in one week after it was released May 27. The song was downloaded about 266,500 times in its first week on sale, according to Nielsen SoundScan. That broke the previous record of 175,000 copies of D4L's "Laffy Taffy."

The single was part of an effort to breathe new life into Shakira's current album, "Oral Fixation Vol. 2," (Epic Records) which was initially released in November without "Hips Don't Lie" on it. When the album appeared to be flagging on the charts, Epic planned to re-release the CD with the new single added to it. But before the re-release, the new single and related tie-ins were promoted on Yahoo Music and were released exclusively to Verizon Wireless customers.

The multimedia release deal developed rapidly in February and relied on a pre-existing relationship between Verizon and Shakira, said Charlie Walk, the president of Epic Records. ...

The fan video "went straight to No. 1 and became extraordinarily viral," said Jay Frank, the head of programming and music relations for Yahoo Music. Mr. Frank said the fan video was viewed more than a million times in the first few weeks of its release.

It's sad, it's like the Times almost had the story, but since it misses a few essential ingredients, it was a minor fluff piece, rather than a front-page zeitgeist article.

Shakira, in my opinion, is like Michael Jackson in one specific way: Just like his 'Thriller' video showed the possiblity of music videos and gave birth to something that was not there before, my guess is the success of HDL is going to be seen as the poster child for the transformation of the music industry. Heck, if she can do it....

Although I wonder about the claim that this is the most-played pop song ever on the radio. 9,637 times in one week doesn't seem that many. It's only 1,367 times a day. According to an unrelated New York Sun article, the FCC says there are 14,645 radio stations in America, of which 9,638 are FM.

Let's say 1 out of 10 of these stations would be open to playing a song like Shakira's--which is actually conservative, since Spanish is the second-most popular radio format, with Top 40 the fourth-most popular, followed by Adult Contemporary.

But even if only around 1,000 stations in the whole country play Shakira's type of music, each station would only have to play her song once a day for it to get the numbers it got!

There's something fishy about the claim that it's the most-played pop song in history. Maybe Nielsen has only recently been able to measure airplay this specifically.

The company is notoriously cagey about its data, but a quick look at its website finds:

Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems is the world's leading provider of airplay tracking for the entertainment industry. Employing a patented digital pattern recognition technology, Nielsen BDS captures in excess of 100 million song detections annually on more than 1,400 radio stations in over 130 markets in the U.S. (including Puerto Rico) and 30 Canadian markets.

Radio formats monitored include Adult Alternative, Adult Contemporary, Album Rock, Classic Rock, Contemporary Christian, Country, Modern Rock, Oldies, R&B (including Rap and Hip Hop), Spanish (including Latin Contemporary, Regional Mexican and Tropical Salsa), and Top 40. Additionally, Nielsen BDS monitors 12 U.S. Music Video Channels and 9 Canadian Video Channels.

Ah, so the way it monitors these stations--only 1,400 of them, no less--is via software that matches a known song's digital 'footprint' to what a particular station's broadcasting. I'm sure that software, in essence digital 'voice recognition', has only been developed within the last 10 years.

Further, the company probably doesn't even have the ability to input for the stations it does cover every song they're playing every second (it's not the NSA, after all), but rather uses algorithms, sampling and then projecting what it does catch first to the stations it covers, then to the radio industry as a whole. Wonder what the error rate on the formulas are.

The interesting thing about Shakira's song is all the Spanish-language stations were playing it, as well as all the English-language ones. That, combined with its great marketing strategy, probably accounts for its numbers.

However great a song some people may find Hips Don't Lie, it doesn't seem reasonable to write a sweeping statement like the Times and Wikipedia have, making it seem like the song's toppled the likes of the Beatles, Madonna, or even Frankie Valli from their place in pop history.

It's just taken its own place, on a different playing field.

Uncredited image of Shakira found all over the Web.

Doing without

What a great day... Rush Limbaugh's been arrested, and immigrants have taken over the streets!

The pictures already from a Day Without Immigrants are astonishing--businesses closed down, thousands of people on the sidewalk linked arm-to-arm. And it's just the beginning, this afternoon's mass marches will probably draw millions.

Not sure why immigrants are protesting and boycotting? Just take a look at the major news websites at 12:16 p.m.

New York Times, 3rd story
Employers Gird for Immigrant Boycott Today
Companies set out a wide range of plans and braced for a new wave of immigration demonstrations today.

CNN, lead
What's the cost of illegal workers?
Illegal immigrants are gathering across the nation for "A Day Without Immigrants," a protest meant to show the economic impact of immigrants. Many experts agree the economy is stronger because of illegal immigrants, but some see a negative impact on low skilled U.S.-born workers.

MSNBC, lead
Immigrant Anger
Nation braces for day of boycotts and rallies.

Los Angeles Times, lead
City Prepares for Effects of Major Immigration Protests
Mayor warns of gridlock as huge crowd is expected along Wilshire. Other cities around nation brace for marches.

USA Today
Immigrant boycotts underway

Wall Street Journal, 5th story (right below Playboy Playmate ruling)
Illegal immigrants gathered
with their allies on a planned national day of protest to show their importance to the U.S. economy.

Washington Post, 3rd story
Rift May Shrink Boycott's Impact
On eve of national economic protest, immigrant groups remain divided on whether to participate.

It's pathetic the Washington Post story and front-page callout is still from yesterday; but even worse is the tone of the nation's major news websites.

Look at the word choice--Nation braces; city prepares; employers gird. Yo, guess what--illegal immigrants are part of the nation; they are part of our cities; and they're employers too.

This is exactly why immmigrants are so mad--it's time to stop casting immigrants as them, as something outside the national fabric.

They are us.

Photo of NYC demonstrators by Thomas A. Ferrara/Newsday.

As presented by the Times

Quoth the Raven: I Bake Cookies, Too

Mark Landler in The Times: Surely Germany, cradle of the kindergarten and home to some of the world's most generous maternity-leave policies, would do everything it could to make life easier for mothers who work, right?

Well, no. Few developed countries are more resistant to the idea of working mothers, and the hostility can be summed up in one word: Rabenmutter.

It means raven mother, and refers to women who leave their children in an empty nest while they fly away to pursue a career. The phrase, which sounds like something out of the Brothers Grimm, has been used by Germans for centuries as a synonym for bad parent. Today, it is at the center of a new debate on the future of the German working woman, prompted by the first woman to lead the country, Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Mrs. Merkel herself, a physicist and career politician, has no children, making her typical of her generation of German professional women. But she has appointed Ursula von der Leyen, a physician and mother of seven, as minister for family affairs.

Dr. von der Leyen has taken it on herself to challenge some deeply held, if only whispered, prejudices in German society, chief among them that women must choose either to work or to raise children.

To her critics, many of whom belong to her own conservative Christian Democratic Party, Dr. von der Leyen is Germany's latest incarnation of the Rabenmutter — a driven creature determined to impose her own superhuman lifestyle on women who can neither deal with it nor afford it.

Only someone who knows nothing about Germany would be surprised that the country doesn't "do everything it could to make life easier for mothers who work." As for this line, it just made me laugh.

Immigration can solve only part of the problem. Even if Germany's annual influx of immigrants were to double to 200,000, the population would still shrink 8.5 percent by 2050. And Germany already struggles to absorb the current waves of Turks and others.

First, it's telling that Germany tolerates immigration only because it has a rapidly aging workforce. Second, it's a huge understatement to say non-immigrant Germans 'struggle to asorb' immigrants--the language choice itself is telling of how Germans see immigrants as a necessary evil to be made swept under the rug as much as possible.

Immigrants aren't sheep--they know non-immigrant Germans hate them and are pretty racist, so don't assume Germany can bring in as many workers as it needs, or wants. Heck, just look at how Germans treat their own mothers:

"The thinking that mothers should look after children and men should go out and support the family is a product of our dark past," said Reiner Klingholz, director of the Berlin Institute for Population and Development. "It's still in the minds of people, even if they sound liberal or progressive."

Not so past, I'd say.

To Hire Sharp Employees, Recruit in Sharp Ways

The Times: "There's a new war for talent, but most companies aren't bothering to fight," argues John J. Sullivan, a management professor at San Francisco State University and critic of traditional hiring practices. "Whether it's a store manager or a software developer, there's a huge gap between the business results that average employees deliver and what stars deliver. If you want to win the battle in the product market, first you have to win the battle in the talent market."

This is not, Dr. Sullivan is quick to add, a plea to return to the bad old days of the 90's dot-com boom — when the last "war for talent" became an excuse to lavish big signing bonuses on any self-absorbed M.B.A. or self-impressed Internet marketer. It is, instead, a call for companies to become as creative and aggressive about stocking up on talented rank-and-file employees as they are about designing sleek products or producing flashy television commercials.

"The first rule of recruiting is that the best people already have jobs they like," Dr. Sullivan said. "So you have to find them; they're not going to find you. It's amazing that so many companies still use job fairs to recruit talent. Who goes to job fairs? People without jobs! All you get are worthless résumés and lots of germs. Recruiting has to be a clever, fast-moving business discipline, not a passive, paper-pushing bureaucracy."

As an alternative to the passive approach, consider the hiring strategy pioneered by Quicken Loans, the mortgage company based in Livonia, Mich. This fast-growing company, with 3,400 employees, closed $16 billion worth of home loans in 2005, compared with $4.6 billion in 2001, and has emerged as the country's largest Internet lender.

According to Michael G. Homula, Quicken's director of talent acquisition, the company's most pressing business challenge is to add employees quickly enough to keep pace with such meteoric growth without diluting its highly charged culture. (It is a regular on Fortune magazine's list of 100 best places to work.)

Specifically, Mr. Homula is racing to hire 200 mortgage bankers a month for the foreseeable future. "This is the job that really moves the needle at our company," he says. "These are the people who interact with customers, solve their problems, make things happen. We ask ourselves every day, 'Where is our next great mortgage banker going to come from?' "

The primary answer, it turns out, isn't help-wanted ads, Web site postings or job fairs. Mr. Homula and his 34-member department have mastered the art of discovering talented candidates in unlikely places. This month, for example, they organized a "road rally" in which teams of recruiters blitzed a carefully selected group of shopping malls.

They spent hours inside stores like Best Buy and Circuit City and restaurants like T.G.I. Friday's. They walked the aisles, bought merchandise, ordered meals and hunted for employees and managers who stood out by virtue of their energy, enthusiasm and rapport with customers.

This week's entry in the Times' ongoing quest to bring to the attention of American business things they should already know.

Erasing an Error, One Tile at a Time

The Times: DID you ever make a home decorating mistake?

Not a huge mistake, like buying the wrong 40 yards of very expensive chintz for the dining room curtains, then deciding that Venetian blinds are far better. Or hiring a painter to paint a three-story hallway orange, and then discovering that you hate orange.

No, this was just a small error: I had put some moderately ugly flesh-colored tiles on the kitchen backsplash.

Flesh-colored tiles sound pretty repulsive now, but 15 years ago, the manufacturer called them taupe — although they weren't — and the idea was that they matched the color of the paint lining the paneled wooden cabinets. The paint looked good on the inside of the cupboards, but it never looked good on the backsplash. After about a decade of averting my eyes every time I passed by, I painted them an intense yellow to match the curtains. But after a while, the paint started to chip off, exposing the flesh.

This week's entry in the Times' ongoing quest to ignore its changing city and country. Ironic that it went from taupe to 'flesh-colored' even as the term increasingly makes one wonder whose flesh? What color?

Times Laugh Lines: Jay Leno
The president of China, Hu Jintao, arrived in the United States today. His first stop is Seattle. He stopped into a store to buy some souvenirs to bring home. He was a little frustrated. He said, "Do you guys have anything that wasn't made in China?"

So China's president meets America's president. It will be President Hu meeting President Huh.

David Letterman
In Washington, D.C., today is the annual White House front lawn Easter egg hunt. It's a big, big annual event and the kids found so many eggs, it was unbelievable, and I'm thinking, "Well, maybe they should send the kids to look for Osama Bin Laden."

Photo of German Family Minister Ursula von der Leyen and her family by Jochen Luebke/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images.

We need our half-naked fakirs

To Become an American

Fareed Zakaria in the Post: Many Americans have become enamored of the European approach to immigration -- perhaps without realizing it. Guest workers, penalties, sanctions and deportation are all a part of Europe's mode of dealing with immigrants. The results of this approach have been on display recently in France, where rioting migrant youths again burned cars last week. Across Europe one sees disaffected, alienated immigrants, ripe for radicalism. The immigrant communities deserve their fair share of blame for this, but there's a cycle at work. European societies exclude the immigrants, who become alienated and reject their societies.

One puzzle about post-Sept. 11 America is that it has not had a subsequent terror attack -- not even a small backpack bomb in a movie theater -- while there have been dozens in Europe. My own explanation is that American immigrant communities, even Arab and Muslim ones, are not very radicalized. (Even if such an attack does take place, the fact that 4 1/2 years have gone by without one provides some proof of this contention.) Compared with every other country in the world, America does immigration superbly. Do we really want to junk that for the French approach?

The United States has a real problem with flows of illegal immigrants, largely from Mexico (70 percent of illegal immigrants are from that one country). But let us understand the forces at work here. "The income gap between the United States and Mexico is the largest between any two contiguous countries in the world," writes Stanford historian David Kennedy. That huge disparity is producing massive demand in the United States and massive supply from Mexico and Central America. Whenever governments try to come between these two forces -- think of drugs -- simply increasing enforcement does not work. Tighter border control is an excellent idea, but to work, it will have to be coupled with some recognition of the laws of supply and demand -- that is, it will have to include expansion of the legal immigrant pool.

Beyond the purely economic issue, however, there is the much deeper one that defines America -- to itself, to its immigrants and to the world. How do we want to treat those who are already in this country, working and living with us? How do we want to treat those who come in on visas or guest permits? These people must have some hope, some reasonable path to becoming Americans. Otherwise we are sending a signal that there are groups of people who are somehow unfit to be Americans, that these newcomers are not really welcome and that what we want are workers, not potential citizens. And we will end up with immigrants who have similarly cold feelings about America.

All I can really say is amen. Zakaria gets it; reading his column makes me wonder if it's naive in this day and age to think that policymakers might change their minds if only they were exposed to the truth in the form of his well-written column.

I mean, how great would it be if every day every politician and business leader who's in a position of amplification were to read one thing that made him or her rethink what they've been pushing.

When was the last time somebody prominent came out and said you know, I was wrong before, now I understand, thanks to this, or that.

People do change their minds--usually through personal experience, though, like the senator who's against gay marriage until their daughter comes out of the closet and gives them emotional and personal reasons to alter course, as well as political cover (well, everyone knows daughters have their dads wrapped around their finger, we can't hold this against him).

So much more civilized to actually engage in an an exchange of ideas, then act accordingly. Rather than wait for the fickle finger of fate to push someone who's usually stuck in their rut anyway into opening their mind.

Oh well. Until the day when it becomes fashionable again to engage in meaningful discourse, when talking points and arguing your side become gauche, the choir can at least explore Wikipedia's entry on Zakaria.

Which reveals that he's one of those astonishingly accomplished Indians, along the path blazed by Tagore and Gandhi, who understand Western culture better than most American or European intellectuals do. You might even call him India's response to Thomas Friedman.

Fareed Zakaria photo by Sigrid Estrada via Zakaria's site.

America's story

An Immigration Debate Framed by Family Ties

The Times: During the heated immigration debate on Capitol Hill, some Republicans have portrayed immigrants as invaders, criminals and burdens to society. But for Senator Pete V. Domenici, Republican of New Mexico, the image that comes to mind is that of his mother and the day the authorities took her away.
It was 1943, World War II was raging and federal agents were sweeping through Albuquerque hunting for Italian sympathizers. They found Mr. Domenici's mother, Alda V. Domenici, a curly haired mother of four and a local PTA president who also happened to be an illegal immigrant from Italy. Mr. Domenici, who said he was 9 or 10 years old then, wept when his mother vanished with the agents in their big black car.

Now 73, Mr. Domenici stunned many of his colleagues when he stood up on the Senate floor last week and shared the story, which he has kept mostly to himself for much of his life.

But his powerful account reflects a broader reality that has gone almost unnoticed as Republicans have feuded over whether to legalize the nation's illegal immigrants. Among the most passionate Republican voices in this debate are lawmakers with strong immigrant ties, who have woven the strands of family history into an outlook that has helped shape their legislative positions.

The close connection has convinced some lawmakers of the importance of providing citizenship to illegal immigrants, while others say it should be granted more sparingly.

Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, which voted last week to legalize millions of illegal immigrants, said his parents came to the United States from Russia in the early 1900's. Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, who supports a more limited temporary worker program, said he grew up listening to the stories of his grandparents, who arrived from the Netherlands sometime before 1910.

And Senator Mel Martinez, Republican of Florida, fled Cuba for Florida in 1962, when he was 15, and lived in orphanages and with foster families until he was reunited with his family four years later.

These men carry the memories of relatives who spoke with the sonorous accents of their homelands, fading black-and-white photographs of the newcomers to the United States and the names of villages in faraway places. All four support bills that would allow illegal immigrants to work here for a period, though their singular experiences have resulted in different perspectives on the question of whether the immigrants should become citizens.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, when foreign-born senators and those with immigrant parents were much more common, their stories would have been unremarkable, Senate historians say. These days, the lawmakers say, their family histories — particularly those of Mr. Domenici, Mr. Specter and Mr. Martinez — give them something of an unusual vantage point.

There but for the grace of God....

This is why it matters that members of Congress reflect the society among them, why it matters that increasingly Washington is a millionnaire's club, why the Christian right's stranglehold on the GOP is bad for the party as well as the country. It's why diversity matters in the corridors of power, whether political or business or social.

Policy is still made by people drawing on their personal experiences. Narrow that pool of people and it becomes an echo chamber, with the outcome mediocrity at best and incompetence more generally.

Senator Domenici has always struck me as a decent person; his Senate website even has a Student's Corner. His bio starts: "Senator Pete V. Domenici was born on May 7, 1932 the only boy in a family of five children. His parents emigrated from Italy and settled in Albuquerque, New Mexico. As a young boy, the Senator helped out his father by delivering groceries for the family business."

As the Times article goes on to show, some in Congress have some more listening to do.

Representative Tom Tancredo, Republican of Colorado, one of the fiercest critics of efforts to legalize immigrants, said his orphaned father was around 11 when he arrived at Ellis Island from Italy around the turn of the 20th century and made his way to the Rocky Mountains.

Mr. Tancredo pondered a bit when asked whether his immigrant background had played a role in shaping his views. Then he thought back to his mother's parents, also from Italy.

"I certainly think back on the fact that their greatest desire was to be Americanized," Mr. Tancredo said. "This desire to cut with the old and attach to the new, speak English, stuff like that. If there was anything, maybe that was an influence." ...

Mr. Domenici sees it differently. Both his parents are dead, but his mind sometimes flies back to his childhood, to memories of his mother raising money for the local Catholic school, the smell of his father's cigars and that awful day back in 1943.

Mr. Domenici said he decided to tell his story when the hostile rhetoric about illegal immigrants started to boil. He said he wanted to remind his fellow Republicans that the sons and daughters of this century's illegal immigrants could end up in the Senate one day, too.

"I wasn't trying to impress anybody," he said of his story. "I think it just puts a little heart and a little soul into this."

AP photo of Senator Domenici via Las Vegas Sun.

March of angels

More Than 500,000 Rally in L.A. for Immigrants' Rights

Teresa Watanabe and Anna Gorman in the LATimes: Joining what some are calling the nation's largest mobilization of immigrants ever, hundreds of thousands of people boisterously marched in downtown Los Angeles Saturday to protest federal legislation that would crack down on undocumented immigrants, penalize those who help them and build a security wall on the U.S. southern border. Spirited crowds representing labor, religious groups, civil-rights advocates and ordinary immigrants stretched over 26 blocks of downtown Los Angeles from Adams Blvd. along Spring Street and Broadway to City Hall, tooting kazoos, waving American flags and chanting "Si se puede!" (Yes we can!). The crowd, estimated by police at more than 500.000, represented one of the largest protest marches in Los Angeles history, surpassing Vietnam War demonstrations and the 70,000 who rallied downtown against Proposition 187, a 1994 state initiative that denied public benefits to undocumented migrants.

The marchers included both longtime residents and the newly arrived, bound by a desire for a better life and a love for this county. ...

Saturday's rally, spurred by anger over legislation passed by the U.S. House of Representatives last December, was part of what many say is an unprecedented effort to organize immigrants and their supporters across the nation. The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee is to take up efforts Monday to complete work on a comprehensive immigration reform proposal. Unlike the House bill, which beefed up border security and toughened immigration laws, the Senate committee's version is expected to include a guest worker program and a path to legalization for the nation's 10 to 12 million undocumented immigrants.

In recent weeks, hundreds of thousands of people have staged demonstrations in more than a dozen cities. The Roman Catholic Church and other religious communities have launched immigrant rights campaigns, with Los Angeles Cardinal Roger Mahony taking a leading role in speaking out against the House bill and calling on his priests to defy its provisions that would make felons of anyone who aided undocumented immigrants. In addition, several cities, including Los Angeles, have passed resolutions against the House legislation and some, such as Maywood, have declared itself a "sanctuary" for undocumented immigrants.

"There has never been this kind of mobilization in the immigrant community ever," said Joshua Hoyt, executive director of the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. "They have kicked the sleeping giant. It's the beginning of a massive immigrant civil rights struggle."

It's nice to turn on the tube and for once see a sea of brown faces in America. I think one day this L.A. rally may well be remembered the same way people remember the giant anti-Vietnam war and civil rights marches; if the movement had an MLK it might be seen as the spark that ignited a new era in this country.

Not sure I remember when hundreds of thousands of people last marched in cities all over the country on the same day for the same narrow issue--and seemingly out of nowhere. Which might say more about the poor state of mainstream media coverage of the Hispanic community.

I don't think Republicans had any idea what they were getting into. President Bush is on the right side of the issue, actually, but members of his own party seem intent on currying favor with those they see as their constituents at the expense of national political suicide.

It's about time that Hispanics stood up and said enough with racism, enough with crazy rhetoric, enought with silent suffering. It's just the latest evidence that we live in epochal times--on a variety of fronts things that have been one way for generations are undergoing momentous changes, whether the status quo likes it or not.

Until we transition to this post-old white boy era in America, the old guard will try to make last stands, and at times will succeed in stemming change or even turning the clock back. But the demographics will prove overwhelming in the end, not to mention the moral force of the arguments arrayed against bitter white guys.

It's interesting that the Catholic Church was such a key part of these rallies. There's a great history in this country of socially progressive Christianity, and it's almost always been elements of the Catholic church in the vanguard. I'm glad the Catholics have again flexed their muscles after a period where it seemed like conservative evangelical Christians became the face of the faith... which is ridiculous when you consider how small in number evangelicals are compared to Catholics in this country. It's the winning Democratic coalition reborn--this time led by Hispanics.

The L.A. Times article has some amazing photos with it. But, as the New York Times reports, it's the images in conjunction with the words of the previous seemingly-invisible and voiceless that really drive this issue:

"It's unbelievable," said Partha Banerjee, director of the New Jersey Immigration Policy Network, who was in Washington yesterday to help plan more nationwide protests on April 10. "People are joining in so spontaneously, it's almost like the immigrants have risen. I would call it a civil rights movement reborn in this country." ...

Until the wave of immigration rallies, the campaign by groups demanding stringent enforcement legislation seemed to have the upper hand in Washington. The Judiciary Committee was deluged by faxes and e-mail messages from organizations like NumbersUSA, which calls for a reduction in immigration, and claims 237,000 activists nationwide, and the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which has long opposed any form of amnesty, including a guest-worker program advocated by President Bush.

Dan Stein, president of the federation, acknowledged the unexpected outpouring of protesters, but tried to play down its political significance. "These are a lot of people who don't vote, can't vote and certainly aren't voting Republican if they do vote," he said. ...

In a telephone briefing sponsored last week by the National Immigration Forum, the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez Jr., president of the National Hispanic Association of Evangelicals, warned that elected officials would pay a price for being on the wrong side of the legislative battle.

"We are talking to the politicians telling them that the Hispanic community will not forget," he said. "I know there are pure hearts that want to protect our border and protect our country, but at the same time the Hispanic community cannot deny the fact that many have taken advantage of an important and legitimate issue in order to manifest their racist and discriminatory spirit against the Hispanic community."

Photo of L.A. rally by Bob Chamberlin/LAT.

Dear Jose

Inquiring Gringos Want to Know

Ask a Mexican," the [OC Weekly alternative newspaper] headlined it.

The column, published in 2004, was meant as a one-time spoof, but questions began pouring in.

Why are there so many elaborate wrought-iron fences in the Mexican parts of town? What part of the word "illegal" do Mexicans not understand? Why do Mexicans pronounce "shower" as "chower" but "chicken" as "shicken"?

Arellano has responded each week, leading an unusually frank discussion on the intersections where broader society meets the largest and most visible national subgroup in the country: Mexicans.

Nothing is taboo. When asked to explain the inclination of Mexicans to sell oranges at freeway offramps, he fired back:

"What do you want them to sell — Steinways? According to Dolores, who sells oranges off the 91 Freeway/Euclid onramp, in Anaheim, she can earn almost $100 per week hawking the fruit. That averages out to more than $5,000 a year — and since it's the underground economy, she doesn't pay taxes!"

Heh heh. I think this is great--you've reached critical mass as a culture when you start making the jokes about yourself, and decide when things are funny or when they're offensive.

Not to mention when you start providing the answers.

'Ask a Mexican' illustration by Mark Dancey for OC Weekly.

Stranger in a strange land

Immigration Debate Is Shaped by '08 Election

The Post: President Bush's effort to secure lawful employment opportunities for illegal immigrants is evolving into an early battle of the 2008 presidential campaign, as his would-be White House successors jockey for position ahead of next week's immigration showdown in the Senate.

Bush called on Congress yesterday to tone down the increasingly sharp and divisive rhetoric over immigration, as he renewed his push for a guest-worker plan that would allow millions of illegal immigrants to continue working in the United States. But Bush's political sway is already weakened by public unease about the war in Iraq and by Republican divisions.

Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.), whom Bush helped elect as party leader, is threatening to bring a new immigration bill to the Senate floor early next week. It would tighten control of the nation's borders without creating the guest-worker program the president wants.

Meanwhile, Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), a rival of Frist's for the Republican nomination, is promoting Bush's call for tougher border security and the guest-worker program as he embraces the president to shore up his standing with Republican leaders. In the House, Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.) is garnering support for a long-shot presidential bid with his fierce anti-immigration rhetoric.

And after weeks of sitting on the sidelines, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) jumped into the immigration debate Wednesday. She declared that Republican efforts to criminalize undocumented workers and their support networks "would literally criminalize the good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself."

Uh, okay.... You'd think the Post would expand on that quote by Hillary, either in the next paragraph or somewhere else in the article. But they don't.

So let's go to the trusty New York Times to explain, in the clunkily headlined Mrs. Clinton Says G.O.P.'s Immigration Plan Is at Odds With the Bible:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton invoked the Bible yesterday to criticize a stringent border security measure that, among other things, would make it a federal crime to offer aid to illegal immigrants.

"It is hard to believe that a Republican leadership that is constantly talking about values and about faith would put forth such a mean-spirited piece of legislation," she said of the measure, which was passed by the House of Representatives in December and mirrored a companion Senate bill introduced last week by Senator Bill Frist, a Tennessee Republican and the majority leader.

"It is certainly not in keeping with my understanding of the Scripture because this bill would literally criminalize the Good Samaritan and probably even Jesus himself," she said. "We need to sound the alarm about what is being done in the Congress."

Mrs. Clinton, who is running for re-election this year and is leading in polls for the Democratic presidential nomination, spoke at a news conference in Manhattan with more than 30 immigrant leaders after meeting with them privately.

Hmm, nothing else in the article addresses it either. So we turn to Google News, and after some time find the original remark that apparently triggered this whole line of argument; here's the Rocky Mountain News article in its entirety:

Rep. Tom Tancredo has accused leaders of some of the country's biggest religious denominations of being out of step with their own followers on the issue of illegal immigration.
Tancredo, a Littleton Republican, released a statement Tuesday blasting the U.S. Catholic Church, Episcopal Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Methodist Church, Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society for lobbying against a border-enforcement bill that passed the U.S. House of Representatives last year.

"The faith community must step forward and tell leftist activists that undermining border security is not a religious imperative," Tancredo said.

"I call on the conservative majority of churchgoers to contact the activists who are misrepresenting their beliefs."

Various religious groups have lined up against the House-passed bill, which calls for building a fence along portions of the U.S.-Mexico border, plus tougher enforcement against illegal immigrants and those who employ them.

The Washington, D.C., office of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) issued an alert to members saying, "This enforcement-only bill is anti- immigrant, unfair, and unjust."

Elenora Giddings Ivory, of the denomination's Stewardship of Public Life advocacy program, said the church's position on immigration is based on the scripture passage Matthew 25, verses 31-46, which talks about nations being judged, in part, by how they treat strangers.

"We have a position that supports compassionate immigration policy. So any bill that comes forward and does not fit with a compassionate understanding of immigration policy would be held up to that," Giddings Ivory said.

She said a bill pending in the U.S. Senate, by Sens. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., comes closest to meeting the church's ideal, based on its proposed guest-worker plan. The Catholic bishops also support that bill.

The Senate is expected to begin debating immigration legislation as early as next month. Then its version must be reconciled with the House-passed version.

"Joseph and Mary had to flee persecution. Jesus was not born in his home community," Giddings Ivory said. "Jesus and his family perhaps would have been locked up with a strict border approach to immigration."

But that kind of argument offends Tancredo, a member of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church.

"As a person of faith, I was offended by these radical advocates invoking God when arguing for blanket amnesty," Tancredo said. "If we really want to be a compassionate faith community, we must enforce the law and end the border charade that lures hundreds of people through the deadly desert every year."

Tancredo, leader of the congressional Immigration Reform Caucus, has vowed to fight various guest- worker plans, including McCain- Kennedy language, calling them tantamount to amnesty for people who broke the law to get into the country.

Jeanette R. De Melo, communications director for the Catholic Archdiocese of Denver, said the church does not support "blanket amnesty" for illegal immigrants, adding, "The idea that the choice is between completely 'open borders' or (a) homegrown Berlin Wall is misguided. Neither option is practical or just."

It's all very interesting. Obviously Jesus would not favor enforcing the letter of the law over the spirit; so anything that calls for tightening immigration rules in a country built by immigration is pretty suspect from any sort of Christian perspective.

As for calling Jesus an illegal immigrant--well, who knows technically, not sure you can compare laws from 2,000 years ago. But he was certainly not at home under the tyranny of Rome in Palestine.

Would he be at home in America today?

Georges Henri Rouault's Head of Christ via Wikipedia.

Those damn numbers

Surprise -- Europeans Approve of Immigrants, Study Says

New America Media: Editor's Note: The notion that anti-immigrant sentiments are rapidly spreading in Europe due to the massive influx of workers and refugees from Africa and the Middle East may be false, if a new study is to be believed.

Among all Europeans, the French have the most positive view of immigration and minorities. Huge majorities of Germans and Italians would give immigrants, legal and illegal, free access to their health care systems. Americans are the most trusted foreigners in Europe.

These startling findings emerged in a study done by a prestigious Italian university just months before riots in France's suburbs left officials pondering what to do with the country's restive non-white minorities and immigrants.

The Fifth Report on Immigration and Citizenship in Europe was prepared between June and September by the University of Urbino, one of Europe's oldest higher education institutions, and by Fondazione Nord Est, an Italian foundation focusing on social policy, economics and immigration.

"The research results seem to contradict the current debate on immigration in Europe, particularly after the recent events in France," says Ilvo Diamanti, lead investigator for the University of Urbino. "It's even more surprising considering that the lowest degree of anti-immigrant alarm was found in the metropolitan area of Paris."

This study flies in the face of everything I've read and believe about the attitude of Europeans towards immigrants.

I wonder if I drilled down what I'd find in the numbers themselves--the article, after all, says: Italy's urban centers with more than 500,000 residents, less than 30 percent of the population view immigration negatively. In Germany the percentage rises to 32 percent while in France it drops below 13 percent.

That's good news? Only one-third of the population views immigration negatively? What if you took out immigrants themselves from the poll sample?!

I half-want to go look up Gallup polls from the 50s asking white Southerners what they think of blacks, which I think is a comparable era to Europe today when it comes to race relations. My guess is you might have large numbers telling pollsters they think negros are great, they should be treated equally and well--while they went on using firehoses, dogs and bullets on them in the streets. And keeping them out of their country clubs.

Or, alternately, you could have large numbers of Northeners and enlightened Southerners having positive views of negros, while a relatively smaller number of Southerners continue enforcing Jim Crow. But in which case, a headline of U.S. Approves of Negroes headline in the 1950s would need a subhead of U.S. Also OK With Segregation.

Given that, believe it or not, there is a website, Gallup Brain, that allows you to research old polls; it's interesting to compare some numbers:

-2005: 71.7% of French citizens perceive immigration as a positive social and economic phenomenon
-1962: 69% of Americans think Negroes in their community are treated very or fairly well

-2005: 82.1% believe that immigrants who pay taxes should be allowed to vote in local elections
-1965: 76% of Americans would support making sure negroes are allowed to vote in local elections

So it is possible to have seemingly-rosy numbers even while your society at-large is actively repressing a minority group. I wouldn't dismiss the Europe study, but it should be kept in perspective.

On a related note, it's depressing to read through Gallup polls and be reminded of how easily prejudiced most Americans were, even after the civil rights movement forced the country to examine itself:

Question qn27 (The Gallup Poll #658) 5/1/1962-5/1/1962
What do you think are the BEST qualities about the Negroes in the United States? (3664 answered question)
In music (7.34%), In athletics (5.27%), Humble, respect white people, stay in their place (2.32%), Loyal, faithful, dependable (3.66%), Well-behaved, polite, agreeable (3.14%), Kind, gentle (1.09%), Honest, sincere (3.49%), Patient (1.88%), Hard working, want to get ahead (14.98%), Religious, devout in religion (3.63%), Sense of humor - humorous (0.57%), Happy, good natured, pleasant, nice, good (8.68%), Charitable, will help you, compassionate (1.50%), Good servants, cooks (1.15%), Intelligent, quick learners (2.13%), Stick together, help each other (1.42%), Just same as whites, as anybody else (9.14%), Work cheaply; will do dirty, menial work (1.61%), Have to be judged as individuals (6.58%), No good qualities, can't think of any (2.48%), Miscellaneous, others (0.71%), Don't know, no answer (34.74%)

Question qn28 (The Gallup Poll #658) 5/1/1962-5/1/1962

What do you think are the POOREST qualities about the Negroes in the United States? (3663 answered question)
Uneducated, illiterate, ignorant, not capable of learning (15.53%), Immoral - less moral training, low morals; inmoral, general (5.95%), Criminal - steal, kill, fight (5.16%), Lazy, don't want to work, slothful, no initiative, no ambition, shiftless (18.02%), Dirty, slovenly - live in dirt, miserable housing, carelessness (11.08%), Aggressive - chip on shoulder; smart-alecky, nasty, impolite, no manners (5.38%), Don't stick togeher; don't help their own people (1.64%), Won't stay in their place -- want equality, want to eat with you, etc. (3.41%), Dependent on others - beggars. (1.83%), Pretentious, show offs (1.04%), Common-law marriages, don't marry (0.93%), Dishonest, can't be trusted (3.22%), Drink too much, always drink (1.77%), Spend money foolishly, can't save money (1.75%), Superstitious (0.33%), Same as whites, same as anybody (4.80%), Have to be judged as individuals (2.87%), No poor qualities (0.71%), Miscellaneous, others (1.28%), Don't know, no answer (29.84%)

Given that many of those poll respondents and their peers are still alive, anyone who believe there isn't meaningful racism in America today is whistling past the graveyard.

And anyone who doesn't believe that Europe--which has never gone through the searing yet ultimately cleansing civil rights battles America has seen over the last five decades--isn't even more racist is ignorant. No pain, no gain; Europe has spent its last five decades with its head in the sand, except when it lifts up to lecture America about its "race problem."

But it's important to keep in mind at some point it may not matter what Europeans today think of immigrants. Like the Israeli settlements in the West Bank, the facts are on the ground already.

Short of another Holocaust, Europe not only needs but is going to get more of its immigrants; unless white Europeans wanna turn every day into a pitched street battle, they'll eventually come around.

Riots that force the topic into public discourse--and interracial dating!--will see to that.

After all, in 1957 Gallup asked, "Do you think the day will ever come in the South when whites and Negroes will be going to the same schools, eating in the same restaurants, and generally sharing the same public accommodations?"

Yes (54.17%), No (30.12%), Don't Know (13.49%), No Code or No Data (2.22%)

Just six years later, the same question got this response:

Yes (82.62%), No (12.85%), No Opinion (4.53%)

The original Europe report, in Italian, is available via Fondazione Nord Est's website. To view Gallup's polls relating to race, type 'Negro' into the search engine at http://brain.gallup.com (registration required--but worth it!)

Iconic AP File Photo by Bill Hudson taken between May 2 and 3, 1963 in Birmingham, Alabama as Police Chief “Bull” Connor used dogs on a crowd of peaceful young people.

Waking up to a new world

The first babies born in New York City in 2006--both at 1 second after midnight--are 'Zahi' Saher and Vicky Tang.

Appropriate for a metropolitan area that's now nearly 40% foreign-born; take into account the kids of immigrants, and it's again a city where the immigrant experience is the norm.

Not that you'd know it from reading most media coverage in the area--where to take just one example the word 'exotic' regularly makes its appearance, always in relation to non-white people and cultures.

Photo by Charles Eckert for Newsday; more cute photos here.