Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Here's Fred Thompson pandering just as fast as he can in Iowa. Here's the first stupid statement:
During what must've been a strenuous day of campaigning in Iowa, GOP candidate Fred Thompson told potential voters at his one-and-only appearance that immigrants deserve some of the blame for the mortgage crisis."A lot of them couldn't communicate with the people they were getting the mortgage from," the lagging Republican told an Iowa audience during his "Clear Conservative Choice bus tour," according to the Los Angeles Times.
Is there any evidence that immigrants have a higher rate of default than non-immigrants? None that I know of. But wait, moments before he had said this:
Thompson's stop in Mason City, Iowa, allowed him to play on Republicans' fears of immigrants and riff on apparent frustration with hearing options in Spanish on recorded phone messages.Janice Easley, one voter in the audience, was boiling with frustration at having to hear, "Para el español, prensa dos," whenever she called the power company.
"Everything is in Spanish," she said. "It's sickening."
"You are so, so right," Thompson said, calling for English to be made the national language, before placing the blame for the sub-prime mortgage crisis on non-English-speakers.
So you see, the American mortgage crisis is caused by those horrible Mexicans because they can't understand the lenders. And if the lenders seek to communicate with them in their own language to solve that communication problem, that's "sickening." That's so, so.....stupid.
Comments
He also said that there is no women who should be president of the country. He is just a stupid ass and again should never have a position of power
Posted by: Ex Partiot | December 28, 2007 9:39 AM
That's so weird... I mean I live in Toronto Canada and I see all kinds of other languages around despite Canada only having two official languages (English and French).
Street signs in Chinatown have kanji on them in addition to the English, and there's Greek on the signs along the Danforth. ATMs at the major banks in the downtown core have at least three language choices (English, French and some kind of Chinese generally), but I've seen ATMs with Ukranian, German, Greek, some kind of Arabic script (I think... coulda been anything, I am woefully ignorant of languages).
And while there's often a hoopla about French language rules in Quebec (English on signs has to be a certain percentage smaller), I have never heard people complain about having to listen to choices for other languages on the phone. I mean, can't you press #1 for English immediately without listening to the entire menu?
It's beyond worrisome that someone would be able to fly into a rage over something that has zero effect on how they live their everyday life. Also if Thompson makes English the "official" language, will he then BAN all other languages? 'cause that is the only way to get the spanish off the lines of businesses that wish to interact well with their customers.
Posted by: kodiak | December 28, 2007 9:49 AM
"ATMs at the major banks in the downtown core have at least three language choices (English, French and some kind of Chinese generally), but I've seen ATMs with Ukranian, German, Greek, some kind of Arabic script"
I've seen this in New York too.
"Also if Thompson makes English the "official" language, will he then BAN all other languages? "
Any "official" status would presumably mainly affect government operations. It would be difficult to impose that kind of restrictions on private individuals and businesses. Presumably businesses offer language options because they feel it's in their own best interest to do so; they'd have incentive to resist restrictions (where I live there's a lot of Portuguese-speaking Brazilians, and businesses that cater to them). So "official" status would make it harder for immigrants--including legal immigrants--to access government services.
Admittedly, in the "old days" there wasn't a lot of accommodation for immigrants, mainly for the same stupid reasons (ethnic prejudice) people have today. The immigrants learned english, but at the same time, they were locked out of many employment and educational opportunities until they did.
Posted by: Moopheus | December 28, 2007 10:23 AM
Based on purely personal experience I find my indian/ecuadoran/mexican friends more responsible with money and harder working than any of my native born/raised friends and family (especially family).
Here is the other thing that grates me - I get offered a lot of money to do work in Des Moines and surrounding areas on a regular basis. Why? Because they can't find qualified local people. Its no wonder that Des Moines has lost population in the last few years.
Posted by: yoshi | December 28, 2007 10:25 AM
kodiak, the other great thing about Quebec and language is that on the highways there's only French signs... I got lost in Quebec because I couldn't remember that Oest & Est were West & East in English.
Posted by: Paul | December 28, 2007 10:43 AM
Once in a while, just to mess with people, I press "Spanish" on the self-checkout at the grocery store. The next customer gets to not follow directions in a language they most likely can't understand.
Directions are for wusses anyway :-)
Posted by: BaldApe | December 28, 2007 10:45 AM
As far as Thompson blaming the bursting of the housing bubble on immigrants, it's not that far of a stretch from calling the whole mess the "sub-prime meltdown." When the media use "sub-prime," they're basically saying "it's the black-folk what messed up the economy." The bubble was created by people thinking that housing was a great way for quick, high-yield investing, not people getting shaky loans. The shaky loans were a product of the bubble. But if you read just about anything that places the blame for this "crisis" on sub-prime loans, there's a subtext that the people who got sub-prime loans were minorities, who, of course, were too dumb to read the fine print.
I love when people in power (politicians, media-owners, the very wealthy) blame us poor suckers who are left holding the worthless shares at the end of whatever Ponzi scheme they cooked up in the first place. Sure, minorities and aliens are to blame. Lucky duckies.
Posted by: Jonathan | December 28, 2007 10:59 AM
My late father-in-law was 3rd generation, born and raised on a farm in Wisconsin and didn't learn English until he went to school. The fact that his first language was Norwegian, not Spanish, doesn't matter at all to the nativists, now does it?
Posted by: snoey | December 28, 2007 11:19 AM
What is it with these simple folk getting their panties in a knot about hearing stuff in Spanish? First time I went to Toronto I thought it was wicked cool because everything was a flash card! (For French of course, not Spanish.) Learn new vocabulary just by buying stuff.
Then it got that way at Home Depot around here (and hey, you've gotta admit, herramientas is a much cooler word than tools). And now it's even more prevalent. Sorry, that's a good thing! Take the opportunity to learn something, people.
Sheesh.
Posted by: Johnny Vector | December 28, 2007 11:30 AM
Did Thompson happen to mention what the impact of deporting immigrants or restricting immigration would have on the US economy's ability to recover from the sub-prime crisis?
Posted by: Ex-drone | December 28, 2007 11:53 AM
The only time someone not being able to speak English bothers me is when they're asking for help/directions, and I can't help them because my [insert language here] isn't good enough to get the point across.
Posted by: dogmeatib | December 28, 2007 11:57 AM
If we're going to make English the official (and only) language in the USA, what version of English will it be?
Brooklyn?
South Philadelphia?
South Georgia?
Rural Maine?
West Texas?
Upper Peninsula (Michigan)?
Whatever the version, will there be proficiency tests required for jobs, voting, holding public office?
Posted by: khan | December 28, 2007 12:04 PM
Is there any reason to even bother talking about this asshat anymore? Dennis Kucinich is more of a contender than Thompson. Maybe if we stop talking about him he'll go away.
Posted by: Scott R | December 28, 2007 12:09 PM
I thought Thompson was pretty terrible back when he was just District Attorney. I know I never voted for him.
Posted by: kehrsam | December 28, 2007 12:25 PM
Here in Canada all the ATMs I use offer the choice of English, French, and Chinese, and my bank's website offers the additional choice of Panjabi. The most multi-lingual ATM that I have seen, though, was the one at a deli in Philadelphia that offered: English, French, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Italian, and Polish. I made a point of going there so that I could try them all out. I was proud of myself for managing a transaction in Polish, which I don't know.
Posted by: Bill Poser | December 28, 2007 2:52 PM
Did anybody else notice the inherent contradiction in Janice Easley complaining, "Everything is in Spanish," while being offered a choice between English and Spanish?
Posted by: Ahcuah | December 28, 2007 4:09 PM
It's a Brayton kind of day all over the internets
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/005266.html
Posted by: Liz D. | December 28, 2007 4:51 PM
@kodiak,
It's very nice of the Chinese citizens of your fine city to provide kanji for their Japanese visitors...
Posted by: N.O. | December 28, 2007 5:10 PM
Thompson is a complete tool. Does he think that most of the defaults are occuring among busboys working 12 shifts a week to pay mortgages? And, here I thought the right was griping about immigrants sending their money back to their home countries to be stuffed in mattresses instead of spending it here.
Posted by: Dr X | December 28, 2007 5:32 PM
On NPR's Morning Edition Christmas they had a report that illegal aliens are very good mortgage risks Here's a link.
Posted by: MrEphemeris | December 28, 2007 6:49 PM
I wouldn't trust NPR on this; they have an agenda which is simply the opposite of Thompson's.
I recall seeing a front-page WSJ on the link between illegal immigrants and "liar's loans". That issue seems to have gone to recycling, but the 12/21 paper has an article on a fraud ring (page 1 column 3) run by ghetto kids. The Mexican rings aren't any less clever than the others.
Posted by: Engineer-Poet | December 28, 2007 11:50 PM
kodiak, banning other languages was tried in Sri Lanka. In the 1950s one language, Sinhalese, was made the sole language of government. The problem was that a sizable minority of Sri Lankans speak only Tamil.
"Sinhala Only" was a disaster. The North and East of the country (primarily Tamil speaking areas) are ruled by day by the army; by night by terrorist separatists. In the cities of the West, soldiers patrol the streets at dusk and surprise checkpoints bloom at odd locations, all to stop Tamil-speaking suicide bombers.
Posted by: David Ratnasabapathy | December 29, 2007 12:24 PM
Large swathes of the South West are now de facto Spanish only. Yes, it is inevitable in a multicultural society that minorities will be persecuted during downturns. That is why multiculturalism is a bad idea.
Posted by: Pretty Poisson | December 29, 2007 8:31 PM
What would we make of India with its 15 official languages?
Posted by: rimpal | December 30, 2007 8:27 AM
That's a joke, right?
(Incidentally, Bill Poser above is a professional linguist.)
Posted by: David Marjanović | January 1, 2008 3:50 PM
Engineer-Poet: "the 12/21 paper has an article on a fraud ring (page 1 column 3) run by ghetto kids. The Mexican rings aren't any less clever than the others."
Well, that proves it - can't trust those dirty Mexicans. And I like how you don't pull any punches about "ghetto" and "Mexican" being interchangeable.
Pretty Poisson: "it is inevitable in a multicultural society that minorities will be persecuted during downturns. That is why multiculturalism is a bad idea."
And it's inevitable that when you start to racially integrate neighborhoods, some minority newcomers will be discriminated against. This is why integration is a bad idea.
And multiculturalism isn't an idea, dear. It's a fact of the world we live in. How do you suggest we get everybody in the country to have the same culture? Take away the music, art, food, etc., of minority cultures by force and ban them from using their languages? Or deport the minorities? Seems the second one would be slightly more feasible, but only slightly. Which is your preference?
Posted by: MPW | January 12, 2008 3:41 PM