01 May 2006 What America Needs: More Goof-Offs

Could this AP report on the illegal aliens’ goof-off day be any more one-sided?

Not easily.

My best idea for making the AP report even more favorable to the illegal alien cause would be to decorate the text with a little picture of Mary and Joseph with the baby Jesus in the manger, with the caption: “Jesus was an immigrant, too.”

But then I remembered that Jesus was a legal immigrant to Bethlehem and he only stuck around 40 days or so, so that idea won’t work very well.

The AP report, of course, doesn’t use the word “illegal,” but let’s face it, regardless of the views the following people hold on this issue, absolutely nobody is expecting to see Michael J. Fox, Dan Aykroyd, William Shatner, Alex Trebek (born in Canada), Madeleine Albright, Martina Navratilova (former Czechoslovakia), Henry Kissinger, Andre Previn (Germany), Gloria Estefan, Andy Garcia (Cuba), Ricardo Montalban (Mexico), Placido Domingo (Spain), I.M. Pei (China), Eddie Van Halen (the Netherlands), Angela Lansbury or Elizabeth Taylor (Britain) participating in these events.

That’s because they’re all (as far as I know) here legally, and there simply isn’t an anti-legal immigration movement in the U.S. to protest against.

My closest immigrant ancestor immigrated from Prussia (legally) almost a hundred years ago. I never met him, but I’ve heard enough to know what he would think of a group of people, immigrants or not, proving their worth by not working. It is perhaps unfair of me to put words in his mouth, but I’m pretty sure he would not have been impressed.

Me neither, Grandpa.

Addendum, 5/2/06: This essay by Jay D. Homnick is my favorite commentary on goof-off day. Who says the Internet has no stylists?