Remember when your English or history teacher back in high school figured out which side of an issue you leaned toward and then, out of sheer spite and/or teaching acumen, had you take the opposite side in the debate? You’d end up scratching together a few gray-area points and then arguing the heck out of them. This is all I could think of when reading Ernesto Portillo Jr.’s column in the Arizona Daily Star a few Sundays back.
It was titled “Missing mud flap leads to possible deportation.” It should have been titled “Missing pieces of the story lead to false impression of nobility.” According to the story, 27-year-old Jesus Ramon Gonzalez was driving along minding his own business when he got pulled over by a Tucson police officer because the truck Gonzalez was driving didn’t have mud flaps.
(According to Arizona law, common pickup trucks do not require splash guards unless they have been modified “from the original bumper height design to raise the center of gravity of the pickup truck.” All it says in the column is that Gonzalez was driving a “Chevy truck,” so we don’t know whether it required splash guards or not. On this point, there are three possibilities. Either his truck required splash guards, or it didn’t require splash guards and he got pulled over for nothing, or he got pulled over for something else and claimed that it was because of splash guards. We may never know.)
What we do know is that after Gonzalez got pulled over, he was found not to have a valid driver’s license (which is a crime) and he got arrested. While at the Pima County Jail, Immigration and Customs Enforcement checked on his legal status and put him in the system for possible deportation. This sucks for him because he’s got three kids and a sister, and a dad who needs an operation. We’re supposed to feel crappy right about now, but it turns out that there’s more.
By Portillo’s own account, the “sympathetic” central character in this piece:
• Had a serious involvement with illegal drugs.
• Was either driving on a suspended license or with no license, depending on which part of the article you’re reading. Both are crimes.
• Had served two years in prison and then;
• Had been deported to Mexico upon his release from prison.
After reading the column, all I could think was “And I’m s’posed to feel sorry for this motherf—–?!” (I’m sorry; I often think in the vernacular.)
Portillo is a talented wordsmith, but since he didn’t have much to go on in terms of actual facts, he just threw everything at the wall in the hope that something might stick. He wrote: “…Gonzalez returned home (to Tucson) after being deported.” Well, I’m sorry, but if you committed a crime and then got deported, home is wherever your sorry butt ended up.
Portillo went out his way to let the readers know that Gonzalez’s father and Gonzalez’s three kids (the eldest of whom is an eyebrow-raising 12 years of age) are all U.S. citizens, but never mentioned the main character’s citizenship (which couldn’t have been U.S. because he got deported). The reader is left to determine how everybody else in the family is here legally but Gonzalez isn’t. Call me a cynic, but my best guess is that he was too busy being involved in illegal activity and fathering children at the age of 15 to learn that there are 27 amendments to the U.S. Constitution.
Gonzalez’s father is quoted as saying, “He deserves a second chance.” He got a second chance when they let him out of prison. Nowhere does it say that he deserves a second chance to be in this country illegally.
I guess Portillo tried to make it an indictment of what’s left of SB 1070, which was a dumb, reactionary law. It was so bad a law that the right-tilting U.S. Supreme Court gutted most of it. The Tucson City Council doesn’t want its own police force to enforce what’s left of the law. But this isn’t about a bad law. Neither is it a matter of a law “tearing families apart.” I hate that argument. You don’t get to break a law and then argue for humanitarian relief for a situation that is a direct result of your having broken the law in the first place. That’s like the kid who kills his parents and then pleads for mercy because he’s suddenly an orphan.
I’ve been politically liberal all my life. But I’m not one of those guys who says, “I’m an old-school liberal and now they’re moving the goal posts on me.” I understand that times change, situations change and maybe even the definition of liberal might change somewhat. What doesn’t change is the definition of stupid. This guy has led a wayward life and it would be stupid of me to feel sorry for him.
Maybe it’s my rough upbringing, but I’ve never had a soft spot for the guy who smokes crack, beats his wife, robs a liquor store and then finds The Lord. I prefer the story of the person who does things right from the jump. If you’re looking for the poster child for immigration reform, please use somebody in the latter category.
This article appears in Dec 5-11, 2013.
There are plenty of eligible poster boys of the “latter category” awaiting deportation as you read this, but Jesus Ramon Gonzales was just an opportunity for Portillo to put in his two centavos in on the subject. I didn’t feel that it was an article glorifying Gonzales. It was a warts and all article about illegal immigration, factually reported. Portillo is a good enough writer that if he did want to turn Gonzales into a hero, he would have left out or glossed over all those bad bits. Instead, you state that “by Portillo’s own account…”, he enumerates definitely unsympathetic facts about Gonzales. And yet you accuse Portillo of trying to gloss over the facts to make Gonzales a sympathetic character. You can’t have it both ways, Tom.
Was listening to Jon Justice 104.1 FM the other day in a communication he had with Katie Pavolich his shill he often used while she was in college now a editor for a right wing blog, and they were mocking the low wage workers who might wish for a raise in minimum wage, it was ironic Justice using a 25 year old who went straight from college to a high paying editor job, who has some questionable connections to John Birch society see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katie_Pavlich#Bibliography
One might wonder how anyone can take this joke for a right wing radio shock jock seriously when he got run out of Michigan, fired for a drowned dog hoax, is his shill Pavolich just another version of tendency to use hoax’s in form of a girl just out of college to denigrate the less fortunate in society?
Ps…Jon Justice and his pal the black buy trapped in a white mans body showed up at the local Macdonald’s on a rainy dreary day, allegedly as a counter protest, with some of his fans, made a big deal of the workers at the Macdonald’s not joining the protest, guess he thought the owner would just give them a protest break if they did instead of a dismissal for leaving job assignment! Then today on his show he claims he shut down the protest and made them leave not due to the weather! Of course this joke for a right wing advocate cannot even get a right wing candidate elected to dog catcher in Tucson as is evident since everyone he campaigns for loses! Sadly this is a necessary media outlet for the sad sacks who live for hatred, racism, bigotry in every community, they need their right wing snake oil providers!
And this has what to do with Tom’s column ? Black buy ?
It is not too often I disagree with you Tom but this time you messed up. I agree with the commenter ‘Kentop” on this one.
Danehy
Great column, I felt the same way.
They say even a blind squirrel can find a nut now and then. I guess that’s the case with Pulitzer Tommy this week. Good job Tommy ol’ pal, except for the S.B. 1070 part. If you read it, it’s just a mirror of the federal immigration law.
Mr. Danehy, my head swims with the directions you folks take on this immigration issue. Ok, 1070 is BAD, then, not so much, now, Neto calls this clown who got deported a ‘good guy’ ? I didn’t read his column but from your inference, he’s leading the charge that he shouldn’t have been? Your conclusions about him being deported are in my judgement are correct. He’s illegal (NOT undocumented – ILLEGAL!!) You’re outta here. For reasons aptly stated by yourownself as Jeff Smith used to say. But, you confuse me ( and probably yourself with this whirligig. You’re beginning to sound like Bob Bekel on “The Five.” Things are getting so screwed up, old fashioned liberals like yourself are being shoved into the political center. What’s his face needs a permanent one-way south. His kids? They are American, if they want…they stay here.