Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Are We Really Doing Ourselves Any Favors?

And by we, I mean liberals (which I'll cop to for the moment). The truth of the matter is that I usually come down on the side of fairly lenient immigration policies (and I despise the RightWing™ habit of refusing to differentiate between legal and illegal immigration at all).

This morning, The Today Show ran a report (with MSNBC) about the issue of immigrant families being separated because of one or more family members' status. I'm not embedding the entire story because that's not what I'm interested in talking about. If you want to watch the whole thing, you'll find it here. I'm also not going to talk about whether or not the story, as a whole, presents a balanced picture -- I know I saw some opposing viewpoints, but frankly, I wasn't paying all that much attention.

What did catch my attention was the interview portion at the end with Ann Curry talking to (or would that be talking for) three children tragically separated from their parents. Watch the video.


Sorry, but it just seems to me that having Ann practically sobbing over these poor kids' plight is just ammunition for Rush and Sean and their ilk. I'm fairly certain the poor urchins could make the point for themselves if Ann would just ask some questions and pretend to be a journalist.

19 comments:

John the Scientist said...

If a woman gives birth here as an illegal, I'm in favor of amending the Constitution so that the kid is not automatically an American Citizen. But enforcement has to get a hell of a lot better than it is to root them out and send them back before they get educated in our system and become de facto Americans. Beyond a certain point it's a huge waste of human capital to send a kid back.

This comes from someone who's wife was an illegal for 9 years. She came when she was 11. It would have been a huge waste to send her back after high school if she had been discovered before the 1986 amnesty. But people do come here and have kids just to force this kind of issue.

One of my wife's cousins came here illegally about 20 years ago when she was a couple of month's pregnant (in the "are you fat or are you pregnant" stage where people hesitate to ask) and stayed until she had a kid.

The older brother and mother were not Americans, the daughter is. What if they'd been caught 10 years ago? After 10 years evading the INS, what do you do with such people? The daughter could not function back in the ROC, and shed have been too young to stay here on her own with no other relatives in the States.

John the Scientist said...

Oh, yes the Left is also guilty (more so, I think) of glossing over status. How is this a tragedy if the parents came knowing this risk and took it anyway?

Did Curry ask the parents if they'd made plans for this circumstance?

(Since I assume they were illegals and knew this could happen.)

Nathan said...

Ooh look...I'm going to moderate...

While I'm OK with sidenotes about the topic of immigration itself, I'd like to keep this more on the topic...

Is news coverage in general and Ann Curry's piece in particular so embarrassingly slanted that it has no hope of being viewed as balanced reporting. (We'll stipulate that Fox, Rush, Sean and the like make no effort whatsoever to look evenhanded...or you can try to argue that they are evenhanded, but good luck with that Skippy!)

John the Scientist said...

Well, Nathan, I'd say that form my side of the aisle, it's merely the mask coming off of the MSM's allegedly even-handed reporting. In this context, Ann's failure to ask them about their contingency plans *is* germane - it shows a lack of balance.

Does it make my opinion that the MSM is extremely biased to the Left get any stronger? No. I knew it, it's interesting to see it come out in the open, but no. No new information there.

Will it give some momentary ammunition to the idiots on the Right? You betcha. So what? Both sides supply each other with material all the time.

Jeff Hentosz said...

I watch the Today show but I can't stand Anne Curry. When she's being "light" she won't shut up. Cross-talks everybody. When she's being "sensitive," as in this piece and another she did this morning that made me leave the room, I can barely swallow for the treacle trying to force its way down my throat.

Nathan said...

Point taken John, but I'd submit the "press" has never been evenhanded...they just did a better job of presenting a front at one time (think Cronkite, Murrow, etc.). In the late 18th, early 19th century, they were so blatant about it that libel was considered a legitimate tactic and nobody made any beans about it.

I just think this was so ham-handed it's fucking embarrassing. I'm with Jeff. I didn't leave the room (too lazy), but I did turn away and find something engrossing on the computer.

And BTW John, something showed up in the mail today and...let's just say revenge is going to be in the offing. Yes, it will.

John the Scientist said...

The trollops, I assume? Have not been into work to get my mail.

Nathan said...

Assume all you like, FishFace!

neurondoc said...

Trollops? Who did you send by mail, John?

John the Scientist said...

????

Whomever sent it, it wasn't me...

Nathan said...

It wasn't what I received...it was the threat of what I'd be getting from Copenhagen.

(How quickly they forget.)

John the Scientist said...

Oh that. Heh. Well, I decided that if I was gagging from the smell emanating from my luggage AND horking up a lung, I'd be quarantined for suspicions of H1N1 for sure. So I took a miss on the lutefisk.

What I did return with, you only wish you were getting. :D

MWT said...

o.O

What happened those nice, simple days of postcards? O.o

Nathan said...

OK, enough of the cryptic...

John sent a postcard saying he was bringing me lutefisk from Copenhagen. Luckily, he wussed out and decided that the smell on the airplane might get him lynched.

I knew airport security was going to save my life someday.

Eric said...

I started to write a comment and couldn't think of anything I could possibly say in an unfrothy matter, and I don't have the energy to be frothy right now.

Thanks!

Nathan said...

Will you froth tomorrow, please?

Eric said...

No, no--too frothy. Next you'll be asking me to engage in public hoopla.

vince said...

To froth, or not to froth. That is the question.

Jim Wright said...

Hey! No Hoopla!


IRT the post, personally I think this type of news reporting (which is pretty much all new reporting nowadays) is a bigger problem in this country than illegal immigration ever was.