Monday, November 11, 2013

Cross Purposes

Seth's new animated show:

Fox orders animated comedy series 'Bordertown' from Seth MacFarlane

... MacFarlane will be an executive producer of the show alongside its writer and "Family Guy" producer Mark Hentemann. Alex Carter ("Family Guy") and Dan Vebber ("America Dad," "Futurama") are also on board as co-executive producers.

"Bordertown" cracks wise on the hot-button topic of immigration. It takes place in a fictional Texas town and follows the travails of a border patrol agent named Bud Buckwald. The married father of three lives next door to a Mexican immigrant family of six. ...

I'm totally in favor of more animated half-hours, since it means more work for board artists, designers, and directors.

But won't this series' subject matter work against Fox News' storyline how immigrants are bad? And a threat to European-style white people? Has somebody told Rupert about this?

9 comments:

Oswald Cox said...

No one is saying immigrants are bad. They simply don't want a WIDE OPEN border with their southern neighbor. Pretty much exactly the sentiments of the country of Mexico, who enforces their own southern border from immigrants.

Simply from a public health point of view(remember when that gentleman with the highly contagious strain of TB was on an airplane?) its sound policy to enforce our border - in case an epidemic or something comes across.

It makes sense to have people sign the guest book. Thats not racist or evil. Its pragmatic.

But don't let that get in the way of your vitriol....

Unknown said...

Thanks for doing an article on this. I had left a link to that story on Friday, but it was a post that you didn't write so I didn't know if you read it or not.

As far as I'm concerned, I'm not too happy about this. It's gonna be another lackluster Seth MacFarlane show eating up airtime like The Simpsons. I think there could be far better animated shows from talented people in the animation industry that should at least be given a chance on to improve the variety on the block.

If they can do something really funny with this concept and point out what a propaganda machine FOX News is in the process, I'd be a bit happier. Mike Barker leaving American Dad must be a sign that he's read the writing on the wall.

Unknown said...

The biggest supporter if ILLEGAL immigration is...Big Agribusiness, the heavily subsidized corporate farm business (fond of corporate communism). The LOVE lobbying their special interests to prevent meaningful immigration reform, because they're afraid they'll lose their cheap labor. Time and time again, they've spent hundreds of millions of dollars to prevent legislation from moving forward. If only these people believed in the free market.

Steve Hulett said...

Oswald, don't know what your point is, but you clearly miss mine.

Simple fact: The Obama administration has deported more non-documentedl immigrants than the Clinton OR Bush administrations. (Go look up the stats.)

Nobody is advocating open borders. And speaking of TB: the main reason for being against Prop. 187 during the Pete Wislon adminstration is that it helped insure that tubercular undocumented families would NEVER report cases of TB because medical staff would be required to turn them in.

Don't know if you had small children at the time, but I had two. And there was NO WAY I was going to support a law that turned teachers and health workers into arms of the border patrol, thereby upping the odds that illegals would go underground, TB would go unreported and MY kids would get it.

Happily, the courts struck down Prop. 187, recognizing the law for the insane, unconstitutional piece of crap legislation that it was.

Oswald Cox said...

Steve please. You are prattling on about events that occurred 20 years ago. Look at the facts:

"The number of Mexican legal immigrants and Mexican illegal aliens in the United States has grown quite rapidly over the past 35 years, increasing almost 15-fold from about 760,000 in the 1970 Census to more than 11 million in 2004–an average annual growth rate of more than 8 percent, maintained over more than 3 decades."

Wikipedia_Illegal immigrant population of the United States

No nation in the history of world has endured that kind of an influx of undocumented people. The money they send OUT of the country to the families in the country they are actual citizens of, has been estimated at $100 BILLION per year by ABC news. Your head in in the sand and you need to stop watching Rachel Maddow if you think the opposition to illegal immigration can be summarized as "immigrants are bad".
Our nation has admitted, on average, more than 1 million immigrants a year. More than any other country on the planet. There is no injustice here.
People just want those crossing the border to have the same checks on them that every other nation asks for... including Mexico.

And again, you are spouting false data.

"Authorities deported fewer illegal immigrants in fiscal 2013 than at any time since President Obama took office, according to secret numbers obtained by the Center for Immigration Studies that suggest Mr. Obama’s nondeportation policies have hindered removals.

The 364,700 deportations are the lowest since fiscal year 2007, which was in the middle of the last time Congress debated immigration."

Report: Deportations plummet in 2013

Steve Hulett said...

Oswald, old top:

You sound like one of these frightened old white men whimpering "I want my country back."

The U.S. has had waves of immigrants for bleeding years. The fact that much of this latest batch has the adjective "illegal" in front of it, is due to legislation. (The Iroquois nation had laws too. Fat lot of good it did them.)

We had more immigration as a percentage of population a century ago. And yes, Obama DOES win the deportation award:

... [C]ompare the two presidents’ [Bush and Obama's} monthly averages, it works out to 32,886 for Obama and 20,964 for Bush, putting Obama clearly in the lead. Bill Clinton is far behind with 869,676 total and 9,059 per month.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/aug/10/american-principles-action/has-barack-obama-deported-more-people-any-other-pr/

What I was doing up above was having a bit of impish fun with Fox Broadcast (pro-immigrant, vial Macfarlane) and Fox News (anti-immigrant, via Hannity and others.)

But here's hard reality, free of the Reverend Moon Times' charming spin: the U.S. population demographics are changing. White, European caucasians will be a minority in a few decades, and they'd better learn to adapt or they'll have big problems. Within three to four election cycles, the Republican tune will be changing, otherwise they'll become as irrelevant as the Whigs.

Uncle Steve takes no position on this, except to note that Asian and Latinos have increasing leverage, and Uncle Steve respects leverage.

You can piss and moan about "leaky borders" all your want, but the GOP did nothing when it held power (note your "11 million illegals" from '04. It wasn't President Al Gore that was doing zip. It was your President George W. Bush, aided and abetted by a Republican congress.)

And we know damn well that evil Democrats will do nothing, So where does that leave you, Oswald old chum? Probably in Idaho, unless I miss my guess.

And who the hell is Rachel Maddow?

Steve Hulett said...

Oswald, maybe you've landed on the moon. Who knows, since you hide behind a fake name and we can only speculate who you are.

Here's my history: I attended UC Irvine and worked twenty hours a week besides undocumented workers who were employed by Automated Services of America, a food and vending machine company that sub-contracted work from the University of California. I saw how hard they worked first-hand, because I worked with them.

I enlisted in the Navy, and served beside Phillipinos who had earned their way into the country by enlisting themselves. And I saw how hard they worked. (We chipped paint and sanded decks together.) Oh yeah. I voted for Richard M. Nixon. Me, the big liberal.

MORE RECENTLY I've walked through companies as a union rep where there were legal immigrants, other studios where there were illegal immigrants (Canadians, not Mexicans.) I told the studio head that she put me in a real difficult position having an illegal French Canadian working on a cartoon without papers. (The answer: "We're working on his paperwork.") I didn't turn her in. It would be interesting to know what you would have done.

And I've filed complaints with the labor department over the abuse of foreign workers, none of which went anywhere, but I tried. I fought with agents gouging south Asian agents in the offices of the California Labor Commissioner. We got the agent busted.

And I've written thousands of advisory letters over twenty years for O-1 visas for LEGAL foreign immigrants.

And you've done what, exactly? I mean besides touring Mexico.

You have a fine time twisting my words. I never said the country thinks immigrants are bad. I said (in jest) that Fox News has that as one of their memes, and it conflicts with Fox Broadcasting.

And there's a simple way to stop illegal immigration, and it doesn't require any thirty foot walls. The only thing that needs to happen is that U.S. employers who hire illegal immigrants need to be arrested and thrown in jail. That's part of the law Reagan signed a generation ago, but you'll never see an American corporate chieftan put in jail for breaking the law. Just as you'll never see Jamie Dimon prosecuted for Chase-J.P Morgan's fraud, or the head of Goldman Sachs ever having an unpleasant day because of G-S's lawbreaking.

We're a corporatist state, in case you hadn't noticed.

You like to yell about the need for immigration laws being reformed, but please tell me (us) how. Be specific, and please give us something that isn't a right-wing fantasy and has some chance of passing. I'll tell you MY first step: It's to have Boehner bring the Senate-passed immigration bill (passed on a bi-partisan basis) up for a vote in the House, and see what happens.

I'd like to know where you stand on THAT.

And I would still like to know who Rachel Maddow is.

Unknown said...

Rachel Maddow is a Rhodes Scholar, and is generally respected as one of the smartest journalists alive today, as well as one of the most well rounded. She deals in facts, which drives wing nuts crazy.

Oswald Cox said...

Rachel Maddow alleged that Congressman Steve Stockman received an early warning of the Oklahoma City bombing and did nothing about it because he was "close to the militia movement".

^This never happened. Those are the kind of "facts" she deals with.

She then had to apologize on air for her slur.

Shortly after, Reason Magazine gave her "The Award for Most Sanctimonious Non-Apology of the Week".

She's the first Rhodes Scholar to become a punchline. Here ratings demonstrate that every night.

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