Take This Job And Shove It

Funny: the less Mexican illegal immigrants there actually are (numbers are falling precipitously), the more draconian the measures being passed in certain xenophobic states. Some people will argue that the main reason Mexicans have virtually stopped crossing the border illegally is because they don't want to deal with those terrible anti-immigration laws. I'm sure they have given people pause. But it is important to point out that they are not the sole reason why Mexicans are choosing to stay home. According to this article in the New York Times, there are many more substantial reasons why Mexicans are not crossing over, namely, that life has gotten better in Mexico. 
This is hard to believe when all we hear is about thousands of deaths due to the "war on drugs" and the anti-immigrant hysteria here in the States. It's hard to believe even for Mexicans, who, used to ages of corruption and inefficiency, are constitutionally incapable of believing that things are going well in their own country, or that their government is doing something right. But birthrates have fallen from seven children per woman in the 1970's to two today (thanks to an enduring family planning campaign by the government. I still remember the slogan "la familia pequeña vive mejor" -- "a small family lives better"), and despite the best destructive efforts by the Catholic Church. 

As families' economic pressures are eased, more children are studying, more are going to college. Many former migrants are coming back. Certainly, life must also have gotten better because they were, if I am not mistaken, the second source of income for Mexico after oil. They sent a lot of money back to their hometowns, and they are coming back with money to spend. And many Mexicans are applying for legal work visas, because they are doing the math. Why pay $3000 to risk death at the hands of the merciless desert heat, murderous gangs or rapacious smugglers? Get in line and ask for a Visa. The United States cannot live without this labor force.
Even with the solidity of the numbers quoted in the article, I'm a little skeptical. The article focuses on the state of Jalisco, which is a pretty prosperous state. It says that a lot of the work there comes from the boom of fancy tequila marketing (as I've always maintained, tequila is not only the Nectar of the Gods, but good for all that ails you, including apparently curbing illegal immigration). Yet I wonder if really poor states like Oaxaca, Chiapas and Guerrero are seeing the benefits of this economic upswing.
Still, I'm so happy that circumstances prove that Mexico is not only not a failed state, nor should it be annexed by the US, nor is a dark hole of underdevelopment, but a great, dynamic country which has always teetered between extraordinary progress and stagnation.
I hope that economic, social and political progress will continue. I love the college kid in the article who says that he wants to come to the US but as a tourist. Now that is change.

Petra Rules

Dear readers: for those of you who wish to read Petra's Diary, please be advised that on her request, it is being published on her new very own blog. She didn't want to mix with riffraff like me, so now she has her own page. It was the least I could do since I decided to publish her private diary without her permission.
For your convenience, there is a link to her blog on the blogroll below. Be sure to check her page out. She's a fun lady.

Today On I've Had It With Hollywood

Instead of Transformers, Eric Rohmer's Le Rayon Vert, about a real transformation.

Today On I've Had It With Hollywood

The Tree of Life: A Primer.

Today On I've Had It With Hollywood

The new, needless iteration of Transformers: Review of A Movie That I Ain't Gonna See.

The People v. DSK

It just started getting interesting! Who knew!

The narrative of a sex-addicted, entitled, powerful white male vs. a hard-working innocent African widow is interesting enough. But the narrative of a sex-addicted, entitled, powerful white male vs. a seemingly hard-working and perhaps not so innocent African widow that seemed to ask advice about profiting from her accusation is far more interesting. It messes with our heads big time.
This is not only a case in which we allowed ourselves to be swayed by our romantic notions of pure evil vs. pure good, strong vs. weak, white vs. black, powerful vs. powerless, man vs. woman, etc. By now we should all know that human nature is a magnificent cornucopia of complexity and base motives and we should not fall so easily for such tidy narratives. Which is to say, in so many words, "my bad".
I feel a little bad about coming down so hard on DSK, but not too much. The copiously documented fact remains that he is a serial harasser of women (not a confirmed rapist yet). Now his accuser needs to prove that he tried to rape her. The fact that she lied about her asylum application, consorts with drug dealers, and has been lying to prosecutors certainly weakens her case but does not necessarily mean that he is automatically absolved from the accusation. I assume that is why he has been released from house arrest but they have not given him his passport back.
The New York Times says that "forensic tests found unambiguous evidence of a sexual encounter between Mr. Strauss-Kahn and the woman" so the question is whether she was attacked or it was consensual. I find it hard to believe that it was consensual. This woman may be a pest, and not the angelical Pollyanna she was portrayed as by the media, her lawyer and the D.A's office. The fact that she may be a liar and perhaps even a criminal does not erase an attempted rape if indeed there was one. But how are we ever going to know? She has no credibility now. Unless the forensic evidence is incontrovertible (signs of struggle, etc), he may always claim it was consensual.
There are so many questions:
Why did the D.A.'s office write to the defense with their findings of this woman's credibility issues? To beat them to the curb? Is this normal procedure?
Is it legal for them to record a conversation between her and her incarcerated friend (who happens to be a drug dealer who apparently uses her to launder money?). Can this evidence be used in court? 
If they were too eager to accuse DSK, are they now not too eager to let him off?
Was there attempted rape or not? This is the question.
Everything I've read seems to point out to the fact that the woman did not know who DSK was when she accused him. Let's suppose she was attacked and then continued cleaning* and then decided to seek advice from her friend in jail and only then did she come out with the allegations. This still does not mean that there was not an attack on her, just that she was figuring out if it was profitable to her or not. This is horrible, but such is human nature.
And who knows? After his ordeal, he may be rewarded with the Presidency of France, if he decides to seek office. And she may be deported for lying on her asylum application and other documents. Tides turn, or what?

*On 9/11, after witnessing the two planes hit the towers, I went to my office and told my colleague at the time that we should get back to work. He looked at me as if I was insane. I didn't even know what I was saying, but it was like an instinct to will everything to return to normalcy. So I could believe that this may have been the case with her, or most likely she had things to weigh in her mind before crying out immediately with an accusation. Will they believe me? Should I say anything? This happens all the time... To me this is not evidence of cold calculation. The phone call to the friend may be.

Petra's Diary

June 27, 2011
Why do humans assume that I want to be petted and stroked and caressed and played with at all times of the day and night? If you see me taking a nap after strenuous playing with toys and other people's toes, please refrain from slobbering all over me. I'm taking A NAP. I do not wish to be disturbed. Like Greta Garbo said: "I vant to be alone". Being a well-mannered lady, I demurely move to another corner when this happens, but keep pestering me with your uncontrollable love and I don't promise you won't get a good bite one of these days.

June 28, 2011
Let's make something clear: just because I am a dog, doesn't mean I don't have standards. Just because I'm a dog, it doesn't mean that I'll eat that bone dry Puppy Chow and pretend it's the same as that dreamy paté and jambon du pays leftovers they brought the other day from Cafe Boulud. They cannot seriously think that I can't tell the difference. So if you are going to give me boiled ground beef (and I do appreciate that you got the natural Angus, and not the one with the antibiotics and shit), please be so kind as to sprinkle it with a little salt. I'm not saying use curry or fenugreek, I'm not asking for beef bourgignon but a little salt in the gray ground meat can do wonders for one's appetite. What makes them think that I'm going to stomach eating tasteless ground beef with melon?!!! The doctor said fruit? Ask him to eat that shit! Prosciutto with melon, by all means. But please, do not insult my intelligence with these disgusting foods. By the way, they don't give it to me, but the other day in the park someone spilled something divine called ice cream and I licked that asphalt until it was shiny. Also a baby spilled some apple juice, the slob, and it's not bad!  They are never going to give me stuff like that, I can tell. But I'll get it where I can find it.

Petra's Diary

I found my dog Petra's diary behind the couch and I am reading it. Pipe down, people. She's a dog, okay? She's not gonna find out. Here is what she has to say so far:

June 21, 2011
They put me inside the belly of a plane in a cage for three hours. Did they tell me where the hell we were going? No. Did they ask me if I wanted to go anywhere, let alone emigrate? I know they mean well, but you don't put a two month old baby in a cage. They got me out in Miami, and from there I travelled coach. Not bad, but if you ask me, it's not that different from cargo. There is actually more leg room in cargo.

June 22, 2011
Apparently I am in a place called New York City now. It's freaking noisy, I can tell you that. What's with the sirens? And the human hollering? Is this a zoo? Anyway, what I like about it is there are a lot of other people like me, with four legs and wet noses. I want to meet everybody! I like em all. Dogs, kids, adults, feet, leaves that blow in the wind. I like anything that moves. I kinda like this New York City. I have a nice yard downstairs, and boy, are the sidewalks a smorgasbord of chewing goodness! Cigarette butts, weeds, chicken bones, all kinds of poop (including human, I'm afraid). The asphalt jungle, indeedy!

June 23, 2011
The very official looking customs agent at the big airport was so thrilled with me, he took his glove off to pet me. I have that effect on people. They all go "OMG! SOOOO CUUUUUTE!" every time they see me. My owners say they can't walk two steps without someone stopping by and asking about my age, gender, breed. "Is it a puppy?", they ask. No, it's a dinosaur, what do you think?
Enchilada confessed that she was happier when she didn't have all the neighbors cooing and making small talk at all times. Imagine, she hasn't even brushed her teeth or combed her hair (as if) and she needs to get into some inane dog chitchat first thing in the morning; when B.P (Before Petra), she could be a verbissener New Yorker who barely said "good morning" in the elevator. She claims she liked her anonymity then. She thinks that this is how supermodels or movie stars must feel at all times and claims she was invisible until I came along. Hey, it's not my fault that I'm a charmer. If you don't like this, you should have gotten a tarantula.

June 26, 2011
Okay. Someone please explain to me the big deal with the peeing and the pooing. 'Cause it just don't make any sense to me. Every twenty minutes they scoop me up and take me down as if the house was on fire and then they put me on the street as if they are waiting for the Second Coming of Christ. I pee, and they almost throw a parade in my honor. Such celebration! But I do the same at home (which as far as I can tell is much less inconvenient for everyone) and they get all bent out of shape about it! They pretend to be really angry and get all serious and yell NO, PETRA! (but I can tell it breaks their hearts to read me the riot act. I just look at them with my big round eyes and I cock my head to the side and they virtually dissolve).
So make up your minds! When I do it at home I'm saving you the trouble of taking me out. And what's three little drops of pee to you anyway? You got the Windex thing going on and it seems to be working. Stop the drama.
The poop, I understand, is another matter. That's kinda gross even to me. But the other night they had the audacity to go to the movies and they left me all alone in this huge apartment, so I'm like, you cannot expect me to hold it in (or perhaps you can, but I'm not gonna). You cannot leave me here all by myself and go to the movies. You don't do that to a two month old baby. So I did it on the carpet. Maybe they'll think twice about not taking me to the movies ever again. 

Crowd Control is Getting Out of Line

I was very happy when I heard the news that the Marriage Equality law passed in New York. No less is expected from New York. For this is New York, and it is how it should be.

So now everybody is going to have equal access to the Wedding Industrial Complex Ripoff Machine (flowers: $20; same flowers for a wedding: $200). Mazel Tov!

I wrote to Republican senators Saland and Grisanti on Friday morning to remind them that this is not a religious issue but an issue of legal discrimination and civil rights.
I'd like to believe that they read my letter and said, what the hell, why not?

On Friday night there were lots of people celebrating in front of the Stonewall Inn, and I wondered just how many of them actually feel the immediate hankering to get married. But even though the legalization of gay marriage in NYS is an enormously important issue with real-life consequences for many couples and families, it is also a highly symbolic issue that positively affects those who have no intention of marrying. It means that the barriers are coming down. It means that we are becoming a more evolved and fair society.

The barriers that seem to keep multiplying, however, are those horrid methods of crowd control used by the NYPD since 9/11. The first gay pride parade I ever witnessed in NYC was about 14 years ago. People would line up in the streets and the parade would go by. I barely remember a barricade. But now, NYC crowd control has has an almost fascistic, authoritarian feel. We got out of the subway on Sheridan Square and because parade watchers were squeezed inside the barricades like human Spam, we decided that we didn't want to be penned in like cattle so we wanted to go back into the subway from which we had just emerged less than one foot away, yet the police made us get on a tortuous line and snake around the block in order to do so. I respect that there is order. In fact, one of the reasons I enjoy living here is that people respect order, but this is ridiculous.

Americans are oblivious to the fact that they are the best behaved crowds in the world. Americans see a random person standing in front of them and they instinctively form a line. Where I come from, and in most countries, rich and poor, people either do not fathom the concept of an orderly crowd or they do anything in their power to fight it.
Just see what happens every time you try to board a plane going somewhere other than the US. It doesn't matter how many times before people have been in the same situation, they crowd around the gate as if they were in a mosh pit. So since Americans are so good at policing themselves at crowds, why does the police feel the need to treat American crowds like POWs? Americans are so good, that even when they are treated like cattle, they quietly obey (for the most part) and they continue having a good time. In other places, these kinds of constraints would spark stampedes or rioting.
I see this as the next great civil rights issue: the right to enjoy a parade without feeling punished by the police.

Newsflash: Hell Froze Over

If you must know, pigs flew, too. My friends, I, an avowed disliker of pets, am now the proud if farblondget mother of one. For those who know me, the word pet and I don't go together like love and marriage or horse and carriage. I have never had a pet in my life (except for some chicks who died and some fishies that went down the kitchen sink drain in that surreal era called childhood). To this day, I was happy as a clam without one. My ideology about animals is: let's leave them alone. But if there is a case of "never say never" this must be one. For my arm was duly twisted, my defenses breached, my will vanquished, my resistance quashed. You can see why:

This is Petra. Full name: Petronila Vilma Etele Lucille Shpilke Cosa Loca.
Petra is both a Hispanic name and in honor or the Nabatean ruins we visited last summer. Vilma is in honor or Vilma Picapiedra, aka Wilma Flintstone, one of my favorite classy dames, Etele is the diminutive of Ethel in Yiddish, but no relation to Ethel Merman. Lucille was given to her in honor of Lucille Ball. Shpilke is because she is like a little flea with hair. and she is a Cosa Loca.
Petra looks like a mop and she behaves like one. So far, she seems smart, demure, and obedient. Very friendly and playful. I do not quite understand nor quite appreciate yet her penchant for licking my armpit, but I guess I'll come around.