Tag: humor

The New Immigrants.

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Photo credits : Shannon Cottrell/LA Weekly.  Mosaic: by HIVN.

The other day, emerging into the sunlight, at the LA Fitness parking lot, in Universal City, I was confronted with the painful sight of five cars with out-of-state license plates: Ohio, Wyoming, Virginia, Tennessee and Iowa.

These are the new immigrants to California. They are mostly young, white, tattooed and illiterate, post-collegiate settlers.

I see them hogging up the freeway, and texting while driving. Many of them are sub-intelligent, and speak in grunts and groans: “Yeh” or “Hey” or “What’s up?”

Compared to the well-groomed and nicely mannered young people who immigrated to California 50 years ago, this bunch seems to have no manners.

They are taking some of the best jobs in California and some of the worst ones too.  Real Californians are now almost completely shut out of the job market.  Waiters, receptionists, valet parking, graduate students, personal trainers, bank tellers, retail sales—every once viable occupation is now taken over by people under 25.

Many of these recent immigrants live like pigs. One young woman I met, a native of Massachusetts, kept moldy French fries under her bed for months. She smokes pot and actually made one of her male roommates into her boyfriend.  She has a backyard full of dog shit.  These are the type of people that are now crowding the Golden State.

Their blank faces and gleaming white smiles cannot hide the devious truth that they are almost all out to get married, get rich, get famous and find happiness.  They greedily eye real estate, hoping to buy houses that rightfully should be occupied by real Californians.

And many of these lazy young people sit for hours in coffee bars and cafes, talking about idle gossip, surfing the Internet and sometimes even asking their parents for financial help. Most of them lack health insurance, while many will get sick and then depend on health insurance to pay their medical bills! Others are addicted to such exotic and useless hobbies as video games, yoga, running, drinking liquor, music downloading, and chin-ups.

It’s time that the people of California followed the example of Arizona and made immigration a top priority for law enforcement. The social fabric of our state is decaying, and California will no doubt become just a repository for the young and the useless, the confused and the ambitious, the intelligent and the stupid….in short just a magnet for young Americans who contribute too much and too little to the problems of this state.

A Presidency Without Laughs?

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One of the only pleasures of the past eight years has been the great fun it is to make fun of President Bush. His malapropos, his goofy expressions, and his inability to form a complete sentence: these are everything that a humorist could hope for.

Now we have this upcoming First Family that is the youngest, brightest, most well spoken bunch seen in ages. And to top it off: they’re African-American.

The dignity, the profundity, the honor, the grace, the articulateness and powerful prose: all the Obama qualities are so comedically dismal.

And because the new President has a black father, we are all painfully self-conscious in our reaction to him. We must not rob the man of his dignity before he gets into office. We must give him a chance. He is the very embodiment of the American dream.

This nation defines pigmentation as the essence of one’s personhood. And is now eager to experiment with allowing an individual to be an individual and not a cog in the color wheel. So why are there hushed voices and sanctimoniousness?

Some of the funniest observers of the political scene in Washington, like the writer Maureen Dowd, are now suddenly the strictest and most reverent protectors of President Elect Obama. One must say nothing off-color about the man.

Dowd writes in the NY Times: “I had been astonished by the overt willingness of some people who didn’t mind being quoted by name in The New York Times saying vile stuff, that a President Obama would turn the Rose Garden into a watermelon patch, that he’d have barbeques on the front lawn, that he’d make the White House the Black House.”

He’d make the White House the Black House? What is so horrible about that? Isn’t it slightly funny? How about the fact that we will have a Black First Lady in a White House? Is that vile too? Dowd never backed away from her poison pen in attacking Mr. Bush. But Obama elicits mystical worship from a media that should be intelligently skeptical.

Jimmy Carter was a peanut farmer,  Reagan an actor, George HW Bush a “patrician”, and Clinton was a serial adulterer along with his public accomplishments and leadership. But all of these men were subjected to skits, cartoons, mockery, and criticism. And nobody held back because they were afraid of offending those supporters who backed these aforementioned Presidents.

I hope that we are mature enough to allow ourselves to laugh at Obama without the inhibiting p.c. that risk turning the leader of our democracy into a personality cult worthy of the rulers of North Korea, Iran or Cuba.