Ramos Makes the Immigration Debate Angry and Bitter, Too
For those who think I never write anything nice about Donald Trump . . . boy, it's just delicious to watch him respond to Jorge Ramos, an Univision reporter who hadn't yet been called upon, but who decided to stand up and harangue Trump at an event in Iowa Tuesday night.
"Okay, who's next? Excuse me, sit down. You weren't called. Sit down. Sit down. Siddown! Go ahead. No, you're not. You haven't been called. Go back to Univision. Go ahead. Go ahead. Sit down, please. You weren't called." The media probably will eagerly turn this story into "aspiring fascistic dictator Trump uses Stasi tactics on minority reporter," but the video indicates it's nothing of the sort. It's difficult to hear exactly what Ramos is saying on the video, but it sounds more like a diatribe than a question. When Ramos was allowed back in the room, and was permitted to ask a question, he began, "Here's the problem with your immigration plan: It's full of empty promises." Last week Ramos declared, "Right now Donald Trump is, no question, the loudest voice of intolerance, hatred, and division in the United States." Once you've called a candidate the epitome of modern evil . . . I don't think they're obligated to grant you an interview! And for all of the howling and fury over Trump's comment about Mexican immigrants, Ramos is the flip side of the coin in making the immigration debate angry, ugly, and bitter. He never acknowledges that Americans who want their border laws enforced have a legitimate point or are good people. He routinely uses the term "anti-immigrant" to describe those who disagree with his stance, when just about all of them support legal immigration. He never acknowledges that there's something wrong with entering the country illegally. He sneeringly simplifies the debate to immigrants and their friends on one side and irredeemable hateful xenophobes on the other. He's declared, "what Republicans don't understand is that for us, the immigration issue is the most pressing symbolically and emotionally, and the stance a politician takes on this defines whether he is with us or against us." One might say Ramos's disregard for waiting his turn during the press conference is a metaphor for the disregard for the law implied in his position. You may recall another reporter passionate about the issue, Jose Antonio Vargas -- legal citizen of the Philippines who came to the U.S. at age twelve and who has been living here in violation of the law since. Vargas has been eager to turn himself into the face of illegal immigrants facing deportation to home countries they barely remember. But as I wrote last year, Vargas' determination to remain in the country led him to violate all sorts of laws: document forgery, making false statements on legal documents (signed under penalty of perjury), driving without a driver's license, using fraudulent documents to enter White House grounds, and driving a car with headphones on. Last week we learned he was "hit with a $41,945.44 tax lien in a court notice on Jan. 7, 2015 for failing to pay taxes in 2010." Vargas said he paid the debt in February and showed Red Alert Politics the check. When you begin thinking your position is so righteous that the rules don't apply to you, trouble follows. If You're Wondering What's on Roger Ailes's Mind These Days . . . A look inside the new Fox News from the Hollywood Reporter: Still, there have been changes at the network since the 2012 election, with Ailes clearly wooing a younger brand of conservative. (The network's median age — over 65 — is the oldest of the news networks, though Fox News still outrates the competition among the advertiser-coveted 25-to-54 demographic.) In 2013, he moved Kelly into the 9 p.m. slot occupied for more than a decade by conservative firebrand Sean Hannity. And he built [Shephard] Smith — an empathic reporter often suspected of being liberal — a $7 million studio and made him the network's on-call anchor throughout the evening. "Nobody else has this — it's very expensive," says Smith of his show's News Deck, which is staffed by dozens of producers who monitor news feeds and social media for what amounts to a perpetual news factory. "We're paying a lot of people in case something happens. It's an enormous commitment, and nobody else is making it. But those things don't get talked about. What gets talked about is O'Reilly bloviating about something." I suspect there's a lot about Roger Ailes that would surprise people: Ailes' laissez-faire attitude extends to his workers, sometimes in seemingly willful ways. After [Juan] Williams was dumped by NPR in 2010 for admitting (on Fox News) that he viewed Muslims with some trepidation when he boarded an airplane, Ailes promoted him. And he stood by weekend anchor Gregg Jarrett throughout a very public battle with alcoholism (Jarrett appeared on the network slurring his words). "I like talent and think they're vulnerable," says Ailes. "They get out there in front of the public and take all the criticism. They do a lot of hard work. So one of my jobs is to protect them." . . . In fact, Ailes' sympathy for anchors in trouble goes beyond his own troops; when NBC's Brian Williams got suspended for embellishing his own war reporting, Ailes sent word to his shows to lay off. "He said to us, 'OK, we covered it, I don't think we need to kill the guy,'"recalls O'Reilly. Ailes, in fact, believes Williams should get his job back. "I think Brian's a talent who made a dumb-ass error," he says. "When you spend your life around CEOs and generals and presidents, you can start to feel less than, particularly if you don't have a college education, you never joined the service. And so you get tempted to do something stupid. So I think he can admit that and say, 'I screwed up.' And most people are willing to forgive. I'm a great believer in giving people a chance. If you haven't actually killed someone or done something that's irreparable, then it's a matter of going on a little journey and never ever doing anything like that again." What Kind of a Future Do the Millennials Have? Michael Brendan Doherty reads Kristen Soltis Anderson's new book and comes away with fear for the Millennials: The Selfie Vote puts a tremendous amount of emphasis on the opportunities that exist for Republicans among millennials. But reading the book, I became less concerned with the electoral prospects for the GOP and more concerned with the fate of a generation, and the nation that will be entrusted to it. Beneath the polling is a sad story of a generation that is more indebted at a younger age, and is less invested in any of its nation's civil, religious, and state institutions. Millennials are just not participating as much in the institutions of public life. They are more likely to remain chronically unemployed, less likely to invest money, and less likely to marry, now or ever. Despite a culture that has come to romanticize the entrepreneurial spirit of young Silicon Valley kids, millennials as a whole are less likely to start businesses. Many of these trends are related: It is harder to start a business if family bonds and family support are weaker. It is harder to invest if you lack even a day job. Sure, some of this reflects the economy. But what if it's more? Anderson has lots of great policy recommendations for Republicans, showing that they can win the future by fighting the outdated structures built by progressive victories in the last century. But millennials aren't just one or two policy tweaks away from becoming Schwab-account-having, tassled-loafer-wearing Bush voters. This is a generation whose social capital has been drained away before it could even be invested. Chronically high youth unemployment, declining religious participation, lowering marriage rates, lowering birth rates, massive debt, a sense that the existing systems are corrupt — in European countries, these have been the signs of extinction for traditional center-right and center-left parties, not mere decline. Maybe they need to hear that growing up, getting married, and having kids isn't so bad after all. ADDENDA: Rolling Stone reports on the "avant-garde industrial group Laibach" which recently performed in North Korea. Did the government provide handlers or minders to watch over you? Our group of 30 people was taken care by five Korean "helpers, guides and translators," who also made sure that we did not act "too freely" and vanish in the night. They were all very helpful and not at all a nuisance. Hey, fellas, what's the next album called? "Useful Idiot"? Group member Ivo Saliger declares, "Entering North Korea is not that difficult at all. As a matter of fact, it is generally easier than entering U.S." No, it's leaving that is the hard part for the American citizens they keep illegally detaining. | 
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