I love these guys.
Need a break from all the anti-immigrant hate-mongers out there, the Terry Andersons, Lou Dobbses, Michael Savages and so on who make their livings spewing forth venom and bile onto the poorest, meekest members of our society? Then check out this episode of the Penn and Teller Showtime program Bullshit!, which ravages the nativist movement through sarcasm and merciless, funny-as-shit derision. It begins with Penn Jillette in an inflatable dinghy rowing up to Raymond Teller dressed as the Statue of Liberty, while Jillette recites Emma Lazarus' famous poem "The New Colossus," but from the perspective of your average Archie Bunker-like hoser: "Give me your tired? Your poor? Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free...?" The skit ends with Jillette going off:
What kind of fucking pinko liberal commie foreign bastard country are we trying to run here? We don't want tired, or poor. And hopeless tempest-tossed bastards? All immigrants want to do is blow up our buildings, take away our jobs and suck up our welfare. Fuck that!
Teller opens the tablet in his green hands, which reads, "Fuck you, that's all Bullshit!" And the episode begins. Early on P&T interview the nearly cross-eyed, shlubby Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies, who tells them modern American society just can't absorb all of these new arrivals. Jillette bitch-slaps him, using a telling map of the United States:
Mark, have you ever seen America? Dude, it's huge. This map shows population density. And where the best strip clubs are. Look at all that open space? Don't we have enough room for everyone and more?
Of course, they head down to the border to fuck with Chris Simcox of MCDC (Minuteman Civil Defense Corps) a little bit, watching all these old farts sitting in their chairs as they look out for illegals. (Don't these people have TVs to help them wait for death?) They chat with Simcox about the fence he's building. And they cite government efforts to build 700 miles of fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border as a huge boondoggle, which won't bother those who come here legally, then allow their visas to lapse.
"According to the Pew Hispanic Center, in 2006, nearly the same number of illegals evaded the southern Border Patrol as entered the U.S. legally," Jillette states, adding, "They get a work, student or travel visa, and then overstay their welcome."
Thus, all this hysteria about building a barrier of some kind to keep out the brown tide is -- you guessed it -- bullshit. Regarding the 700 miles the government's paying for, Jillette mocks it, "700 miles, non-contiguous? The U.S. Mexico border is 2000 miles. It'll have bigger holes than a Tijuana donkey show."
Heh. Good line. P&T then hire a group of illegal day-laborers, who take about eight hours to build a small stretch of wall on the border. Guess how long it takes for them to bust through it? About three to five minutes. What a joke! P&T even discuss how this isn't the first time a U.S.-Mexico wall has been built by illegal immigrants: "The border wall in San Diego was built by the Golden State Fence Co., and they paid almost $5 million in fines for using illegal immigrants to build it."
The episode first aired on April 26, 2007, but I figure a lot of you may not have seen it, so here are links to the YouTubed version, which comes in three parts. Enjoy. I've seen it twice, and it's still fucking hi-larious the second time around.
