Go back to Mexico, honors students! And take your little dog, Toto, too...
I could envision Arizona Republic columnist Laurie Roberts turning over Jews to the Gestapo. This is assuming she jumped in the way-back machine and time-traveled to Hitler's Germany. After all, that was the law back then, right? Anti-Semitism was the official policy of the state, and that meant rounding up the Juden, children and all, even if you thought the kids should get a break. So, sieg heil, baby, and pass the schnitzel.
I can see her informing on escaped slaves on their way via the underground railroad to the North -- if she pulled an H.G. Wells and landed in the antebellum South. And had she been in Montgomery, Alabama during the '50s, I can see her telling Rosa Parks to move on down to the back of the bus. Hey, slavery and segregation, they were the laws of the land at one time, too. The overwhelming majority of the Southern populace agreed with both institutions, in each respective era, as bedrocks of society.
See, Roberts is the Repugnant's in-house bigot, a pasty-faced anti-immigrant hausfrau whose shtick is usually reporting on the DUI accident of the week -- assuming it involves a drunk, undocumented Mexican. She also writes in support of denying bail to illegals (which, despite it being voted in by the AZ electorate, sounds friggin' unconstitutional to me). And she regularly kisses the keisters of red-meat racists like state Rep. Russell Pearce. She's the Rep's potato-cheeked Wicked Bitch of the West, their middlebrow Queen of Mean, with a heart like a lump of West Virginia coal.
Today's Roberts column is a perfect example: ASU scholarships snub Prop. 300's intent, wherein Roberts argues that private ASU scholarship monies given to undocumented scholars violates Prop 300's ban on those same kids getting in-state tuition. Huh? Prop 300 is, of course, a racist statute. I don't care if "seven out of 10 voters decreed" it to be the law, as Roberts states. Here, as in other cases, the law is an ass. But no matter how asinine, the law does not restrict students denied in-state tuition from receiving private scholarships.
Not that Roberts is one to let a few troublesome facts get in the way of her bigoted blarney. She tells us State Treasurer Dean Martin is going to call for an audit of these private donations. Heck, if I buy one of the kids lunch, maybe Roberts could sick marblehead Martin on me as well. Martin has no say over what private donors do, and his suggestion that ASU Prez Michael Crow may somehow have to be investigated blatantly oversteps the purview of his office. Crow shoud tell Martin to go eff himself. As for Roberts, allow me to tell her where to go. Pay close attention, Laurie. I'm flipping you off as hard as I can.
Roberts, as in other columns, leaves herself an intellectual escape hatch, an ass-covering paragraph she can point to if anyone calls her out as a shill for xenophobes. Here it is:
Personally, I've always thought we ought to give students who are here illegally a break, on the theory that they came as little kids and had no say in the matter. But what I think - or what Crow thinks - doesn't really matter.
If what you think doesn't matter, Laurie, then what the fuck is your byline and your soccer-momish mug doing on page one of the Rep's Valley & State section? Passages like the one above may salve what little of your conscience still exists, but they don't fool anyone who reads your column and notes the repetitive, steady drumbeat of bigotry. How the undocumented are treated in this state and in our nation is the number one human rights issue of our time. One day you may be just as ashamed of your stance, as those who defended apartheid in South Africa are of theirs now.
Want more verbal bitch-slappin' of Roberts? Read: Is the Repugnant's Laurie Roberts an anti-Mexican bigot?
