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Happy National Immigrants Day
Thank you, Donald Trump, for reminding everyone who you really are last night, by returning to the symbolically freighted site of the 1939 Nazi Rally (Madison Square Garden) in order to relive it with your racist hate fest. Speaker after speaker went to the podium to deride and degrade major sectors of the American population to the jeers and boos of the thugs in the audience. Latinos bore the brunt of it. I won’t repeat the insulting remarks. They’re out there and easy enough to access, the internet is flooded with them this morning. I would say that that’s what we would have to look forward to with another Trump Presidency, but of course it would be far worse. During his previous Presidency, Trump tried to block billions in disaster air when Puerto Rico was hit by a hurricane, and then went down there to contemptuously toss paper towels at his audience. And his immigration enforcers separated thousands of families and locked children in cages. That’s what he promises and that’s what he delivers. Tears of misery.
Also, thank you Donald Trump, for showing your true stripes on the eve of National Immigrants Day, a perfect opportunity to counter your negative, ugly spectacle with something positive. Vaudeville is our metaphor for America, and vaudeville was all about the immigrant experience with all its sorrows and joys, the good and the bad. I thought I would observe today by introducing you to the sections of Travalanche I have broken down by ethnic identity for your browsing pleasure, along with some related articles. And to show where our heart is we lead with a counterpunch to last night:
Lastly, I would remiss if I were to neglect my own people. Many have made the mistake of making them the whole story of this country; others, the equally unfortunate one of leaving them out in retaliation. My method has been to try to give them an equal stripe in the rainbow. They are fast attaining a similar minority status to all other groups in the country. Some don’t know it. For others it is a trauma. And some, as we saw last night, react by behaving very badly. I try to celebrate my people, but proportionately and with honesty. You can read about them in the section I call My Fellow Crackers (ha!) and in the one devoted to British Music Hall, and the Hall of Hams, which was primarily devised to celebrate old style British classical acting, although I have liberally allowed others to sneak in!
And for dessert, my post on Charlie Chaplin’s The Immigrant.
Happy National Immigrants Day!
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