With swine flu now hitting the United States, I figured it was only a matter of time before someone started to blame Mexican people. But this is an impressive turn-around, even for Michael Savage and Neil Boortz. Plus they get the “OMG terrorizm!” aspect in there too:
Neil Boortz claims that Mexico doesn’t have a CDC, so from the perspective of someone who wants to commit an act of bioterrorism against U.S. citizens, “What better way to sneak a virus into this country than to give it to Mexicans?”
At least one better way comes immediately to mind.
One would think that if terrorists were going to release a virus with the intent of killing Americans, they would do it on, say, the New York City subway system and not on a Mexican pig farm. But there are no lengths to which these guys won’t go in order to convince us that we’re constantly on high Terror Alert in the face of threats from any passing brown people.
It’s phenomenal how easily these guys can fit anything — including a potential global health pandemic — into a one-size-fits-all racist narrative about Mexicans being dirty and sneaky mules. It’s phenomenal that they can get away with it even in a situation like this, where the virus was spread outside of Mexico in large part because of tourists. And it’s particularly appalling in its victim-blaming — is it so easy to forget that 150 people have died in Mexico, and thousands more are living in fear?
You can practically hear the chorus of “They’re giving us swine flu!” right behind “They’re taking our jerbs!”
Unfortunately, it isn’t just a handful of jerks who happen to have radio shows who are perpetuating this kind of racism under the guise of simply wanting to “secure our borders” — it is, to use Liss’ words, rank and file bigotry. But congrats, GOP, for your increasing irrelevancy.