Editor's note: Michael Ackley's columns may include satire and parody based on current events, and thus mix fact with fiction. He assumes informed readers will be able to tell which is which.
Oddly, a scholarly study from a most unlikely source – Harvard University – has thrown cold water on the long dominant academic cant that "in diversity is strength." The study by political scientist Robert Putnam indicates that increased diversity in a community reduces citizen involvement in matters of mutual interest.
Perhaps even more oddly, I find myself in agreement with the cant – to a point and with a difference. That difference is illustrated, hilariously, in Leo Rosten's "The Education of Hyman Kaplan," a book my mother read to my sister and me when we were kids.
The story, with Mr. Kaplan at its center, focuses on a New York City English class for recent immigrants. If you have not read it, do so for pleasure and for the insights it offers into human relations, particularly the relationships among ethnic groups.
In the passage I recall most clearly an Irish-American cop hurls an ethnic slur at Kaplan, who responds by calling the cop "meek!" an appellation I did not understand until my Mom explained it was dialect for "mick," a pejorative for the Irish. Anyway, in the story, out of the mutually hurt feelings comes understanding – not the lawsuit that likely would eventuate today.
Rosten's comic work illustrates the strength diversity offers through the interaction of Kaplan and his classmates – Russian, Greek, Orthodox, Jewish – and it illustrates the bond that they shared, a bond that is constantly ignored if not openly denigrated on our college campuses. That is the bond of yearning to be American.
Those classmates – like the immigrant from Greece who believed most English words derived from Greek – were proud of their ethnicity, but they wanted to assimilate those characteristics that would make them like their fellow citizens. They wanted to understand and absorb the laws and customs unique to the United States of America.
When today's diversity mongers – including so many academics – proclaim that "in diversity is strength," the subtext is "as long as that diversity is non-American." For them, to be an American is to be a racist, an imperialist, an exploiter of the downtrodden. So deep is their hatred of their own country, that they cheer and encourage non-assimilation and ghetto-ization. This is nowhere more evident than in their so-called "pro-immigrant" rhetoric.
Poor Putnam! Because he bravely adhered to principles of true scholarship, he probably will endure some ostracism by professors nationwide. They will sneer publicly at his work while privately congratulating themselves on the success of their efforts to belittle and erode all that is American.
Such compassion: The other shoe has dropped in Telemundo's conflict-of-interest "investigation" of reporter/anchorwoman Mirthala Salinas. You will recall that this giant of broadcast journalism was "having a relationship" with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa while she was reporting on his official activities.
Telemundo station KVEA, Channel 52, has determined that the relationship was, indeed, a conflict, and that Salinas should be punished – with a two-month suspension.
Mind you, Salinas not only covered the mayor's civic activities, she cooly read the news on air that Villaraigosa had separated from his wife. It took Telemundo three weeks to determine that this was a "flagrant violation" of conflict-of-interest rules.
We can't speak for the journalistic community as a whole, but I can tell you that at the newspapers where I spent my reporting career, a "relationship" with a subject of our reportage would have been evaluated in about three minutes.
And it wouldn't have led to a two month suspension. It would have led to a concise message from the editor: "You're fired."
This month's Gross Cynicism Award goes to those politicians who waited only a day to ascribe the Minneapolis bridge collapse to spending on the Iraq war. Democratic politicians – including Minneapolis' own congressional representative – bemoaned the nation's decrepit infrastructure while mouthing the words "We've spent $500 billion in Iraq." Their party's new motto: "Never miss an opportunity to look small."
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