Speaking of shock jocks

[RPR]

Radio host turns border cop overnight
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By Jose Lambiet

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Friday, April 13, 2007

Rarely in her 15 years on SoFla radio has something Joyce Kaufman said on the air struck this type of a raw nerve.

And it wasn't even a Don Imus-style joke.



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Last month, the WFTL-AM 850 afternoon talker said she canceled her Comcast service when she called for assistance and was told: "For English, press 1."

Within minutes, the six-day-a-week call-in show shifted to talk on immigration control — a topic she hasn't dropped since.

Kaufman advocates "making it so miserable for illegals to be here that they'd leave on their own" — and her show's profile shot up overnight in radio territory that stretches from Vero Beach to the Keys.

When she mentioned she'd be traveling to Washington on April 22 for a protest demanding immigration control, she told callers who wished they could go to the "Hold Their Feet to the Fire" rally that she'd take with her the signed soles of their old shoes.

She says she has collected nearly 1,500 pairs so far, some bearing messages like "Why Press 1 For English?" and "Please Don't Make Me Speak Spanish." A smelly pile now fills the station's conference room in Fort Lauderdale.

"People are angry," Kaufman says. "Illegal immigration affects everyone, from overcrowded schools to job loss.

"I don't want this place to look like a banana republic with chickens and roosters running loose on the streets. It's not Calle Ocho. It's Eighth Street."

Kaufman isn't any run-of-the-mill anti-immigration nut. She's Puerto Rican. She speaks Spanish, eats Latin foods and is partial to salsa. And she describes herself as a liberal with traditional values, a "tree hugger" who sees immigration from an environmental angle. More residents here mean more pollution, she says.

Kaufman hasn't been alone in using immigration to get attention. CNN's Lou Dobbs and nationally syndicated radio-talker Michael Savage have been on that kick for months. Kaufman, however, is doing it on the local level, in a Latin-heavy region.

"I didn't create the firestorm," she said. "I just tapped into it."

Not good, says Angelina Castro at the Fort Pierce office of the Florida Immigration Advocacy Center.

"No doubt people are suffering," Castro said, "because of the economy and the war. When that happens, they lay blame on society's weakest, immigrants. Ms. Kaufman doesn't understand the complexities of immigration."

Full disclosure: As Page Two columnist, I'm featured every Wednesday on WFTL's morning show with Kelly Mitchell and Russ Morley, but I've never appeared on Kaufman's show.

[Suki]

Someone has to be blamed for something at some moment. Otherwise people who have lived the longest in this society and have done the most damage might have to face up to the reality of their contributions to global warming, over consumption of world resources, creating poverty over the world with the World Bank led by Wolfawitz and other realities that many don't want to cope with. Blame the immigrants. People who can't vote, who either wind up in jail or taking the worst jobs in the world and who come to the USA because they made a decision that is very difficult to accept. Their own societies are either not offering them life opportunities, or they have no other choice but to leave and try to survive somewhere else. Why do so many people like this Kaufman character want to blame immigrants for the problems in the USA?

Who are native USA citizens? Are they the most hard working? Apparently they are good at avoiding bad jobs with no benefits. They are good at getting into credit card debt. They are good at becoming drug addicts and alcoholics, they are good at making prostitution legal and gambling a state industry in a few states. In summation native USA citizens are as full of human flaws as the immigrant waves that they are so deathly afraid of for all the wrong reasons.

It is like the prison program in New York state with Bard College recently featured on sixty minutes. There are those who believe prisoners should not have access to a college education (even though it is not taxpayer paid), because prison is about punishment and not rehabilitation and life changes. And there are those who are analytical and intelligent and realize that even though people who are imprisoned and are lifers education is a way of changing the psychological landscape of a person and have him transform his or her life into something better. Some people can't see that people are capable of contributing something great to society---as long as they are willing to change themselves from the inside out. Immigrants by and large just want to work, earn a living and either go home or raise their kids so their kids can make a better socioeconomic living than they could. Some are criminals who lead screwed up and hopeless lives. Others are just people with no hard skills and no way out of a cycle of poverty and desperation. Others are just consciousless folk. But, the idiots like Kaufman want to paint everyone who is an immigrant---who speak Spanish and are Latin American as some ignorant, Banana Republic lowlife useless type who needs to be feared. The people who she should fear the most are people who allow ignorance and fear to dominate or to dictate their opinions. The person or people she should fear in her case are people exactly like herself. She is either trying to make money off of the fear of terrorism and xenophobia that are both rooted in the recent events in USA history. Frustration over a foreign war that has gone sour, or in just scapegoating someone that is easy to blame because they have no money, no power and no voice in general.

Overall, a cowardly point of view in general. Provincial and lacking in any transformative or universal sense of causation at all. It doesn't surprise me. The world is full of small minded people with limited opinions that never really make any changes of any real significance in the world.

Kaufman is not going to sit there and think, "why do these people come here to some land in which they don't speak the dominant language? Are not the top socioeconomic group? Are of the lowest rung of the ladder in their home nations and don't assimilate very well but still hang around hoping to survive and get a job? WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE and why are they here in the first place? Why did they come here and why can't they stay in their home nations?" She doesn't ask those questions because she is not interested in the questions or the possible answers to those questions. She just wants something easy and blameable. Like many people who don't think much do. They say, "I don't care. Why don't they disappear. I know. If I make the banks, the phone companies, the schools, the hospitals, etc. stop offering Spanish---and make it hard for them in the USA they might disappear." It never occurrs to them to think that the bank, phone companies---etc. NEED the client base to survive their capitalistic needs to expand and profit and that the multinational corporations are not nationalistic or localists, and certainly are not loyal to some provincial bozos without any information on Economics 101. These companies offer the Spanish option not out of warm, fuzzy welcoming feelings to these Latino immigrants. NO. They offer the option because of sheer demographics and economic impact statistics. It is all about their economic bottom line---the hard drivers of modern capitalism. Apparently Kaufman still thinks bozos like her run these systems that offer bilingual options for services. No, they don't. She needs to stop being so naive and ignorant---she is the problem and not the solution for sure.

Then they say they are Puerto Rican? I laugh at that. They are prostitutes to whoever they need to pander to--economically or socially so they may survive. If the only listeners she has are some ignorant immigrant bashers and those are her supporters she is really scraping the bottom of the barrel in every way. A supposed Puerto Rican (who forgot to speak Spanish a long time ago), who needs to pander to white trailer trash in order to survive. That is a sad case folks--a terribly sad case bordering on pathetic, and could be interpreted as the opening of a bad reality show series on cable tv (the late night version that might be entitled, "Fake Token Minorities Gone Bad!").

What do banks look at? Who are our future customers and who do we need to brainwash next so they can be addicted to all the things they need to be addicted to so we can survive economically? They analyze this chart and then they decide to put in a Spanish language option. Doesn't Kaufman get it? Lol. Quizas no. Quizas ella piensa que tiene un futuro con los blancos y los ignorantes de todos los grupos etnicos. Buena inversionista para la banca internacional no va ser la pobrecita.



There is the answer to why the banks are putting in the Spanish options.

[Stanley]

Suki:


Do you think words hurt people?

I could care less about what a shock jock says. Words are harmless, particularly if they do not communicate the truth. But, even if they do----they are nothing but words.

Of course, this form of discrimination hurts when it prevents people from advancing in a fair manner. Look at Jackie Robinson-----he heard every word in the book. However, the important thing is that someone gave him a chance. What is truly hurtful is the form of discriminatiuon that prevents people from moving up. The words are harmless if they do not prevent this climb to the top.

The other issue regarding the so-called "shock" is how people respond to the words. Unfortunately racist whites know which buttoms to push if they want to offend black people. In a sense they would not use hurtful langiage if it was not hurtful to the target.

The only way to end racism is with performance. Nowadays you don't find white people saying blacks cannot play sports.

BTW, did you know that two Puertoricans played baseball in the major leagues several years before Jackie Robinson did?