I do think that I get where you are coming from on this, and to be fair I was using Mexican and immigrant interchangeably in the sentiment that I was expressing (not very accurate, but there you go). I do see how this could be funny.
Hell, that would make for an excellent sitcom. The bold immigrant who struggled to get here, braved obscene INS paperwork and bureaucracy with competence and panache, only to bumble when it comes to his job.
I just have my doubts that the OP had that level of nuanced humor in mind.
Heavens, no, King Philip. You obviously need more Twain in your brain.
The language is rich. It has great meaning. The text of the language should carry the mind to an even greater meaning, one much more powerful than the simple sum of words. The OP was evocative because it carried me back to my former life in Los Angeles.
Incorrect. A Coyote arranges border crossings, either to or from America. And they don’t care if you’re legal, illegal or Al Qaeda. So again, yours is a pretty dangerous assumption.
Pardon? Maybe it’s the crowd I’m seeing, but I don’t believe I know any of those jokes. And you can be as oblique as you want, but just mentioning a stereotype in this manner only helps to perpetuate it. Shame on you.
I don’t mind drunken Indian jokes. I much prefer a joking bigot who thinks he knows he’s better than me to a sincere leftista who thinks he knows what’s best for me.
There is no difference between the OPs comment of a sweaty, lazy hispanic and a black, asian or hispanic person commenting about me being a fat lazy white bitch just because I stay at home caring for my kids instead of having a “real” job.
Labels suck and the PCness of some things has gotten WAAAAY out of hand. I’m sure if she was describing a purse snatcher in the OP she wouldn’t be catching the flack she has here. :rolleyes:
The Coyote may not care, but it’s a safe bet that all his clients are illegal. Why would an illegal pay to be smuggled across the border? They can just take a bus or plane for a fraction of the cost.
Let’s take a look at that old standby of disagreements over what a word means… the dictionary! (Yes, I know that dictionaries may not be the final authority on slang. However;I too am from California, and I have never heard the term used to describe someone who brings legal immigrants to and from the US. I imagine that person would be called a “travel agent.”) Check out the third definition.
Now you’re just being silly–discussing commonly held stereotypes isn’t comparable to genuinely believing them or assuming (perhaps indirectly, as in making a joke that’s based on one) them to be true. I hope you’re being deliberately obtuse to make some kind of point.
Why the hell should she do it herself? If she’s wants to spend money on a gardener, it must be because she either does not want to do it herself or she can’t do it herself. Why shouldn’t she have the right to hire someone and get the job done in a professional manner? Believe it or not, there are people who don’t like to work in the garden, or don’t know enough to tend it well (and don’t care to learn), or feel that doing something else is a better use of their time. If they’ve got the money to pay for it, great! Your holier-than-thou attitude of “do it yourself” is bullshit and smacks of envy.
This gardner got hire by someone else, maintanence was an expected duty and he didn’t do the job. She’s firing him and will personally hire his replacement. Sounds perfectly reasonable to me. Frankly, I’m glad my neighbor is so good at keeping up my lawn and yard (for a fee), because finding a reliable lawncare service can be a challenge.
I think the OP may have stressed her gardner’s ethnic background too heavily, but I don’t think it was egregious enough, on it’s own, to brand the OP a racist. I think that people may have been influenced by the idea that, because of the pool and gardener, this must be a rich bitch, so she’s got to be racist, too. For the record, in LA, pools aren’t just attached to mansions–everybody’s got a pool, and just about anywhere people solidly in the middle class may have gardeners, so climb off the high horses and try not to sound so green.
Liberal gives you a solid cite that says most illegal immigrants are Mexican, and you complain. You later declare it’s a “safe bet,” based solely on anecdotal information, that every client of every Coyote is an illegal immigrant. From Mexico.
Your logic is soft and stinky, a menudo of words. If only I had a hangover.
Exactly.
Further, your last post failed to bring forth any evidence of the Coyote’s clientele. Barring a cite that says every client of every Coyote is an illegal immigrant from Mexico, your dangerous assumption stands. And to think, I even gave you an “out” with the terrorist-smuggling angle.
Really? I’ve never heard a drunken Indian joke, so now I’ve got to go look one up in order to know what you’re talking about. That’s just sad.
See, I find this more objectionable than the original post. It assumes that the gardener was uneducated, doesn’t speak English, is stupid and a liar, because he was an immigrant from Mexico with a manual labor job.
For all we know, this guy graduated from medical school, but isn’t licensed in the US yet, so took a job that would be easy to quit. Maybe he speaks perfect English, plus French and Swedish–it is possible for people from other countries, even Mexico, to get an education, and even well-educated people may want to immigrate to the US.
He lies (maybe because he doesn’t understand what is being asked) by saying he has skills he does not have. Even assuming that he did lie (sometimes it’s called padding your resume), he’s too stupid to learn how to fix the sprinkler system.
Yeah, yeah, most manual labor jobs may be filled by immigrants from a poorly educated underclass, but isn’t assuming that any specific individual must fit that category a poor assumption? Doesn’t making that assumption show that you are willing to accept generalities as fact without additional support? Isn’t that at least close to accepting a stereotype? And isn’t taht just a wee bit, well, shall we just say politically incorrect?
You’re confused because you’re taking two things out of context.
I didn’t think Liberal’s cite was valid because it wasn’t topical to the discussion at hand–the proportion of illegal immigrants who are Mexican isn’t the same thing as the proportion of Mexican immigrants who are illegal. You can’t assume a Mexican immigrant is illegal because most illegals are Mexicans–this is a logical fallacy called “Affirming the Consequent.”
Later on, I declared it a “safe bet” that the customer of a coyote is an illegal immigrant. I based this both on the definition of the word (as it exists in the dictionary and the common vernacular) and also added some simple logical reasoning to show that it would be highly unlikely for a someone that makes a living smuggling illegals to “smuggle” legal immigrants as well (please note that I didn’t use any “anecdotal information”–anecdotal information involves, well, anecdotes, e.g., “I read an article where someone asked a coyote if he’d ever smuggled any legal immigrants, and he said no before licking his ass and wandering off to find some carion.”) My reasoning was ment to show that it was highly unlikely a legal immigrant would use a smuggler to get into the country–I never ment to argue that it was completly beyond the realm of possibility that it would happen, nor did I hold Liberal to such a standard (I asked him for a cite that showed an “overwhelming majority,” not “all”).
Other then the fact that a dictionary defined the word to be someone who smuggles illegal aliens across the border and that it makes NO sense at all for someone to smuggle legal aliens, you’re correct that I didn’t provide a cite.
This will be my last post responding to you in this thread.
Brushing the Rolls upholstery is the driver’s responsibility, silly dahling!
Now where can I find a qualified cabana boy who will hand me the towel as I step out of the bath, instead of hanging them on the rack? Does he expect me to pat dry my own ass? Really!
Oh. So you’re mad at yourself for hiring this fella. You feel foolish for paying someone (repeatedly!) for not doing their job. Now I get it. For a second there, I thought you were mad at him.
Very well. I will endeavor in the future to be mindful of your subtleties. Just, please, the last thing we need is to push each other around with accusations of bigotry. It’s so divisive and so unimportant.
…
I am most sincerely sorry you feel that way. I’ve written something especially for you, to try and make this right:
New-Age Sensitivity is Guilt’s ugly bastard. A furtive peek into the pram makes lips curl, stomachs twist and sensibilities deliquesce with the foreseeability of feeding-time.
…
Professionals or highly skilled people in Mexico are typically not scraping for a living. That’s why I made the observation that -
In many cases, for specialized industrial and commercial skill sets, the wages are not that wildly far off US levels. I suppose it’s possible that a Mexican doctor or engineer decided that doing yard work in California is a good part time gig, but somehow I would doubt it. And in case you missed the point of my point, it was not that immigrants are lying, shiftless bums, it was that it would be foolish to assume that someone who is your typical immigrant yard worker ( the vast majorty of whom are the under employed Mexican underclass) is not likely to be bringing a skill set to the table that inlcudes the ability to repair an inground lawn sprinkler system.
What an amazing collection of proudly bigoted comments and lame ass attempted justifications on why they shouldn’t be taken that way.
The original poster needs to be kicked in her upturned little nose, Liberal (how is it that the most frequent attacker of liberal ideals here calls himself a liberal?) needs to be kicked in his spewing rectum, and Mr. “The Mexican Must Have Used A ‘Coyote’ But How Dare You Claim I Said He’s Illegal” needs to be kicked in his moldy gray matter.
And as long as we are in the pit already, regarding the pathetic racist (yes, it’s racist, if you don’t understand why you should keep your mooth shut instead of advertising your ignorance) subject line of the thread, you DON’T make plurals by adding an apostrophe S at the end. How did you even freaking get out of grade school without learning that?
Liberal gives you a solid cite that says most illegal immigrants are Mexican, and you complain. You later declare it’s a “safe bet,” based solely on anecdotal information, that every client of every Coyote is an illegal immigrant. From Mexico.
