Dallas Morning News 2007 “Texan of the Year” (Updated)
[Guest post by DRJ]
Following the example set last year when Time Magazine named *YOU* as its 2006 Person of the Year, the Dallas Morning News has named The Illegal Immigrant its 2007 Texan of the Year:
“He breaks the law by his very presence. He hustles to do hard work many Americans won’t, at least not at the low wages he accepts. The American consumer economy depends on him. America as we have known it for generations may not survive him.
We can’t seem to live with him and his family, and if we can live without him, nobody’s figured out how. He’s the Illegal Immigrant, and he’s the 2007 Dallas Morning News Texan of the Year – for better or for worse. Given the public mood, there seems to be little middle ground in debate over illegal immigrants. Spectacular fights over their presence broke out across Texas this year, adding to the national pressure cooker as only Texas can.
To their champions, illegal immigrants are decent, hardworking people who, like generations of European immigrants before them, just want to do better for their families and who contribute to America’s prosperity. They must endure hatred and abuse by those of us who want the benefits of cheap labor but not the presence of illegal immigrants.
Especially here in Texas, his strong back and willing heart help form the cornerstone of our daily lives, in ways that many of us do not, or will not, see. The illegal immigrant is the waiter serving margaritas at our restaurant table, the cook preparing our enchiladas. He works grueling hours at a meatpacking plant, carving up carcasses of cattle for our barbecue (he also picks the lettuce for our burgers). He builds our houses and cuts our grass. She cleans our homes and takes care of our children.
Yet to those who want them sent home, illegal immigrants are essentially lawbreakers who violate the nation’s borders. They use public resources – schools, hospitals – to which they aren’t entitled and expect to be served in a foreign language. They’re rapidly changing Texas neighborhoods, cities and culture, and not always for the better. Those who object get tagged as racists.”
The linked Dallas Morning News article has a lengthy discussion of immigration … but we’ve batted that around so many times, I’ll pass this time. However, this trend in naming everyday people as “person of the year” is lame.
UPDATE 12/30/2007 – Whether you agree or disagree with the selection, at least the UK Telegraph understands that the “Person of the Year” really should be a person who did something this year:
“The critics said it couldn’t be done, but the vision and determination of General David Petraeus have brought greater security and cause for optimism to the people of Iraq. He is The Sunday Telegraph’s Person of the Year.”
— DRJ
Definitely lame. The Texan of the year is clearly George W. Bush, who’s had a a very good year.
Christoph (92b8f7) — 12/29/2007 @ 9:41 pmI think this is the first time I have been embarrassed to live in Dallas.
chas (d7c0b2) — 12/30/2007 @ 2:08 amI think it’s quite pompous to decide your organization can decide who is the most important person. Says a lot for the journalists that they not only do this, but do it in a manipulative way, such as here, where they are just trying to propagandize amnesty.]
This was the year when the Iraq War turned around, when we began winning the war on terror, when the dems calls our general “betray us” and attempted to deny funding that supports our victorious efforts.
Illegal immigration was as big an issue twenty years ago. This is a cop out.
I think it’s sad that people don’t realize that many of these crappy jobs illegals tend to perform can be performed by teenagers. On the other hand, I truly admire most illegal immigrants that I personally know. One, a dishwasher, puts up with a ton of abuse from her boss and slaves through each day, because she loves her daughter. She really doesn’t care much about the implications of illegal immigration when she needs to fend for her own, and I respect that.
But the real crime is that she wasn’t able to do as well as her meager American existence back in Mexico. Illegal immigration must be fought in the Mexican government and aristocracy. We, the US, need to intervene in Mexico via our trade agreements in order to ensure real progress in social justice in Mexico.
Ultimately, the idea that we do so well because we have quasi slaves is a bunch of crap. Europe is fine, Canada is fine, Japan is fine. The USA does not need to exploit people, but we do need to enforce laws fairly. Plenty of good folks need to have an easier time immigrating here, by following rules that make sense.
Dustin (9e390b) — 12/30/2007 @ 2:10 amno comprende…… %-)
redc1c4 (39c24a) — 12/30/2007 @ 2:10 amonly in texas can idealogues believe the “war on terror” is being won. were out of troops, our military has been compromised by the strain imposed by horrendous leadership, and attacks continue daily despite our 5 years of illegal and immoral occupation. the illegal immigrant and terrorists have something crucial in common, neither are understood less or propagandized more in america.
terrorism is a term that has lost all meaning and is often omitted from the lectures of political science professors due to its constant misuse. terrorism is defined as an attack against non-military targets for the purpose of imposing a psychological effect. therefore disguised individuals bombing US military targets are simply guerilla fighters. much like the colonial army that fought the british to purge america of imperial oppressors.
the illegal immigrant on the other hand has been used by politicians to divide the american people emotionally and ideoligcally for political gain. i personally find it despicable to exploit both the american people and our mexican brothers who seek no more than our own ancestors did.
i know you texans take a great deal of pride in being violent as opposed to progressive, faith as opposed to information driven, intolerant as opposed to realistic individuals, but let it go. the mexican immigrant make America a better place that is more congruent with the values this country was founded on.
Jared R. (bab21f) — 12/30/2007 @ 5:33 amoh yeah 2 more things:
1. i am in iraq
Jared R. (bab21f) — 12/30/2007 @ 5:38 am2. when i talk about politicians exploiting immigration im talking about how its all rhetoric and nothing gets done. neither to enforce or create realistic laws or to secure our borders.
So the Dallas Morning News selection for Man of the Year is someone who drives down wages for honest, hardworking American citizens?
The telling line describing why illegal slave trade is booming, “she cleans our homes and takes care of our children”
syn (9c2583) — 12/30/2007 @ 5:39 amThank you for your service Jared R, you’re accomplishing extraordinary things.
I agree with you’re assessment that ‘the mexican immigrant make America a better place’ as does every other immigrant from around the world does. I just wish the govt on all levels would stop engaging in an illegal slave trade so that uber wealthly Americans will not have the opportunity to exploit those without legal status.
Americans need to get back to those jobs they refuse to do because the illegal slave trade exploits cheap labor, jobs like ‘cleaning their own homes and caring for their own children.’
That said, as a teenager some twenty-five years ago I worked as a maid and also in the fastfood industry, it was the best learning experience I ever received, opposed to my now 21 year half-brother who only knows how to skateboard through life; at this point I have far greater respect for that immigrant who comes here illegal and has noble work ethic than I do Americans who skateboard their lives away.
The phrase ‘those jobs Americans won’t do’ what they are saying is ‘those jobs Americans are to snobbish to do’
syn (9c2583) — 12/30/2007 @ 5:54 amCorrection:
“I have more respect for that immigrant who comes here legally and has a noble work ethic”
syn (9c2583) — 12/30/2007 @ 5:55 amThis just in. The Dallas Morning News has named
Mike F. (c36902) — 12/30/2007 @ 6:29 amCho Seung-Hui “Virginian of the Year”.
“However, this trend in naming everyday people as “person of the year” is lame.”
Ditto for naming a group instead of an individual.
Robert (220f5c) — 12/30/2007 @ 8:00 amWhen no one of their tribe has done anything of note (and the Goracle already got the Nobel) they’re going for the slap-in-the-face to their readers. I am sure they will have a few less after this award.
(Maybe the vagrant who chased me up my driveway yelling at me in Spanish, who then tried to get into my house, was just telling me he had a strong back and a willing heart?)
Patricia (f56a97) — 12/30/2007 @ 9:36 amAnd they were doing so well with finalists like Carol Wise and Cathy Bonner….
Mary (622317) — 12/30/2007 @ 10:07 amPress 1 for English
daleyrocks (906622) — 12/30/2007 @ 10:18 amPress 1 for English
God knows where we’d be today if not for the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
steve (31e7f0) — 12/30/2007 @ 10:32 amJust cancelled my 15 year subscription to the Dallas Morning News….so did my Mom, 5 neighbors and 12 friends that receive the paper….Let the payback begin!
Cathy (bef6fb) — 12/30/2007 @ 11:46 am“Yet to those who want them sent home, illegal immigrants are essentially lawbreakers who violate the nation’s borders.”
Whether you want them sent home or not, they are and will remain lawbreakers who violate the nation’s borders. This sleight of syntax is nothing more than manipulation by the MSM…
Dana (4a94e8) — 12/30/2007 @ 11:49 amJust cancelled my 15 year subscription to the Dallas Morning News….so did my Mom, 5 neighbors and 12 friends that receive the paper….Let the payback begin!
You have amazing powers.
steve (4d2de8) — 12/30/2007 @ 12:43 pmWho’s side are they on, exactly? Their own or ours?
Vercingetorix (32e3c0) — 12/30/2007 @ 12:47 pmSort of like bombing a religious building like, just to pick a random example out of nowhere, the Al Askari mosque in Samarra? Or say, churches and markets and hospitals full of nuns and children?
Yep: sounds exactly like those scrappy New England colonists!
DoDoGuRu (a3c81d) — 12/30/2007 @ 12:51 pmNot a lot is sacrosanct in these bloated “Person of the Year” honorifics. Had the Dallas Morning News singled out the “Intrepid American Soldier” – few blogs would have linked it.
In 2005, the editors’ pick was the city of Houston for its response to Hurricane Katrina.
The city “Business Person of the Year” is Roger Staubach, incidentally.
steve (4d2de8) — 12/30/2007 @ 1:00 pmAt this rate, next year’s selection will be an entire country and, after that, it will be the world and then the universe. By then, Cathy and her allies will have put the Dallas Morning News out of business.
DRJ (09f144) — 12/30/2007 @ 1:07 pmThe DALLAS MORNING NOOSE what else do you ever expect from thesedamn news papers and magazines i mean its a wonder their not naming ASSAM BIN LADEN as MAN OF THE YEAR and espeacly that rotten TIME
krazy kagu (31c771) — 12/30/2007 @ 1:35 pmIs this real? The Dallas Morning News is out of their minds!!
http://isupportronpaul.blogspot.com/
webdevgirl (26f827) — 12/30/2007 @ 2:50 pmWhile in the service and stationed in TX a long time ago, I stopped reading the DMN as a hopelessly lost liberal paper. Always thought the Star-Telegram was closer to me politically.
Another Drew (8018ee) — 12/30/2007 @ 3:19 pmThis will sound redneck but sometimes I think Dallas is a liberal town.
DRJ (09f144) — 12/30/2007 @ 3:59 pmYou compare them to the european immigrants. Are you comparing them to the ones that made sure that they became “AMERICANS”?? That their children learned english. That came here LEGALLY. That wanted to learn and become aware of the way we do it here and not like the illegal alliens who Demand that we accept there way of life and their traditions. And what do you mean you do not speak Spanish. HMMMMM do you think they celebrate Thanksgiving in Mexico? or our Independance Day?
Calling an illegal imigrant an undocumented alien is the same as calling a drug pusher an un-licensed pharmicist
Randy L. Johnson (1bb3c4) — 12/30/2007 @ 8:40 pmJared R–
were out of troops
Right, and that’s why the Navy is kicking out huge numbers of folks each year, and why the max number of years at a set rank keeps going *down.* Because we don’t have enough folks. Right.
Foxfier (c8e3db) — 12/30/2007 @ 11:04 pmAnother Drew – sure you arent mistaking it for the Dallas Times Herald? for many years it was the liberal paper until the DMN bought it out in the early 90’s. since then DMN has drifted leftward, still not as liberal as the DTH was but its trying!
chas (d7c0b2) — 12/30/2007 @ 11:56 pmI’m not the biggest fan of group selections but this isn’t a new phenomena. Twenty years ago Time was naming the Asian whiz kids as the person of the year. Many in the Asian community were frustrated with the stereotype being portrayed for several reasons.
As far as the illegal immigrant nominee in this instance there were a lot of things related to the issue in 2007. Some of note:
1. The last viable bill to tackle the illegal immigration problem was voted dow, largely due to shameless pandering by the left and right wings of our parties. Unlikely that any reform will be enacted for another 5 years.
2. Fair or not, the GOP may lose a chance at majority status in the House and Senate for the forseeable future due to the way the issue was handled — Bush’s 40% of legal Hispanic vote in 2004 may be a fond memory.
3. In the famous poll which cited 72% of Americans wanted enforcement, the 58% who wanted to see some path to citizenship was roundly ignored as the debate over the bill roared on. Why?
DRJ,
I’m interested in your definition of a conservative town vs a liberal town.
Foxfier,
The retention for the active duty services is not suffering yet. Part of the reason is that the total end strength for the services is half of what it was in the early 90’s – 1 million now versus 2 million then.
In addition the Guard and Reserve are getting wiped out with the unending deployment pace. Retention in the Guard and Reserve may be much worse than the active duty side.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-09-29-reserves_x.htm
Lastly,
voiceofreason (c4d641) — 12/31/2007 @ 4:59 amCancelling subscriptions, while a noble gesture, does little to impact the paper. When the businesses stop advertising is when the paper begins to worry.
Okay folks, listen up please.
Unless you’re going to host a World Cup game on your lawn, you don’t need grass. Call it “hardscaping”, if that satisfies some deep psychological need, but artificial turf has come a LONG way. Not only will you no longer “need” landscapers, you’ll save a fortune on your water bill.
Read “You can afford to stay at home …” by Malia Wyckoff, or any one of the raft of books like it. Be there for your children, give them the attention and affection they deserve and that only their parent can truly give them. (Yes, parent, not necessarily mother; even us guys can do it.) You no longer “need” a nanny.
All the rest of you: Pony up for automation or an actual decent wage (here’s a hint — those “low prices” at Wal-Mart? You’re paying the rest of it on your state taxes for Medicare, Section 8, and all the rest of it).
Thank you for attention. Have a nice day.
Stephen (e3cb72) — 12/31/2007 @ 7:28 amI just cancelled my subscription of 25 years. Let the DMN sell to the market they represent. This is just the latest in the long term trend as they are wanting to be like the NY Times.
Kerry (0889a4) — 12/31/2007 @ 8:10 amJarad,
Just because you are in Iraq, doesn’t give any monopoly on truth.
I left there three weeks ago and have an entirely different take on things than you. You are entitled to your opinions, but your location on this planet, has nothing to do with illegal immigrants.
By the way, “disguised individuals bombing US military targets” are called illegal combatants by the Geneva Convention, and could be shot without trial if we desired…but we don’t.
Nice reasoned comment about Texas and Texans by the way, you dolt.
The only real way to stop illeagal immegration is to improve the sorry way of life south of our border…they come here for money and a better way of life…for the most part.
Having lived in Texas most of my life except for military service, illegals haven’t been that much of an issue (not like California) until the last 10-15 years…the Mexican and Central American economy has become so bad, more people are electing to take the chance of coming north.
Don’t get me wrong they shouldn’t be here and we should deport ILLEGAL persons, but to stop it we need to treat the reason not the indicator.
I don’t know what to think about the Dallas Morning News…I used to read it all the time when I lived in the DFW area, but it has obviously changed lately.
Outlaw 13 (f745f9) — 12/31/2007 @ 8:31 amOutlaw, the dallas paper is still a very good paper. Sure, they are showing more bias now, but they are still in Texas. Papers have to show a bit of bias these days. MSM consumers expect it.
Texans always serve in the military far more than their fair share. Always have always will.
Jarad,
Terrorism can easily be directed at military targets. For example, crashing a plane full of innocent people into the pentagon was terrorism, even if there was a military target. Terrorists in Iraq know they cannot decimate the US military and are trying to kill civilians and scare them with bombings, even if some of those bombs are under Humvees.
There’s truth that immigration is used to divide the electorate. Also true that placating criminals (illegal immigrants) to get their illegal votes is as unethical.
Letting this many people flee Mexico is the same as endorsing Mexico’s awful government and society. We need to stand up and say enough.
Jem (9e390b) — 12/31/2007 @ 9:09 amVOR,
A conservative town believes in small government. A liberal town believes government is the answer to most problems. I think Dallas is more like the latter than the former.
DRJ (8b9d41) — 12/31/2007 @ 9:15 amActually, it does. Newspapers’ main source of revenue is advertising (they don’t make money on selling papers), but circulation numbers drive their rates. The lower the circulation, the cheaper the rates.
Jeff (6eaa3a) — 12/31/2007 @ 9:54 amDRJ,
That seems a little simplistic.
http://urban.nyu.edu/research/littlefield/section9.html
has data that shows NYC spending less on city employees and services than the US average. By your definition that makes NYC more conservative than the US on average.
I think most cities scale their services according to population and tax base not ideology.
voiceofreason (db0a5c) — 12/31/2007 @ 11:31 amThat said, my opinion is that the bigger a city gets the more likely it is to be “liberal” due to the wider diversity of people found there.
It’s an attitude, VOR. You either have it or you don’t.
DRJ (09f144) — 12/31/2007 @ 11:34 amJeff,
http://www.stateofthenewsmedia.com/narrative_newspapers_audience.asp?cat=3&media=2
But as those shifts were occurring, the newspaper industry also made choices that had important and likely negative consequences on readership and circulation. Newspapers make roughly 80 percent of their revenue from advertising, and only 20 percent from circulation.15 Indeed, it costs most papers more to print each paper than they actually sell it for, but higher sales allow the papers to charge higher advertising rates. Influenced in part by advertisers who increasingly wanted to focus exclusively on people who were likely to buy a lot of goods, newspaper companies in the 1970s and 1980s decided to chase demographics rather than readers. Around the same time, many newspapers also began embarking on pricing strategies that further made the newspaper even more forbidding to less affluent audiences.
That shift toward elite audiences dictated where the circulation declines occurred. By and large, when the afternoon papers that appealed more to working class readers died, those readers stopped reading newspapers.
People can debate which came first – the disappearance of middle-class audiences or the pricing and coverage strategies that made newspapers even less appealing to those audiences. Whichever, they reinforced each other. In the short run, that may have made economic sense. Why add readers who advertisers are not interested in, when the cost of producing and delivering additional newspapers does not pay for itself without new advertising dollars to underwrite it?
voiceofreason (db0a5c) — 12/31/2007 @ 11:37 amDRJ,
Okay I’ll bite. Please name a couple of cities that you feel fall into the conservative category.
voiceofreason (db0a5c) — 12/31/2007 @ 11:40 amI have to focus on Texas because that’s what I know best. I won’t bother naming small towns but, among larger populations, Dallas and Austin are towns that think government is the answer. Houston and Fort Worth are live-and-let-live towns that are more likely to follow a private sector/small government approach. San Antonio is an interesting blend, but San Antonio is in a class of its own on almost every level.
DRJ (09f144) — 12/31/2007 @ 12:03 pmDRJ,
voiceofreason (66d6cf) — 12/31/2007 @ 12:09 pmThanks for answering. Austin I can see as it is a University town and even in Louisiana we hear about its more liberal bent.
Houston I am puzzled by as I think it used to be a “sanctuary city”.
I’ve been to Dallas many times and it just doesn’t strike me as liberal but living somewhere and visiting are two different viewpoints.
chas…
Another Drew (8018ee) — 12/31/2007 @ 12:14 pmYou’re probably right about that. It was the early 60’s, and all I remember is that we were offered a Dallas paper, and a Ft. Worth paper. I read both until I just couldn’t stand the Dallas view of the world, and TX politics. But, whenever I read the DMN online, it seems like I’m reading the same crap as 45 years ago. Who knows, some of the same bodies are still there from when it was the DTH.
VOR,
President Bush’s policies that use big government programs to accomplish “compassionate conservative” goals is straight out of the Dallas local government playbook. Dallas is where he lived, worked and “came of age” politically before becoming Texas Governor and then President, and it’s where many of his closest aides come from (like Harriet Miers). There’s a reason we say the West begins in Fort Worth.
DRJ (09f144) — 12/31/2007 @ 12:35 pm