Not only did the U.S. Bureau of Education translate the Star-Spangled Banner into Spanish in 1919, but El Presidente himself has on occassion sang nuestro himno. Gently nudging a stupid argument toward mental gridlock is the fact that we're only having this specific debate because "British music rebel" Adam Kidron recorded the Spanish-language version and released it online a few days ago.
This is so stupid. It's not stupid because mouthbreathing muckrakers like Michelle Malkin—who, by the way, baffles me with a line complaining about liberals' "selective advocacy of force"; it should be what sort of advocacy, exactly? Indiscriminate? Gleeful?—would have us believe that a Spanish translation of the National Anthem, emceed by Wyclef and set to a Casio-issued samba beat, represents an authentic front in the Reconquista effort. No, on this point, conservatives are on to something: they're right to want to protect the anthem from performance. The anthem changes by mediation, whether it's belched or wailed on a guitar or sung by orphans, so if you have a real stake in ensuring that all things patriotic are all things melee to be used to club political adversaries, you must keep the anthem (flag, purple ink-stained finger) far from the hands of a politically inexpedient minority group.
What's so wrong is that the right has so woefully misidentified the enemy. A British person recorded the National Anthem, and the right's fed up because immigrants living in America are listening to it? We have seen the enemy, and the enemy isn't getting off the hook just because he produced The Slits. What a carpetbagger—a carpetdouchebagger. I can't put my finger on why, precisely, but I find it meddlesome and opportunistic and every bit as irritating as the xenophobes complaining about it. Why not put "La Marseillaise" in Arabic next? Kidron could be Sufjan Stevens, replacing states with nations and their distinctive boring intercultural policy disputes that don't involve him. It reminds me of that great Eddie Izzard routine, that one where the Corinthians respond to Paul's letters: "Dear Paul, Fuck off. Where do you get off, writing to an entire city? Hugs and kisses, the Corinthians."
Ultimately, it's a weak thread in the immigration debate, but one Republicans promise to pluck for some time to come. Then again, "immigration debate" itself is such a fruitless phrase for what's in fact happening in the Americas. It was a rather small detail in the article, but in a books review for the Atlantic Monthly Marc Cooper notes that the Mexico-U.S. border is witnessing the greatest human migration in recorded history. There's just nothing to be "done" about it, and all the handwringing—the President interceding in a debate about how people sing songs; the weekend warriors in the Arizona sun, with guns and koozied beer—represents a stark failure of imagination. We're talking about an epochal movement of people. Even amnesty and boycotts and other policies I nominally support fail to appreciate how vast this migration is—as if it is a trend we may somehow permit or not. It's like saying, I support tidal waves.. It's nonsense! Though the followup (My political opponent's anti-moon position is sheer lunacy!) is better.
It's of course important that we ensure fair treatment for all residents, maintain a standard of living that doesn't come at the expense of the lower class, and prevent British people from acting out at all costs. No use kidding ourselves that we can tweak the tides of history—these are things we just ought to do as citizens.
Posted by Kriston at May 3, 2006 12:59 PMI support tidal waves
Um, tides? Tidal waves don't have anything to do with the moon, and they are Very Bad Things which should be got out of the way of. (I'm picking on this because a tsunami warning was just issued.)
Anyway, I hope that reference to Sufjan wasn't intended as derogatory. Grrr.
Posted by: Matt Weiner at May 3, 2006 2:14 PMGreat, now I'm the pro-tsunami guy.
Posted by: Kriston at May 3, 2006 2:20 PM"U.S. Department of Education" s/b and now is "U.S. Bureau of Education". Thanks to a sharp reader for that.
Posted by: Kriston at May 3, 2006 2:25 PMyou're cute when you're angry.
Posted by: susan at May 3, 2006 4:45 PMDid Bailey write that last post for you? Or is Bayleyitis catching?
;-)
PS - I thought all those Germanic wetbacks around 400AD swimming across the Elbe and the Rhine and sweeping like locusts from the frozen poor North until they settled in the fertile, rich lands of France and Spain, and became "Latins," were the largest migration in recorded history? Unless no one was recording anything back then because they were so scared of people with names like "Vandals"
Posted by: Lenny at May 4, 2006 6:11 PMLenny, that was my question, too. This migration is likely larger in one sense: There are more people now than there used to be. But I wonder if there are ways to adjust the data for time, say, by measuring the percentage of people moving from one region to another or what have you. Then you have the problem with "recorded history," because while writing might have been around in 400 AD, demographic data definitely weren't—so are we talking about from, say, the 17th C. on? Because that's not really all that impressive.
Posted by: Kriston at May 4, 2006 7:40 PMthe Mexico-U.S. border is witnessing the greatest human migration in recorded history
It's just a matter of time before Americans, Los Angelenos anyway, start migrating south of the border in search of affordable housing.
Posted by: David at May 5, 2006 1:11 PMI don't have a problem with a direct translation of the anthem into any language. But when you change the words (something about breaking chains and "my people fight on") to change the meaning, that's a little trickier.
Posted by: j.scott barnard at May 8, 2006 10:12 AM"It's just a matter of time before Americans, Los Angelenos anyway, start migrating south of the border in search of affordable housing."
And jobs.
As for the tides of history, it took some pretty large waves to establish the colonies, labor for the Industrial Revolution and populate the rest of the continent to the extent that the native population could be turned into a tiny minority. This just seems to be the latest part of the trend, with the main distinction being that the immigrants can get here just by crossing a line drawn on a map, whereas previous generations had to haul ass over large bodies of water. (Not to dis the Rio Grande, but it doesn't quite compare to the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans.)
But I think this is why people in the U.S. are more troubled by the wave of immigration from the rest of the Americas than they were even by the Irish, Chinese, et al. -- it threatens our faith in borders. The line between the U.S. and Mexico is imaginary in a way that the borders between the U.S. and the rest of the world aren't. [Cue the last few pages of The Once and Future King.] I think that's the psychological subtext of proposals to build walls and other barriers that don't seem likely to be very practically effective: a need to reinforce the border, to make it more real.
Anyway, having a bit of an ethnic stake in people's not being freaked out by the prospect of immigration, I would prefer that Congress approve more H1 and H2 visas and that immigrants who seek to work in the U.S. use those. The number of visas for non-skilled workers is particularly ridiculous, but it's partly because unlike Microsoft, HP, Cingular & Co. who do put effort into lobbying for visas for their skilled workers, most of the employers of non-skilled workers don't get involved in political fights about the number of visas. More visas for their workers? Great! no visas for their workers? doesn't really make a difference in whether they'll get those workers or not.
I have a post to write on De Novo eventually about illegal immigration and illegal downloading -- something about perceptions of "crimes," who the victims of such crimes are, and the forms that enforcement takes.
Posted by: PG at May 12, 2006 12:08 PM