If you’ve spent much of your life working hard and yet you’ve still been treated badly by employers and others in authority, people whom you thought had your back and didn’t, you’ll know how Cathy Overton-Clapham and most Hispanics in the United States feel today.
Here’s another week of the bad and the ugly (there is so little good these days, I find myself omitting that part).
1) Saturday Night Live had a lot of fun with the new Fascist immigration law in Arizona.
In a state where Major League Baseball has the majority of its spring training operations, it will now be mandatory for Arizona police to maintain ongoing checks of the papers of Hispanic people, constantly harassing them to be sure they aren’t illegal aliens. Arizona didn’t have the cojones to go after the business people who hire illegals, instead they’re going to act like the SS and hunt down anyone who even looks Hispanic (in Arizona that will be a non-stop job).
On Weekend Update on SNL on Saturday, Seth Meyers mused, “’Show me your papers,’ was the standard Nazi line used in every World War II movie I ever watched. In fact, when somebody says ‘Show me your papers,’ doesn’t the Hitler family get a royalty cheque?”
On MSNBC, former sportscaster Keith Olbermann offered, “That’s a great law. During spring training next year, the cops will pull over Manny Ramirez for driving while Hispanic.”
The reality is this. If you combine all the Hispanic Major League baseball players with that Draconian law, you can’t possibly allow big league baseball to be played in Arizona anymore. Even if you ignore the basic racism in the law, anyone with a brain knows that at some point a Major League ball player is going to be pulled over, jailed and deported simply because he left his ID in his locker.
Baseball simply can’t put its players at risk. The law is racist in nature and will be racist in implementation and Hispanic ball players are now in danger in the state of Arizona.
2) Canadian curling icon Jennifer Jones and her pals, Jill Officer and Dawn Askin, fired teammate Cathy Overton-Clapham this week. They used the term “moving forward in a different direction,” as their rationale.
What a sack of crap.
Tell the truth ladies: “Cathy, we’ve decided to give little-hottie Kaitlyn Lawes your spot on the team because she’s younger and will look better on TV. Yeah, we know she doesn’t play the game as well as you, but hey, look at her, she’s hot. Hot like Jen. So listen, there’s a chance that without you, this move might translate into more corporate endorsements and TV opportunities over the long haul. You know how it is. So, ahh, see ya.”
Why is it, when people hurt other people, they have to lie about it. OK, they rationalize it first, then they lie about it.
If the Jones team wanted to improve, the other members would have fired Jones. Instead, they fired the all-star third at the Scotties and the third with the highest shooting percentage at the World Championship. While Jones was choking like a gagging dog at the worlds, Overton-Clapham was keeping the team in the competition.
Listen, what happens on a curling team is the business of the curlers, not anybody else. But when somebody asks why such a public decision was made — and be very clear, this was a public decision — there is really no need to lie about it. You aren’t protecting anybody.
You’re just making yourselves look like liars.
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