Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Republicans are the party of chaos and catastrophe.

“Squeaker” McCarthy

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

When do we start airlifting the women and children out of Texas?

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

Nancy smash is sick of your bullshit.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

Hot air and ill-informed banter

Give the craziest people you know everything they want and hope they don’t ask for more? Great plan.

Americans barely caring about Afghanistan is so last month.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

I did not have telepathic declassification on my 2022 bingo card.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

No one could have predicted…

You are here: Home / Wetback Event Horizon: How I Was Blindsided by that Racist NRO Dude

Wetback Event Horizon: How I Was Blindsided by that Racist NRO Dude

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Well, damn. I think I owe you an apology, dear readers. As you probably know, I’ve been so focused on the Ni-CLANG! Event Horizon — When is it coming! Who will be the first to call President Obama that word? What happens after someone says it? Will fire rain from the sky? Will we all turn into nothing? — that I didn’t see it coming: The Wetback Event Horizon.

I was taken by surprise. I wasn’t prepared. I wouldn’t even know how to prepare. “Wetback” is so old-school, it’s almost delightfully charming!

But here we are: Jay Nordlinger at National Review Online is bringing “wetback” back.

Reader Interactions

16Comments

  2. 2.

    El Cid

    Ahem.

    By ROBERT PEAR, Special to the New York Times | Published: April 26, 1987
    __
    The President of El Salvador, alarmed about the new United States immigration law, has appealed to President Reagan to give temporary refuge to Salvadorans living illegally in this country.
    __
    Key State Department officials, who have adamantly opposed efforts by liberal Democratic members of Congress to suspend the deportation of Salvadorans, said they now supported the request from President Jose Napoleon Duarte.
    __
    In a confidential letter to Mr. Reagan, Mr. Duarte said that if the Salvadorans returned home, it would be disastrous to El Salvador’s economy.
    __
    But Attorney General Edwin Meese 3d, who has the primary responsibility for enforcing immigration laws, is expected to oppose Secretary of State George P. Shultz in this first major conflict between United States foreign policy and the new statute. ‘Bizarre Twist,’ Senator Says
    __
    Senator Alan K. Simpson, Republican of Wyoming, who shepherded the immigration bill through Congress, said he would fiercely resist Mr. Duarte’s request. For the State Department to support it, he said, is a ”bizarre twist.”
    __
    The new law, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, prohibits employers from hiring illegal aliens, but offers legal status, or amnesty, to illegal aliens who can prove that they entered the United States before Jan. 1, 1982, and have lived here continuously since then.
    __
    Mr. Duarte said ”some 400,000 to 600,000 Salvadorans have entered the United States illegally since January 1982” and thus would not qualify under the amnesty program. This represents about 10 percent of the Salvadoran population, which, according to the United States Census Bureau, was five million in 1985. Duarte Cites Economic Crisis
    __
    Mr. Duarte said his country was experiencing ”a severe economic crisis” because of seven years of civil war and the earthquake that left 300,000 people homeless last October.
    __
    The return of Salvadorans from the United States, under pressure of the new immigration law, ”would reduce drastically the amount of money received by poor Salvadoran people in remittances from relatives now working in the United States,” Mr. Duarte said.
    __
    ”My Government estimates that the total value of remittances is some place between $350 million to $600 million annually, and is thus larger than the United States Government’s assistance to El Salvador,” Mr. Duarte wrote.
    __
    Further, he said: ”The enormous cost of the war, the destruction the guerrillas have caused, the reduction of our sugar export, the loss of the cotton market and the plummeting of coffee prices all bode ill for the Salvadoran economy in the coming year. To eliminate remittances from the United States would be yet another blow that seems counterproductive to our joint aims of denying Central America to Marxist-Leninist regimes.”
    __
    A copy of Mr. Duarte’s letter was obtained by The New York Times from a person sympathetic to his request and to the plight of Salvadorans in the United States.
    __
    Members of Congress and human rights advocates assert that hundreds of civilians in El Salvador have been killed by Government security forces, by death squads affiliated with them and by leftist guerrillas opposed to the Government in the last year.
    __
    Mr. Duarte said, ”The improved human rights situation does not justify the granting of political asylum by the United States to Salvadoran illegals.” Asylum is available to aliens who can show ”a well-founded fear of persecution.”
    __
    But Mr. Duarte urged Mr. Reagan to let Salvadorans remain in the United States ”until the economic situation has improved” in El Salvador. He said the United States should defer deportation of Salvadorans by giving them a special status known as ”extended voluntary departure.”

    IOW, don’t admit that our death squad friends are gleefully slaughtering the innocent in the name of being insufficiently obedient to the right wing & Western investors (“Communist”), so don’t give them refugee status — just call them some other name so we death squad dictators can still get their fucking money.

  4. 4.

    Joseph Nobles

    There should be a way to monetize the NiCLANG Event Horizon, since we know it’s coming. Maybe there could be a subscription service for white people that want to get the CLANG off their Ni-CLANG.

    $39.99 a month for three usages a month. Act now and you can get two for free! That’s right, buy three Ni-CLANG-AWAYs, get five! That’s almost Constitutional!

    And with all that slushy PAC money floating around, Republican candidates would be able to afford bulk discounts.

  5. 5.

    stratplayer

    Just like Mitt, Nordlinger has forgotten The First Rule of Holes. Keep on digging, Jay!

  6. 6.

    AT

    Im hoping anonymous are working on hacking the Romney bot as we speak, with the first ni-clang programmed for the first debate. Would denounce atheism and believe in something then

  7. 7.

    Sloegin

    Shorter Tomorrow’s National Review:

    We apologise again for the fault in the articles. Those responsible for sacking the people who have just been sacked have been sacked.

  8. 8.

    Narcissus

    That’s always the way it is. It just slips out accidentally. It’s the same way I sometimes accidentally say a curse word in front of my family. But then I don’t use racist slurs so I don’t have to worry about one of those slipping out on thanksgiving.

  9. 9.

    Mark S.

    Nerdlinger’s “clarification” is almost as disgusting as what he originally wrote.

  10. 10.

    Ufotofu9

    Now this is funny.

    I tried to post a comment on the NRO page where this article appears, and when I quoted his wetback comments verbatim, I received a message saying: “Your comment cannot be posted since it contains objectionable language (wetbacks). Please reword your comment.”

    That’s my new definition of irony.

  11. 11.

    TooManyJens

    From Nordlinger’s “clarification”:

    I have no doubt that most readers knew what I was doing.

    Oh, neither do I. We know about NRO readers by now.

  12. 12.

    Jamie

    Seems like we are all postmodern now. I had no idea that being a racist asshole was OK because, well, I’m a writer. For goodnesss’ sake.

    I’m just going to assume that talking about white Southernern men is equally non controversial.

  13. 13.

    FoxinSocks

    You know how in horror movies, some guy gets infected by the alien virus/bit by a zombie/taken over by a parasite and everyone’s standing there, staring at him in horror, because they know he’s a dead man walking?

    And the poor schmuck, usually bleeding out of his eyes or with his arm falling off, goes, “What’s wrong? I’m fine, guys, really.”

    That’s Jay Nordlinger’s situation right there. All the NRO columnists are looking on in horror and he’s asking them what the big deal is.

  15. 15.

    Kerry Reid

    He really needed to show his progressive cred there and go with “illegals” instead — AMRITE, Glenn Greenwald? Oh sorry — that was before Glenn thought anyone was reading him, so casual xenophobic epithets weren’t a problem.

  16. 16.

    Debbie(Aussie)

    I had no idea what or to whom this word refered, had to wiki it. What a totally sad & bad bunch repugs are . I suppose out in the open is better, if it might change thIngs. I fear for you guys and then for us, for we are
    nothing, if not, slaves to the fashions that come out of the US.

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