Unless you are just coming out of a coma, you are aware that Don Imus, the shockjock with pretentions of relevance, has gotten an avalanche of MSM attention for calling some college athletes “hos.”

But when the Democrat Chair of the Hispanic Caucus labels a woman who is also an elected Representative a “whore” … Not so much.

Rep. Joe Baca reportedly called Rep. Loretta Sanchez a whore last year in a conversation with California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez, causing her to resign from the 21-member Caucus in February.

A firestorm erupted Wednesday within the Congressional Hispanic Caucus when California Rep. Loretta Sanchez quit in protest of Rep. Joe Baca’s chairmanship and alleged mistreatment of women.

Sanchez, in her fifth term representing California’s 47th District, reportedly is furious at fellow California Democrat, Baca, for alleged derogatory remarks. In an interview with Politico.com she accused him of calling her a “whore.”
[Rep. Sanchez Steps Down From Congressional Hispanic Caucus After Interview Causes Firestorm, Fox News 2/1/07]

Today it was reported that her sister and fellow House Representative Linda Sanchez followed suit by resigning her position in the Caucus. Presumably conditions of disrespectful treatment of women have not been alleviated in the past few weeks.

WASHINGTON - A second female lawmaker said Thursday that she is quitting the Congressional Hispanic Caucus over opposition to its male leadership.

The announcement came from California Democratic Rep. Linda Sanchez, the sister of California Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez, who quit the caucus in January and accused the group’s chairman of calling her a “whore.”
2nd female lawmaker quits Congressional Hispanic Caucus,

Unsurprisingly, the MSM has little interest in misogynous behavior in powerful places when the perp is a Democrat and a Hispanic.

Carlos Slim, Mexico’s richest man

is now worth 53.1 billion, and has thus replaced Warren Buffet (52.4 billion) as the world’s second richest man. This puts Slim less than four billion dollars away from the world’s richest man Bill Gates,at 56 billion.

When Forbes published its annual billionaire list (issue of March 8th, 2007) Buffet had $52 billion and Slim had $49 billion. But since then, Slim’s Carso Grupo Telecom increased its value by 15%, and Slim’s America Movil increased by 4% after announcing a move into the Italian telecoms market. This bumped Slim’s worth up to $53.1 billion dollars, making him the second wealthiest man on the planet.

Such wealth in the hands of a Mexican could be an employment-creating asset for Mexico. And yet, despite all of Carlos Slim’s billions, the Mexican Mega-Magnate only provides employment for a quarter of a million Mexicans (in contrast, Wal-mart employs 1.7 million Mexicans in Mexico).

Naturally, Slim’s underwhelming contribution to Mexican job creation doesn’t stop him from bashing the border fence and lecturing the U.S. on its own immigration policy.

There are two general orthogonal rules about who is allowed to speak about race in contemporary American polite society: blacks and comedians have vastly more freedom to tell it the way it is than whites and serious thinkers. So, there’s a grid of acceptability in who is supposed to discuss race, with the most favored corner being black comedians such as Dave Chappelle, who gets a $50 million contract to make fun of blacks and whites. In contrast, a serious, judicious, data-driven thinker like Charles Murray is in the opposite corner. He becomes persona non grata and is subject to horrific slanders.

The ambiguous corners belong to the serious black thinkers such as Thomas Sowell and the white comedians such as this Don Imus radio fellow who is being condemned by Al Sharpton, arbiter of all that is right and holy.

You’ll notice that The Simpsons are totally terrified of anything having to say about blacks. The show has a completely stereotypical Asian Indian, Apu, but no continuing characters who act recognizably black. The upper-middle class Dr. Hibbert is a parody of Bill Cosby’s Dr. Huxtable character, not of a real black. Meanwhile, the show’s creators telegraph to viewers that they are avoiding joking about blacks by creating two black characters who behave indistinguishably from their white partners. There are Homer’s co-workers Lenny and Carl; and there are the cops Lou and Eddie. After 15 years of watching, I still have no idea whether it’s Lenny who is black, or if it’s Carl. The same goes for Lou and Eddie. If there was just one ambiguous duo like this, it might be an accident, but having two pairs indicates the writers are making a joke about their pusillanimity in the face of race.

Imus doesn’t show this caution, so, either now or later, he will likely go the way of most such white males as they age and get crotchetier and lose their self-control. Eventually, he’ll say something and the Great and Good will turn on him. I was happy that the magnificent Chicago columnist Mike Royko had the good fortune to drop dead of a heart attack at around 65, while still on top. He was a curmudgeon and a drinker, so his eventual humiliation over saying something politically incorrect was inevitable if he had lived long enough.

[Crossposted at Isteve.com]

I tuned in to ESPN last night to watch the Boston Red Sox host the Seattle Mariners. This was no ordinary game; the Japanese superstar and newly minted multimillionaire Daisuke Matsuzaka was making his initial Fenway Park home start for the Red Sox. The first Mariner batter he was scheduled to face was a fellow Japanese, hitting star Ichiro.

The Fens was decked out in Japanese advertising; Japanese T-shirts were on sale everywhere. During the course of the telecast, viewers learned that Red Sox players had important Japanese phrases pasted into their mitts to better communicate with Matsuzaka. Red Sox officials, who paid $50 million for the right to merely negotiate with Matsuzaka and signed him for over $100 million, now have their business cards printed in Japanese and English.

Among the many perks for Matsuzaka are eight first class round-trips home to Japan, translators, and special chefs.

I may have missed it but I can’t recall hearing that Matsuzaka was making any effort to learn English. Maybe he figures there is no need since everyone is falling all over each other to accommodate him.

For a baseball traditionalist like me, we have entered a sad era. I suspect it will not be too long before we have Hall of Famers who don’t speak English.

By the way, Matsuzaka’s home debut was unsuccessful. He lost to Dominican Felix Hernandez, 3-0.

We at VDARE.com have worked pretty hard at being rude about the STRIVE Bill, the Amnesty/Immigration Acceleration legislation floated by Treason Lobby minions Representatives Guitierrez and Flake. But we have to salute James Pinkerton’s Tuesday column as second to none in elegant and reasoned ferocity.

The great strength of An Immigration Bill for ‘Plantation Owners’ Newsday April 10, 2007 is that Pinkerton understands the fusion between the political and social dynamic at play here – and does not flinch to name it:

“the STRIVE Act… represents one group’s attempt to manipulate the system against another group - and also against the national interest. Do you think the working class in America has it too good? Do you want to make sure that you always have the option of replacing your current workers - the ones who do your meatpacking, or landscaping, or household toiling - with even hungrier workers? And do you not care about crime and social chaos, as long as they happen in someone else’s neighborhood? Or perhaps disuniting the whole United States, after you’re dead? Then STRIVE is for you.

The legally-compromised status envisaged for those in the “guest worker” program, Pinkerton sees, invalidates comparison with the late 19th Century immigration flood:

at least those immigrants were legal citizens; they were free to negotiate their own wages as best they could, and they were free to travel out West in search of a better deal.

Yet, in an earlier era, some owners had come up with a “better” idea - they didn’t want free labor; they wanted slave labor. So, in the South, plantation owners brought in Africans “to do jobs that Americans wouldn’t do.” It was a good plan for the slaveocrats, if you didn’t mind a little blood and brutality.

And oh, by the way, slavery brought with it a civil war that nearly destroyed America in the 19th century, as well as leaving a tragically stubborn racial divide that lingers into the 21st century.

This is an important insight which Pinkerton wisely amplifies:

those who depend on non-free labor - slaves back then, illegals and “guest workers” today - are so blindly eager for short-term profit they are willing to saddle the rest of the country with long-term problems of multiculturalism and balkanization, made all the worse by welfare-state dependency. Exploitative employers brought the whirlwind to this country once, and now they want to do it again.

And he is too experienced a Washington hand not to remember that legislation often mutates away from what its progenitors expected.

STRIVE is also liked by those who figure it’s a fraud. Pro-multicultural immigration advocates know that all the bill’s complicated provisions can never be enforced, that its measures will be loopholed to shreds by bureaucrats and clever lawyers. And so, they hope, STRIVE will stumble into amnesty.

James Pinkerton has a history of excellent essays on immigration. See, for example, his Bush: Indentured Servants Welcome Newsday March 15, 2007 Applaud James Pinkerton