For the love of God or whatever you find Holy, Paul — YOU’RE RIGHT!

RIGHT, I TELL YOU, PAUL! RIGHT!

I MEAN IT, PAUL! REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, REALLY, RIGHT!

PLEASE GO AWAY — PLEASE!

I’LL SEND YOU MONEY! I’LL WASH YOUR CAR! IF YOU DON’T HAVE A CAR, I’LL BUY YOU ONE!

JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!

HELP!

I’M BEING STALKED BY A MADMAN!

Have you ever been to a Chinatown, in New York or anywhere else? If you have I am stupified by this statement:

“Their statement represented to me the idea that they didn t need for the signs to be in Chinese, so why give the impression that they did? If, indeed, Chinatowns are all voluntarily (and I question the  voluntary  your little photo exhibit didn t confirm that, one way or the other), massively bilingual urban spaces, who says that that makes Chinese people reluctant to speak English?”

First of all, “their statement” is a statement that only you have any knowledge of as you have yet to actually point out where you read it. Second, I never said that Chinese immigrants are reluctant to speak English. I merely pointed out that I have never, ever seen any evidence to suggest that Chinese residents would object to bilingual street signs or subway signs. Indeed, why would they object to these things when every store in every Chinatown I have ever seen has either bilingual signage or signage entirely in Chinese characters. Unless you’re telling me that the city of New York forced these people to include Chinese characters in the signs of their private businesses. Your description of “their statement” simply doesn’t make any sense.

Third: “Chinese people in business speak some of the language of everyone they do business with. If there is a Chinese restaurant near the UN building, the owners probably speak languages and dialects, you I have never heard of. And it is to that, and to nothing else, that I was referring.”

That’s all you were referring to when? Where? When did you ever even bring up the question of spoken languages and dialects? Again, who ever said that Chinese immigrants don’t speak English ever, assuming they even know it? This whole statement of your is a total non-sequitor.

Fourth: Let’s get this question of assumptions. You wrote this:

“Did you know that in NYC, they put the street names for the Subway stops in Chinatown in Chinese, and the community said  Take them down  we re not in China!

No I did not know this Frank and I still don’t know it. But the point is that you never bothered to explain what you meant by this statement but isn’t it obvious that you think this is a good thing, an admirable turn of events, giving you the benefit of the doubt that it actually happened? It also seems patently obvious to me, based on your previous posts, that you think Hispanic immigrants haven’t been taking this kind of admirable attitude. Or am I wrong? Naturally, you think I am wrong because I’m trying to “read your mind.” Unfortunately, that’s really I can do because it’s clear you cannot be honest about what it is you believe. You write:

“What purpose in the world could be served by my thinking that Chinese immigrants are  good immigrants, and Mexican immigrants are  bad immigrants? I m not saying that it s true, but if I did believe that it were true, surely there is more than one possible reason for that belief.”

Well, Frank. Let’s set aside purposes and reasons for a moment and just tell us, yes or no, whether you do believe just such a thing. If you don’t beleive it to be true then please explain the purpose of your original post because you haven’t offered a single reason for why you posted it or why you thought it needed to be acknowledged. In other words, you claim I have misunderstood what you meant, but what is it, for god sakes, did you actually mean? That Chinese restaurant owners speak English when they serve English speaking customers? Really? That’s what you were referring to when you wrote this:

“Did you know that in NYC, they put the street names for the Subway stops in Chinatown in Chinese, and the community said  Take them down  we re not in China!

Well damn, Frank. If I’m confused there is some justification for it, don’t you think?

The assumption is that the Chinesse are the  good kind of assimilating immigrant… blah, blah, blah, yadda, yadda, yadda…

“When you make an assumption, you make an ass out of you and sumption”

There was no such assumption. Their statement represented to me the idea that they didn’t need for the signs to be in Chinese, so why give the impression that they did? If, indeed, Chinatowns are all voluntarily (and I question the “voluntary” — your little photo exhibit didn’t confirm that, one way or the other), massively bilingual urban spaces, who says that that makes Chinese people reluctant to speak English?

I would feel the same way about signs in Italian or Welsh, mainly because I don’t speak either of those languages, but also because I speak English. When I was in Europe, hardly anything was simultaneouly translated into English for me. It was challenging, but not impossible, for me to get around and get things done.

The fact that you refuse to source your initial claim about NY Chinatown is not a fact [BTW, you just don’t give up, do you, Paul?]… I couldn’t find it, because I couldn’t find it. I believed it , because I know Chinese people. Chinese people in business speak some of the language of everyone they do business with. If there is a Chinese restaurant near the UN building, the owners probably speak languages and dialects, you I have never heard of. And it is to that, and to nothing else, that I was referring.

My father grew up in a household where he was forbidden to speak English at home. Do you think he grew up not speaking English? Of course not.

Stop beating the drum on my “reactionary fear.” That is just “parrot talk” for “I’ll tell you what you’re thinking, evidence and your own statements to the contrary.”

“… the only possible explanation I can think of… ”

That usage is peculiar to liberals — or at least the liberals on this blog. In all my years, I have never heard anyone say, “You might be saying A, and justifying it by saying B, but the only possible explanation I can think of is C.

Without passing judgement on you, what immediately comes to my mind is, “Are you that limited in your imagination, that a person’s statement could only have one explanation?” Never mind your ability to think of another explanation, or why you fail to accept the person’s justification as valid.

What purpose in the world could be served by my thinking that Chinese immigrants are “good” immigrants, and Mexican immigrants are “bad” immigrants? I’m not saying that it’s true, but if I did believe that it were true, surely there is more than one possible reason for that belief. Even if there were irrefutable, direct evidence that my belief were false, would I be “compelled” to hold that belief only — only — because I “have a vested interest in denying both history and the present to rationalize [my] racist paranoia about present day immigrant groups, legal or illegal.”

I don’t know about you, but that just simply makes no sense to me.

So, I don’t believe what you think I believe, I didn’t do what you think I did, so I couldn’t possibly have done it for the reasons you imagined.

Paul, are you done?

Paul: The vicious, narcissistic, sociopath, with no imagination

Here’s the bottom line. The right has a vested interest in promoting some immigrant groups as models of assimilation in order to paint other immigrant groups as dangerously aberrant. How else can one read this statement:

“Did you know that in NYC, they put the street names for the Subway stops in Chinatown in Chinese, and the community said  Take them down  we re not in China!

The assumption is that the Chinesse are the “good” kind of assimilating immigrant who only communicate in English and assert their Americanness over their past heritage in order to better assimilate and adapt themselves to American culture. You and other conservatives position Hispanics in contrast to this model as an immigrant group who refuses to speak English, asserts their native identity over Americanness and rejects assimilation in favor of separatism.

In order to hold such a set of views one has to entirely erase both historical fact and present reality. To stick with the Chinatown example, Chinatowns in SF, LA and NY and elsewhere formed in response to the often violent racism that met the earliest Chinese immigrants to this country and lasted for generations. They are separate, immigrant enclaves founded as much as a defensive reaction against an unwelcoming culture but also as a matter of necessity because of racial discrimination in housing and employment. Over 150 years after the founding of the San Francisco Chinatown it remains a distinct neighborhood, dominated by Chinese signage, stores and speakers where a new immigrant can live and work without much necessary contact with the larger surrounding country. At the same time, this Chinatown and others are integrally connected to the larger culture BECAUSE of their separateness as tourist sites. Tourists visit SFs Chinatown, and LAs and NYs, to experience “authentic” Chinese immigrant culture. In other words, the very immigrant separateness that so many conservatives fear has itself, in the case of the Chinatowns all over the country, itself been appropriated by the larger culture for its own ends.

There’s a section of downtown LA called Olivera Street. It is a preserved section of the oldest neighborhood in Los Angeles back when it belonged to Spain (Mexico claimed it in 1821 with the US Army arriving in 1847). It functions in contemporary Los Angeles for its Hispanic heritage the way LAs Chinatown, just a few blocks northwest, fucntions for LAs history of Chinese immigrants, although Olvera Street is no longer a residential neighborhood, it is entirely a tourist attraction.

Miles around Olvera Street in all directions you will find hundreds of thriving, vibrant Hispanic dominated neighborhoods where you will find first generation immigrants living alongside the great great great grandchildren of Hispanic immigrants and native born Hispanic Americans from generations ago. You will find illegal immigrants living alongside legal immigrants and native-born Mexican Americans. Each group, each generation is assimilated to varying degrees but they are nonetheless, assimilating. I guarantee you that if you visit any Los Angeles High School you will find more Mexican and Latino kids who hope the Dodgers malke it to the World Series than care if Mexico makes it into the World Cup. At the same time, the Los Angeles Coliseum is home not only to USC football but regular sold out soccer matches involving teams and leagues I’ve never heard of. In my daily life in this city I hear Spanish spoken everyday, literally. (The workers who are presently converting my apartment building into condos are most likely all illegal, they speak Spanish all day and they bust their asses 6 days a week for a landlord who’s probably paying them peanuts without healthcare.) Am I worried that “my” culture is in danger, that my personal identity as an American is being threatened? No. Not in the slightest.

The picture you paint of some borg like wave of brown people that will overhwhelm “American culture” simply does not match the reality I see everyday in which most newer immigrants, legal or illegal, make due the best they can, while second, third and so on generation immigrants are assimilating into American culture at a steady pace just as your so-called “model minorities” did over the course of generations.

You and other conservatives who want to paint these people as a threat to our culture are in league with the same racist reactionaries who attacked Chinese immigrants a century ago, the same Chinese immigrants you now want to hold out as “model” minorities in a bid to rationalize your present racist paranoia.

Cultures are a shared set of experiences and forms of expression but the only constant of culture is that it culture always in a state of change and contestation. Your reactionary fear is a part of that process but it is still reactionary fear. You simply fear change and you map your fears onto whatever group of people is close to hand. Today its illegal Hispanic immigrants. Tomorrow, they’ll be the model minority and you’ll be bashing some other group of immigrants or whoever appears the most threatening to you.

The fact that you refuse to source your initial claim about NY Chinatown was indicative to me of the irrationality that drives your whole response to this issue. You read or heard somehwere something that fit the good/bad immigrant mindset you have constructed for yourself and you clung to it like a life preserver: Here’s another bit of evidence to rationalize my beliefs. Like I said, you may indeed have read this somewhere but until you can provide the source I will maintain my doubt because that information flies in the face of the self-evident reality of every Chinatown I have ever been to: They are all voluntarily, massively bilingual urban spaces, if not totally dominated by a foreign language. Indeed, as tourist sites, the dominance of the Chinese language is one of their selling points, it is their raison d’etre as tourist destinations.

This is why your initial statement rang false to me and why the only possible explanation I can think of for why someone would try to assert it as fact is because they have a vested interest in denying both history and the present to rationalize their racist paranoia about present day immigrant groups, legal or illegal.

You are letting frame control your life, because he has the nerve to oppose your political views.

So now opposing my political views takes nerve? You crack me up!

Frameone: Now the taciturn narcissistic sociopath.

But not so tired that you can’t throw up four more lengthy pointless tirades. Sigh.

You were going to demand perfection from others; you were going to show them that Paul accepts nothing but perfection (how did you put it? “I expect no quarter, no quarter will be given.” Remember, Paul?

That was the first of many signs that followed that something was seriously wrong with frameone — so “bold” he posts with a fake name. So “bold” that when people began bugging him on a personal level, as he had done so many times to others, he withdrew his website from his profile. So “bold” that when he demands an answer from someone, he taunts them: “So, you got nothing?” “So I assume my answer is correct?’ But when he gets the answer he so tenaciously pursued, he just slinks away with nothing to say.

I’m not a “mystery”, Paul, I’m a person who’s tired of your crap. You love this shit, and you don’t even understand what I’m saying to you, and that’s not mysterious — it’s pathetic.

You can’t even repeat what I’ve said, without distorting it, and insulting me: “you re in graduate school but you re bored by the classes (that makes a lot of sense)” which, of course, is not what I said: “sometimes the classes are mind numbingly boring.”

But that’s so typical of you that you have becoming mind - numbingly boring. And the saddest — the saddest — thing is that you can t even consider that there may be something wrong with you.

I’m expecting a one word answer from you, Paul — introspection is by no means your long suit — another symptom of the sociopathic narcissism you wear like a custom tailored cloak. Freud once said that “No man is truly mature until his father dies.” Someday you’ll realize what a fool you’ve made of yourself. Then the healing might - just might - begin. Narcissism is a hard nut to crack therapeutically (as evidence, right now, you’re probably thinking, “What an idiot this guy is!”. Right, Paul) Sociopaths aren’t even cured by prison, or the threat of execution — see Caryl Chessman, Ted Bundy).

Your life sucks, Paul. And everyone knows it but you.

All that matters to you is that you are right (or perhaps, that I’m wrong — it’s hard to tell).

You keep coming back to these things: Look, Frank, I’m right, see? Look, Frank, you’re wrong, see? Read that again, Frank… I’ve found another link, Frank…

If I were a profiler, I’d say you had (maybe even still have) an extraordinarily demanding male figure in your life. A biological father, stepfather, grandfather, that’s not important. He set very high standards for (perhaps only in your view); standards so high you never felt you had met them. No matter what you tried to do, it didn’t seem to be good enough. Of course, there was a conflict there: This person was central to your life, but they just weren’t cutting you a break. It had to hurt, didn’t it, Paul?

So the locals objected to that? Even though their street signs are also bilingual and most, if not all, the stores in NYs Chinatown feature Chinese writing?

You’ve gone on at length here and given all manner of reasons as to why you can’t be bothered to source your claim above that the local Chinese residents objected to all this bilingualism. But if you aren’t willing to back up your claim, why make it in the first place?

I’m sorry you’ve got troubles Frank but your personal life isn’t really relevant to all this is it? Why you felt the need to drag it out into public view is just as baffling as why you go around making claims that you then refuse to substantiate or support in any way. I’m not saying you’re wrong that the residents objected to all this bilingualism, but it just doesn’t make any sense to me since the Chinatowns in LA, SF and New York are dominated by Chinese signage and people speaking Chinese just about everywhere and they’ve been like that for decades.

So afterall this I know you have two teenage sons, you’re getting a divorce, you’re in a 12 step program, you’re in graduate school but you’re bored by the classes (that makes a lot of sense), you do an internet radio show and that this is Oliver Willis s weblog which is also not the Hague. I know all this but I still have no way of verifying your initial claim because “you don’t want to play games.” You truly are a mystery Frank.

“if it ain’t on the Internet, it ain’t real,” said Mr. Malcolm in a comment he posted on Oliver Willis’ Weblog.

Thousands of librarians are now hunting for Mr. Malcolm. It is believed that they have equipped themselves with torches, axe handles, pitchforks, and rope.

Mr. Malcolm could not be reached for further comment. A spokesperson said he had a previous engagement, pulling the wings off of flies at the John George Psychiatric Pavilion in San Leandro, CA.