FOX News regular Michelle Dallacroche says she's shutting down MAIA due to lack of funds.
I owe nativist firebrand Michelle Dallacroce a wiener. And I mean that in the sweetest way possible.
Ever since the utra-right urban cougar sent out a surprising mass e-mail October 28 announcing that her Phoenix-based Mothers Against Illegal Aliens will be taking a powder indefinitely, I've been promising to take her to Johnnie's Chicago Red Hots on Thomas Road in Central Phoenix. Dallacroce is from Chicago originally, and since I often sing the praises of Johnnie's Chi-town-style dogs to her, she's hankerin' to wrap her gob around one. I've been meaning to oblige her, I just haven't had the time.
For the record, I find Dallacroce's views on new arrivals to this country to be utterly vile. For example, her tirades against "anchor babies" -- children of undocumented parents born on U.S. soil, known by the rest of us as simply "American citizens." Her blather about how Mexican immigrants are "invading" the country and taking it over. How our standard of living's being depressed by all the brown folk migrating from Latin America, yadda-yadda-yadda.
Nevertheless, on a personal level, Dallacroce has a healthy sense of humor and does not take herself as seriously as you might expect. The first time I met her in the flesh, as it were, was at a nativist rally for convicted Border Patrol agents Ignacio Ramos and Jose Compean. I was reporting on the gathering, when she approached me and told me I had to leave. I'm a known quantity in nativist circles, and am generally reviled by those circles' occupants, so no one at the wing-ding was happy I was there. But when she was told by the organizer of the event that I had his permission to be present, she and I embarked on a long, contentious argument on the issue of immigration that continues to this day.
I think she likes the fact that our acquaintance has pissed off many in the local nativist community no end. (She's no fan of the Rusty Childress-Buffalo Rick Galeener-United for a Sovereign America crowd, and they hate her right back.) Though she's happily married, I often kid her that we should run away together just to befuddle nativists and liberals alike. She's the kind of lady who can laugh about such an idea and crack jokes about it. When I called her shortly after receiving her signing off notice, she harrangued me because I hadn't spoken with her in a while.
"So that's why you're calling me!" she excalimed, full of fake outrage. "Just because you think there's a story. I cannot believe you. Yeah, I'm quitting because you stopped talking to me. This is the only way I knew you'd call me, if I quit. Unbelievable."
Hey, I'm a whore for the truth, so sue me. I asked for the real reason she was pulling the plug on her operation.
"I had no donations coming in," complained Dallacroce. "And times are tough. We're just having to buckle down on our money, and I can't use any of my own right now."
Did it really cost that much to run MAIA from her home? Apparently so, according to her.
"We need functioning money," explained Dallacroce. "For whenever I need to drive or to travel...For my cell phone bill. Those were all the things I've been having to fork over myself in order to do what I've been doing."
Her confession is eyebrow-raising considering the number of times she's been on Fox News, and various other TV and radio outlets. Dallacroce garners publicity so easily, it's like she brews the stuff in her backyard. I once saw her cut up her Republican Party card on Neil Cavuto's Fox show. And she's duked it out with Geraldo Rivera on the issue of immigration. Once, when MADD sent her a cease and desist letter over MAIA's name, she effectively turned the tables on MADD, using the matter to gain more press for herself.
In fact, Dallacroce's an expert in knowing exactly what's going to rile the opposition. At one local demonstration a while back, a pregnant woman got so pissed at her that she shoved Dallacroce, and ended up getting cited for it.
Dallacroce's inflammatory rhetoric has earned her rebuke from the Anti-Defamation League and the Southern Poverty Law Center. But like any savvy ideologiocal warrior, Dallacroce's thrived on the controversy she engendered.
Which makes it all the odder that she's hanging up the bullhorn and leashing her mighty tongue, at least for now.
"I'm looking at it as an induced coma," Dallacroce told me concerning her shuttered operation. "It could die, or it could come back to life."
You know, like the national Republican Party.
Dallacroche also admitted that she wants to be "taken more seriously." And that she was sick of the "backstabbing" in nativists circles. She's feuded in the past with none other than CNN Hispanic-hater Lou Dobbs, and when it comes to United for a Sovereign America, the most vicious anti-immigrant hate group in the Valley, its members despise Dallacroce more than any open borders liberal ever could.
"It's like sitting in a room with kindergarteners, who keep fighting and fighting and fighting," she says of the organization, whose members once kicked her out of a meeting following a disagreement. "After a while, you're like, `This is crazy.' In fact, kindergarteners don't even fight that much, you know."
So what's she doing with all of her newfound free time? Lately, she's been calling up FBI offices in DC, asking that they investigate allegations that Barack Obama was not born on American soil, and therefore, should not be allowed to take the oath of office. Though this b.s. has been thouroughly debunked by FactCheck.org, and the state of Hawaii has recently confirmed that Obama's original birth certificate is on file with them, there are loads of loonies out there who are still not convinced. And probably never will be.
"I just want them to prove for once and for all that Obama is an American-born citizen," insisted Dallacroce.
Michelle, Michelle, didn't you just tell me you wanted to be taken seriously?
Actually, FactCheck.org has a copy of Obama's birth certificate online, with its raised seal and date stamp. But, hey, we all know documents can be forged right? And even though Obama cleaned McCain's clock 365 electoral votes to 162, maybe there's some way the game can still get called on a technicality.
Dallacroce promised to prove Obama's a faker to me once and for all. You know, over a red hot one of these days, at Johnnie's...
