Apparently Tom Brokaw is investing his credit as a retired NBC talking head into promoting acceptance of illegal immigration.

What a disgusting waste.

In the Shadow of the American Dream airs tomorrow evening (Dec 26th). Even The New York Times says

this is at heart a pro-immigrant program; immigrants are depicted as hard workers, and there is no suggestion that some come to the United States specifically to commit crimes or rip off the system.

Boom in Rockies for Skiers, Developers and Immigrants By Neil Genzlinger December 26 2006

The centerpiece for the program is apparently a firm called Gould Construction of Glenwood Springs, Colorado. The local newspaper says that

NBC producer Soraya Gage…focused on the Roaring Fork Valley because of a series on immigration, which ran in the Post Independent last year, that featured Gould.

Local contractor featured in Brokaw Report on NBC television Post Independent Donna Gray Glenwood Springs CO Colorado December 23 2006

The fact that a local construction firm - which probably as a practical matter could not stay competitive without using illegal labor – is willing to stand still for this attention tells all that needs to be said about this program. As the NY Times admits

Mr. Brokaw’s crew has no trouble not only pinpointing which of Mr. Gould’s workers are illegal but also finding the document-forger they use. But this is no exposé.(VDARE.com emphasis)

The facts are

• The Upper Class wealth boom of the past decade has caused a huge demand for vacation homes in the Aspen/Vail area.
• Weak US Immigration control – and nothing else – has meant that much of the labor meeting this demand has come from south of the border.

The consequence of this weak immigration control has been that certain parties have benefited:

• The Hispanic workers who have entered.
• The Upper-Income groups buying these properties who are probably buying them somewhat cheaper than if they were native-born constructed.
• The builders, but to a lesser degree than one might think.

(If immigration had been properly controlled, the builders would probably been almost as profitable – demand was strong, and if no one was using illegals, no individual builders would have been disadvantaged.)

The losers are:

• The US- born worker who might have been willing to do these jobs. At the very least, wage levels were driven down. Quite probably, ethnic exclusion mechanisms make entry into these prosperous areas very difficult too – possibly dangerous.
• The Nation. Flooding the country with low grade Hispanic labor and its dependents means reeling health and education services, sprawl, and disintegration. Also adverse political consequences.

One looks for none of this to be recognized on the Brokaw show.

If VDARE.com had the resources, we would immediately refute the NBC show. Even without the resources, we would normally have been able to do something, since this is a matter the currently incapacitated Joe Guzzardi really cares about. (For the sake of his stomach, we are hoping he won’t watch.)

As it is, please send comments to VDARE.com.

Christmas this year has seen the massive use of a comparatively new and particularly absurd tactic by the Christophobic forces – War on Christmas Denial. The Deniers parrot, to the extent of well over a hundred op-ed articles and editorials, that no effort has been made to repress Christmas, usually adding that saying otherwise is evil/selfish/anti-religious-minority and other pleasant sentiments. I remarked on this last week.

The VDARE.com Christmas Competition archive is of course a comprehensive refutation of this assertion, which serves mainly to demonstrate the extreme hive-mindedness of the secular left – and their immense MSM access. Another is John Gibson’s valuable The War on Christmas.

Since the assertion is so obviously absurd to any one with memory of more than a few years, or capable of doing a little research, it has the capability of seriously discrediting the anti Christmas forces. The Los Angeles Times realized this, and on Christmas Eve test-flew another argument: that the (tacitly admitted) War on Christmas is losing steam:

IT JUST DOESN’T seem like Christmas this year — because there have been so few stories in the media about how the holiday is under siege by secular progressives… by and large, it’s been a quiet season

(A lull in the war on Christmas By M.Z. Hemingway December24 2006)

(Of course, it is obvious that in a year where Christmas War Denial articles outweighed Affirming articles more than 5 to one, to say nothing of the grim silence maintained by some other outlets, that the incentives for working journalists to find and offer Christmas War stories to their employers were decidedly negative. Look at how slowly the Sasha Cohen Carol shut-down story spread.)

This concept apparently did not occur to the Los Angeles Times author, but the article does do a good job of documenting that things had become pretty bad before the O’Reilly etc. involvement of last year

The salvos between politically correct busybodies and pious protesters in 2004 were equally intense. Denver prohibited a church group from participating in its annual Parade of Lights because it wanted to sing Christmas songs; a New Jersey high school barred its band from playing religious-themed Christmas music; a Kansas newspaper published a correction apologizing for calling a Community Tree a Christmas Tree; and a priest got in trouble for telling kindergartners that Jesus — not Santa — was the reason for Christmas.

A further sign that the Los Angeles Times feels that the Denier stratagem is unviable appeared in another Christmas Eve article, this time an Editorial:

Christmas, now and then December 24 2006

This is a survey of 125 years of Christmas coverage by the newspaper, which effectively concedes Denial is factually wrong:

PERUSING 125 YEARS of Christmas editorials in the Los Angeles Times is a dizzying experience… journalistic sensibilities have shifted so radically …Up until the 1960s, many of these annual paeans read as if they were written by Christian pastors, and wouldn’t sound out of place if read aloud during a Sunday church sermon.

Few things could signal the about-face more sharply than an editorial from 1989 that urges people to say “Happy Holidays” rather than “Merry Christmas,” so as not to cause offense to non-Christians.

(VDARE.com italics.) A smoking gun!

The Paper goes on to say

our new, somewhat retro, policy is: People should wish each other happiness or merriment in whatever packaging they’d like. Peace on Earth, above all!

VDARE.com observations:

1) The only reason this change is occurring is because the MSM has realized the peasants are very angry. Go Peasants!

(As noted yesterday, we think this is not the case at the National Review. The shift on Christmas there is to facilitate war.)

2) Taken together, these two Los Angeles Times articles decisively demonstrate that the main treatment theme about the War on Christmas by most of the MSM this year was wrong. Wrong to the point of dishonesty.

What a surprise.

Merry Christmas!