May 16, 2004
Immigration, multiculturalism and the media
Maryland's current Gov. Robert Ehrlich and former Gov. William Donald Schaefer have inspired a lively reaction for their remarks supporting immigrants learning English and becoming part of a unified American culture.
It is fascinating to observe how various political camps choose various media to publicize these reactions.
Conservatives own talk radio, while liberals control print media. We already know this. Web forums are split and thus contentious but often united by anti-print media sentiment. What is amusing to me is the speed with which the populist Web forums denounce the elitist print media.
Let's start with some background.
Ehrlich's remark that "I reject the idea of multiculturalism" occurred during his weekly chat two Thursdays ago with Ron Smith on WBAL-AM radio. Essentially he made an "in house" remark safely away from the thought police in the print media.
By Saturday, May 8, the story had jumped the moat, landing in the print media, such as the Washington Post. While the Post and the Sun didn't go quite as overboard as the New York Times did in making the non-story of the Augusta National into a media crusade, there are echoes of overkill here — and well as a truly remarkable level of distortion, hyperbole, recklessness and condescension.
The first Post story brought this revealing remark:
Del. Ana Sol Gutierrez (D-Montgomery), a first-generation immigrant from El Salvador, said she believes the governor and comptroller need diversity training."I think what the governor said absolutely is offensive," Gutierrez said. "It's also a dangerous comment. What I am sensing is that these kinds of comments from leadership, from people who are in high-level positions, are really fueling an environment that is very dangerous and negative. It says it is okay to consider people who are different as something less."
Right off the bat, Gutierrez mischaracterizes the governor's remarks as "dangerous" and as implying inferiority of non-English speakers. She comes up with the typical liberal's totalitarian solution to anyone she disagrees with: a good brain scrubbing at the local Diversity Training lobotomy center.
Next up: Montgomery County Exec Doug Duncan, who again misquotes the governor and appears to make -- but who knows? -- the common error of confusing multiethnicity with multiculturalism:
"People from different backgrounds, different religions, and different parts of the world are what make this country strong," said Duncan, who is considering a challenge to Ehrlich in the 2006 election. "It is troubling to hear anyone degrade our diversity and multiculturalism."
By Wednesday's Post we have the headline "Immigrant Remarks By Ehrlich Still Burn" -- hmmm, could it be because the print media are fanning the flames -- and an the unchallenged implication by Latin leaders that crude unreconstructed racists lead opposition to multiculturalism:
Del. Ana Sol Gutierrez (D-Montgomery), who spoke out against Ehrlich's comments last week, said she has received five "nasty messages," including some telling her and her "people to go back home."CASA de Maryland, a Latino advocacy group, received two similar voice-mail messages, including one that insisted Schaefer "had it right" and they should "ship us to Iraq so we can be bombed on the front lines," CASA's Kimberly Propeack said.
The Sun next published an article, "Ehrlich has no apology as immigrants protest" that portrayed the discussion of a matter crucial to the future identity of the United States as some sort of political grab by the governor toward the whiter suburban counties. Erhlich won comparison with Adolf Hitler and Newt Gingrich from two persons quoted.
After this wave of so-called news articles, come Sun columnists Dan Rodricks and Michael Olesker to lecture the ignorant masses on the error of their thoughts. Rodricks dismisses the governor sarcastically as a "lettered historian" in league with "angry white males:"
... any time he wants, [Ehrlich] can sound like just another Joe Sixpack, letting off steam about America being overrun with people who no speaky the English.
Well, the print media had their say, and the people responded. On the Baltimore Sun's own Web forum page, in a thread entitled Topic: Rodricks pulls the Hitler analogy, readers found Rodricks' column wearying (as did callers throughout the day to more than one of WBAL's shows). From a poster on the Sun's forum page:
People who believe that residents of this country should speak English when they are in public and who also believe that the teaching of English and U.S. history and culture should take precedence over the teaching of any other country's language, history and culture are often falsely accused of being against the immigrants themselves. This tactic allows the multicultural crowd to divert attention away from the real issue.The irony is that by citing the success of past immigrants, who attended schools where the teaching of English and U.S. history and culture took precedence over the teaching of any other country's language, history and culture, they are in fact validating the point of the folks who oppose multiculturalism.
The "If it ain't broke let's fix it until it is" crowd never bothers to contemplate how past generations of immigrants contributed to the building of the greatest country the world has ever known without the so called benefits of the multiculturalism they espouse.
Dear Mr. Idiot, I Mean Olesker rounds up more disgust, including a post that:
the sun keeps reporting this story over and over again. i think they're just amazed that no one really gives a crap. they can't believe we are not "sophisticated" enough to be as angry as them.
The merry-go-round continues today, as the Sunattempts to drag the inert non-story forward in Multiculturalism is in their roots; Heritage: Ehrlich's, Schaefer's German ancestors struggled with assimilation in Maryland -- again, note sloppy use of the term multiculturalism.
Readers immediately dismissed the article as liberal propaganda, with a muddled message to boot.
Sun forum posters also jumped over Baltimore Mayor Martin O'Malley for his rebuttal, in Spanish, of Schaefer's remarks, in a thread entitled O'Malley blasts Ehrlich and Schaefer:
Martin O'Malley has made the transition from promising, rising star to pandering incompetent dolt in just three years. His latest effort to represent Victims, Inc. was even more pathetic then previous cheap shots at the Ehrlich administration. He reminds me of a man living in a falling down house who spends his days whining about his neighbor's crabgrass.
The rest of the country and the world got to sound off on the controversy at the Internet discussion site Fark.com, in threads here and here. What you will see here, quite at odds with the print media depiction, is a lively and at times good-humored debate dominated by common sense views of the necessity of a nation having a common language and culture.
What is the bottom line here?
The unity against the print media on Web forums should be worrisome to newspaper managers. Readers are now a click away -- especially on newspapers' own reader forum sites -- from tearing liberal propaganda to pieces.
Further, the role of newspaper managers in overseeing columnists deserves some scrutiny. Right now we see journalists getting essentially columnist-for-life jobs (see earlier blog on Mary McGrory) and an attendant problem as the evolution of political thought maroons these once-mainstream liberals.
Do Olesker and Rodricks have any remaining audience (or at least, an audience that finds them informative rather than kneejerk) outside the newsroom itself?
An even better question: What should the media's role be in informing the debate on immigration? If I were an editor, I would argue that Samuel Huntington's 
Who Are We : The Challenges to America's National Identity asks important questions about the U.S.'s national identity, the role of immigration, and how Mexican immigration due to proximity, scale and concentration may be far different from anything previously seen in our national history.
If you would like to learn more about what this Harvard historian thinks, try ParaPundit. It seems as though Schaefer and Ehrlich come far closer to examining immigration based on recent scholarship and common sense than do Rodricks and Olesker.
