A few days ago Newt Gingrich expressed the true feelings of the right and the Republican party by decrying Spanish as ghetto language. This is apparently part of the GOP strategy to completely marginalize an hispanic support for their party - Mitt Romney helped too by flattering Fidel Castro.
Gingrich got rightly blasted for it and now has issued a full-blown backpedal on it.
This past weekend I made some comments that I recognize caused a bad feeling within the Latino community. My word choice was poor but my point was simply this: In the United States it is important to speak the English language well in order to advance and have success.
It wasn’t poor word choice, Newt. It was your true feelings. You and the Republican party hate hispanics, hate anyone who isn’t a rich, conservative white guy. Just admit this, it’s in your heart.
UPDATE:
Even better, Gingrich gave his apology in poorly pronounced Spanish. LOL. LOL.
I can’t tell which is more ironic…
…that a man who used to be Speaker seems to have trouble speaking…
…or that a man who touts the use of the English language as a tool for success seems to not understand how to phrase something so as not to sound like a xenophobic buffoon.
Oliver, your a little off though, Newt loves Hispanics, when they’re working in meat plants for below minimum wages and helping break unions, mowing lawns, picking berries, etc…
I think Gingrich was saying that learning English would be a “path to prosperity”, and that Spanish would be a language that locks people in a ghetto.
I can understand your, and the Chicago Tribune’s confusion — you both have in common a visceral hatred for Gingrich.
“…you both have in common a visceral hatred for Gingrich”
…and apparently immigrants as well, if the liberals are going to continue to tell people that english isn’t necessary to “succeed” in america.
Nobody’s saying that, but we also aren’t saying spanish is a ghetto language. By your idiotic reasoning, there’s no reason for Gingrich to apologize, and yet there he is… apologizing.
Oliver, unfortunately, stupidity reigns, especially amongst people like yourself. It’s because of such stupidity that a man had to apologize for using the word ‘niggardly’ after people he used it in front of were too stupid to understand it.
This is no difference. Gingrich did not call Spanish a ‘ghetto language’ so stop presenting it that way. He was taking issue with bilingual education which has been proven time and time again to be a complete failure.
Stop being such a dipshit with these kinds of things. You’re a smart guy, so stop stooping to the level of the left wing knuckle draggers.
“My word choice was poor” is hardly an admission that he called Spanish a ghetto language.
There is an area in my home town called “little Mexico”, where more than two - thirds of all the Hispanics live (over 2,000). About 99% of the stores and businesses are owned and run by Spanish speaking people who were born in Latin America.
It is, for all intents and purposes, a language ghetto.
I agree with Newt. I think it is important to speak English if you want to get ahead in this country. My town is the same as Frank’s. We have a “little Mexico” and “the Polish Ghetto” (which has been losing its identity steadily over the last 40 years).
It’s great to have the cultural resources and community for support and heritage pride, but for jobs and education, you need English.
Of course you need english, I’m one of the first who will say thats part of the deal immigrants enter into when they come here. But Newt wanted to throw out some red meat and it came back to bite him.
If bilingual education is such a failure, why do so many people from other countries speak at least passable English in addition to their own language fluently?
Gingrich isn’t espousing any sort of anti-Hispanic sentiment, he’s just espousing the worst traits of American nationalism–”I don’t have to learn a damn thing about you. Everybody must come to me, and fit within my own narrow perspectives.”
My god, it used to be a mark of pride when you knew more than one language.
midderpidge: I find it hard to believe you agree with Newt. Am I missing the sarcasm?
SpiderJ: This is not about bilingual education. This is about whether you can be successful in this country without speaking English well. To the best of my knowledge, bilingual education is about Spanish and English.
So, it does not explain why people from foreign countries speak passable English.
I live on the edge of “Little Mexico” and believe me, many people don’t speak passable English.
It shouldn’t be too long before Uncle Newt will be singing the national anthem in Spanish with Bush.
This is not about bilingual education.
Frank, you might want to note that with Jay, who I was responding to…
He was taking issue with bilingual education which has been proven time and time again to be a complete failure.
For as dumbfounding as it is to have any immigrants refusing to learn English (and I don’t really think it’s as widespread a problem as all that), it seems equally as silly to claim, as Newt has in the past, that bilingualism “hurts the fabric of our nation” and that allowing it to grow is “very dangerous.”
Really? If you can speak both Spanish and English, that hurts the fabric of our nation?
If bilingual education is such a failure, why do so many people from other countries speak at least passable English in addition to their own language fluently?
For one thing, it’s taught in school.
Someone on another blog mentioned that if newt is going for historical accuracy in equating “ghettos” with european jewish ghettos, he is still wrong, in that the majority of people who lived in the ghettos were more likely to speak more than one language than natives.
I can attest to the fact that there is a difference in the Hispanic community. Their reluctance to learn English — understandable, by the way — is enabled by two major factors: One, they have a greater tendency to travel back and forth to home; and, second, they are accommodated in ways that prior immigrants (and even current immigrants from, say, Russia,or eastern Europe) never were — bilingual announcements and phone trees, full time interpreters in the Court, Spanish TV networks, etc., etc.
The issue of bilingual education is very complicated, and requires some knowledge of education as it is practiced in the United States — which most of you don’t have.
I minored in education, but that was over 10 years ago, and I’d have to go look it up.
yea great, if they can speak more than one language, and one of those languages includes english.
Newt’s point, as you all well know, is that not speaking english is a road to poverty in america.
Now if Ollie and his yellow journalists want to try to obscure that message..fine…but stop pretending liberals care about the downtrodden then, as you have put rank partisianship above the welfare of our newest citizens…
Look, if Newt can’t figure out how to craft his message carefully, then maybe he’s not the best advocate for English as a roadway to success.
And if they gave College credit for misrepresentation, Oliver (and his minions) would have a Ph.D by now.