"Crazy columnist" (OPPENHEIMER) responds to O'LOOFAH & INGRAHAM

However, Andres *does* get it wrong in calling O'LOOFAH an anchorman and faulting him and INGRAHAM on grounds of "journalism," a trade they are strangers to.

OPPENHEIMER has been called a CIA operative or corporate tool by a certain faction here at DU, so O'LOOFAH ought, if he were logical, to make an alliance with him instead of smearing him.


*******QUOTE*******

http://www.miamiherald.com/519/story/308401.html
THE OPPENHEIMER REPORT

Who's crazy, me or O'Reilly?

By ANDRES OPPENHEIMER
aoppenheimer@MiamiHerald.com

On Nov. 8, I had the distinction of being called ''a crazy columnist'' and a ''nut'' on prime time television by conservative Fox News anchorman Bill O'Reilly for a column I had written about the urgent need for a comprehensive solution to America's immigration crisis. ....

DANGEROUS TREND

First, the facts. In my Nov. 4 column, ''Angry migrant underclass might erupt in U.S.,'' I argued that the rapid escalation of the U.S. anti-immigration hysteria is a dangerous trend. It will create an underclass of nearly 13 million people who won't leave this country, who can't realistically be deported and who -- if deprived of a path to earned legalization -- will become increasingly frustrated and angry, I said. ....

`CRAZY COLUMNIST'

On Nov. 8, O'Reilly said in an on-air conversation with Fox News analyst Laura Ingraham that ``there is a crazy columnist in Miami, Miami Herald, who says that the Hispanics are going to rise up.''

Ingraham said I was ''intimating something akin, Bill, to a race war . . . It's insane.'' He responded, ''He's a nut. He's a nut, this guy.'' She added that I am part of ''a crazy far-left anarchist wing'' of the immigration debate. ....



But even more irresponsible is what O'Reilly and other cable television anti-immigration crusaders are doing every day: inciting Americans to rebel against ''illegal immigrants'' -- most of whom are Hispanic -- without offering any realistic solutions to America's immigration problem. ....



If we want to reduce illegal immigration, we will have to allow greater legal immigration and at the same time increase economic ties with Latin America to help our neighbors grow and reduce their people's pressures to emigrate.

Above all, we need to give the 1.8 million U.S.-raised undocumented children an earned path to legalization. Otherwise, we will be creating an underclass of social pariahs, many of whom will end up joining street gangs.

Are these fears crazy? Am I nuts? You decide.

********UNQUOTE*******

The riots in France in 2005 was over employment and opportunities for the immigrant youths there.

Anyone who says it can't happen here are crazy.

Things look pretty black when Andres Oppenheimer gets classified as "far-left anarchist." My impression of Andres Oppenheimer is that he's center-right, and right-wing enough to get most of DU's would-be revolutionaries riled up to label him a reactionary.

Despite O'Loofah's and Ingraham's protestations, I think that much of the voting public knows very well that the immigration "debate" is yet another example of the Far Right's standard divide-and-rule race-baiting, and that "illegal immigrant" is right-wing code-word for "anyone of Latin-American descent."

I am deeply concerned that whoever gets elected in 2008 will let NewsCorp/Faux Noise continue this sort of crap. What's really needed is some heavy-duty trust-busting in the media sector.

knowing what you're talking about, unlike *both* the wingnuts who call this man "far-left anarchist" and the "would-be revolutionaries who think he's a far-Right type. Your whole post is a gem, VogonGlory.