My Favorite Men List (FML) is admittedly eclectic. As such, with each member name I reveal, I receive an extraordinary amount of complaint email.
It ranges from "Yeah, he's alright but have you considered so and so" to "You should have your head examined."
But there seems to be a consensus among VDARE.com readers that I have very bad taste in men.
For example, there is my column Mainstream Media Content Warning, in which I discussed my fondness for George Will.
The criticism continues to this day!
And I have something to say in response: I am hereby issuing a moratorium on the use of certain expressions when describing me.
Dim-witted, thick and slower than a three-toed sloth are out. Frankly, it offends the sloth community.
P.S. I love George Will. Yes, his position on immigration is appalling but the man knows his baseball, alright? And he's cute.
Speaking of popular conservatives befuddled by immigration…
Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard and former Chief of Staff to Vice President Quayle, was not on the Favorite Men List (FML) until recently.
But then, he debuted in the Top Ten.
While delivering a speech on foreign affairs at private Quaker college in Indiana last week, Kristol was smacked in the face with a pie.
Yes, a pie.
Some student or leftist radical in training disapproved of either the speech or Kristol's presence and decided to hurl their dessert as a protest.
Displaying a level of poise and dignity that left me gaping in awe, Kristol simply wiped the pie from his face and said "Just let me finish this point."
Immediately after gaping, I Googled him to ascertain marital status. Married, three kids…sigh.
Here is my problem: I love conservative media men (and women, but in a slightly different way and by slightly different I mean as gorgeous as Ann Coulter is I wouldn't want to, say, marry her).
But, for some reason, many of them have decided to jump off the rational train when it comes immigration policy.
Bill Kristol's Weekly Standard resembles a newsletter from the consular services division of the Mexican embassy.
Two examples:
Basically, the sub-head reveals the gist of the article, but for those who need assistance it's this: give illegal aliens a legal status and you solve the illegal immigration problem.
From the same school of thought as give wads of cash to bank robbers and say bye-bye to grand larceny…
And that's all I have to say about that…
Now look at what my beloved Bill O'Reilly had to say about the current illegal alien population on his March 22 2005 Factor Flash segment:
"Any President who cracked down on illegal aliens would be demonized and accused of bigotry. Politicians know this and are frightened. The Factor has done all it can to report on this problem honestly. I favor a guest worker program, understand the country needs new blood, and feel diversity is a strength."
New blood? Diversity a strength?
Yuck!
Now, O'Reilly has posted an online petition to President Bush urging him to secure our borders. He has been an outspoken advocate of immigration reform…for the most part.
But one aspect of the Bush Administration's wild "Temporary Worker" proposal (which O'Reilly supports, see above) will reward illegal aliens by granting them effective amnesty.
This puts them ahead of many would-be legal immigrants who obeyed our laws and filed the appropriate applications.
My question to Bill O: how can he justify that?
How do we defend ourselves against accusations of what is undeniably preferential treatment for a single class of people e.g. Mexican illegals?
Answer: we can't. Bush's proposal is unfair (even apart from mad, in bringing in yet more immigrants) and I am saddened to see O'Reilly defending it.
Finally, we have Rush Limbaugh.
Seriously, is there any one name more synonymous with conservative principles than Rush Limbaugh?
(I don't care if you like him. I am asking a specific question here, so put aside your little feelings and answer the question objectively.)
The answer is no. However, it is only recently that Limbaugh (Rushie Baby as I call him and to which I am sure he does not object) really started commenting on immigration.
The Immigration Problem from the Rush Limbaugh Show 1/31/05
CALLER: …I would say 70% of the labor in harvesting our food we gotta eat every day, comes from illegal aliens, and if we don't have a guest worker program, we're going to run out of food grown in California.
RUSH: Well, what makes an illegal immigrant far more employable to you than a legal immigrant?
Then they moved on to the solution part of the call.
RUSH: …both parties are afraid to tackle it, for fear of offending.
CALLER: No. Tom Ridge and George Bush are both willing to tackle it. Don't say they're not.
RUSH: …they want to turn illegals into legal with a stroke of the pen and with a program. But to become a legal immigrant in this country you've got to go through a process, and these people are not, and we're going to just waive that process and we're doing it on the basis, "Ah, so many here we couldn't take backward steps on it anyway."
The next part of the call restored my faith in my dearly-loved Rush. He said:
"Okay, even if you have an amnesty program, at some point, whether you call it that or not—guest worker program, whatever you want to call it—at some point we're going to have to start enforcing all of this so that the immigrants that do get in here are legal, even the ones that end up working for you."
Here's the bottom line: I don't understand how "conservative" commentators can support illegal immigration or Bush's Amnesty/Guest Worker Plan and still be considered conservative.
Immigration is drawing a line in the sand. Unfortunately, when once the line separated liberals from conservatives, it is now carving the genuine conservatives away from the counterfeit.
As for the FML, Rush maintains his slot in the upper echelon. Kristol, O'Reilly and Will may face disciplinary action resulting in a probation period and possible removal.
But I still love them.
Bryanna Bevens [email her] is a political consultant and former chief of staff for a member of the California State Assembly.
