Friday, February 09, 2007

...but they're not vigilantes

A sad, short item in today's newspaper mentioned the shooting death of three immigrants crossing the border at the Arizona desert. One of the dead was a fifteen-year-old girl. The real villain, the smuggler, escaped, and two other immigrants were wounded.
That means there was a good bit of firepower involved. We can probably assume that more than five shots were fired at the immigrant group--either that or every bullet met a living target. And nothing in the news indicated that the shots came from law-enforcement personnel.
The same newspaper included a kind of ombudsman report summarizing reader feedback to a front page (alas, before the Super Bowl) that read "Go Bears!" in ten languages. Most of the readers who reacted were outraged (outraged!) that the largest typeface was for the Spanish-language cheer, and their assumption was that all of the Chicago-area Bears fan who would root in Spanish were "illegals." That's just plain ugly.
I know that the so-called "Minutemen" feel justified in "defending" our borders from people who would otherwise risk exploitation and slave wages in our slaughterhouses and hotel bathroom, but if the Tribune readers are any indication, I'm not so sure I like the "America" these patriots are trying to secure for me.
 
 

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