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May
27, 2002, 8:45 a.m. By James Boulet Jr. |
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ust
when you think the politically correct crowd has complained about absolutely
everything possible, you are reminded that there is no offense so trivial
as to be unworthy of their time.
The Detroit News actually convened a focus group to critique the newest Star Wars movie, Episode II: Attack of the Clones, from a civil-rights standpoint. As expected, they found problems.
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The bounty hunter, Jango Fett is played by Temuera Morrison, a New Zealander of Maori descent. But "he looked totally Latino," complained one panelist, Martina Guzman. Another panelist, Jose Cuello, chimed in, "and his kid [Boba Fett] looked even more Latino."
The clones are bred on the planet Kamino, which sounds like the Spanish word camino which translates, notes the News, as "road" or "I walk," somehow transmuting the clones into stand-ins for illegal Mexican immigrants.
Thanks to another dictionary, Arab Americans could also take offense. Imad Nouri complained that, because Jango's son calls him "baba," the Fetts are actually Arabs, not Latinos: "I frankly think the bounty hunter is Arab. He's basically a terrorist and 'baba' is Arabic for 'father.'"
In a climate in which a major newspaper actually convenes Stalinist-style panels to dissect a science-fiction movie for possible thought crimes, coverage of hard news tends to follow a similar, predictable, path. This is because today's reporters and editors view current events through the prism of the 1960's civil-rights movement. Thus they are ever in search of the next great civil-rights crusade — such as language choice.
An recent news story regarding census demographic data contained this editorial comment:
For some small communities in Indiana and Oregon . . .that means local governments struggling to break down language barriers to meet the needs of their newest residents. . . . Already, many city workers are required to know more than one language.
To expect city clerks in Fargo, North Dakota, to be as conversant in Spanish as their counterparts in Mexico City is simply absurd. Indeed, one might reasonably ask, why it is only the government's job to "break down language barriers" and only "city workers" (like Zita Wilensky) rather than, say, Spanish-speaking immigrants, who must learn another language?
There is another, better way. What if the Bush administration announced a crash campaign of what John Fonte calls "patriotic assimilation": more English classes for adults and intensive English-immersion programs in our public schools.
This sort of thing has been done before, and quite well, as John J. Miller's The Unmaking of Americans amply documents.
Patriotic assimilation allows each individual immigrant to take his rightful place in society, rather than depend on a translator to tell him what the translator thinks he needs to know.
An America committed to assimilation would also be subjected to fewer senseless squabbles, such as debating the names of planets in a Star Wars movie.
— Jim Boulet Jr. is executive director of English First.
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