La zorra Estadounidense Nos Avierta de la Amenaza Latina

Orlando Sentinel columnist Kathleen Parker, who I've begun calling la zorra estadounidense because of her nasty little practice of mainstreaming radical anti-immigrant ideas into respectable-white-lady format, is at it again. (That's zorra as in "bitch", not as in masked hero defending ordinary people.) Today, La Zorra asks, How do you say 'pandering' in Spanish? 04/12/06.

La Zorra went to a pro-immigration rally in Washington. Like a good "moderate", she felt all warm-and-fuzzy at first, kind of like she probably imagines white teenagers would feel at a Methodist youth festival. But then she encounters Communist subversion:

And then Rep. James P. Moran, a Virginia Democrat who apparently was channeling Che Guevara, startled me from my dream state. His voice, ragged from the strain of sustained high-volume rhetoric, thundered platitudes as a woman translated into Spanish.

"You do not become American because you're lucky enough to be born of wealthy parents," he hollered unnecessarily as his voice was amplified through several speaker towers erected along the National Mall. "You become an American by working hard and providing for your family. By that definition, you are true Americans."

"Si se puede!" roared the crowd. (my emphasis)

Let's see: Hard work. Patriotism. Shouting something in some funny foreign language. To La Zorra, that's Communism at work?

There was a time - was it really so long ago? - that a columnist who didn't want to announce herself as a John Birch Society partisan wouldn't have written something like that. But now that the Republican Party has transmuted into a Christian (Right) religious party, she apparently expects it to be taken as routinely respectable.

This is another instance of La Zorra acting as a conduit to transmit gutter rightwing ideas into mainstream Republican chit-chat, as we saw her doing last week with promoting the white-supremacist lie about the "Reconquista".

And La Zorra also answers the question of whether the blowhard white folks who were shocked, shocked to see protesters in Los Angeles carrying [gasp, choke] Mexican flags!!! would be more sympathetic to the protesters if they carried American flags. But we all knew the answer to that already:

Despite Moran's fiery entreaties to rouse the rabble, the crowd was notably polite, while the event more closely resembled a Fourth of July picnic than a protest. I haven't seen so many American flags since Sept. 12, 2001.

And while most chanted "Si se puede" ("Yes we can") in response to trigger phrases, the spirit of the day was palpably optimistic, cooperative and at least outwardly patriotic.

Even if the protesters' allegiance to the Republic were only strategic rather than sincere, it is nonetheless difficult to think about these mostly decent, hard-working, well-intentioned people in terms of deportation or criminalization, two elements of the House bill Monday's rallies were organized to protest.

Respectable Republican white ladies, you see, know that brown people who speak a funny language - and they must mean something hostile by that see-see-pwede slogan - are really anti-American. If they carry a Mexican flag, that shows their unpatriotic. If they carry American flags, that shows they're unpatriotic and hypocrical.

Funny how that works, isn't it?

I'm sure La Zorra will get around one of these days to writing an outraged column about how employers like Tyson Food, Inc. need to prove their patriotism by pushing for strong employer penalties and enforcing them strictly. (Yeah, and we found warehouses full of WMDs in Iraq, too.)

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