Who's the Huckster?

Mark Hyman chastises “intellectual hucksters” for using the phrase “undocumented immigrants” rather than “illegal aliens.” Just for the record, Mark, the “huckster” who pointed out the problem with using “illegal” to describe a person rather than an action is Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize:

You shall know that no one is illegal. It is a contradiction in itself. People can be beautiful or even more beautiful. They may be just or unjust. But illegal? How can someone be illegal?

Of course, we know that “illegal aliens” is positively warm and fuzzy compared with what Hyman has said about such people in the past, including his equation of them with terrorists and slandering them as shiftless and lazy. I guess Hyman forgot that male undocumented immigrants have a higher employment rate than the general American population and that one of the very first soldiers to die in the invasion of Iraq was also a man who came to America with a dream of a better life but not the proper paperwork.

Hyman also goes for laughs by inventing wacky euphemisms he feels are parallel to “undocumented immigrant.” He then invites us to come up with some of our own and send them in to him.

Okay, let’s start with the blurb on the Newscentral.tv website describing “The Point”:

“Commentary” = one-sided, unprofessional, editorializing

“stimulate public discourse” = throw red meat to the radical right wing by slandering anyone who disagrees with the Bush administration or other far-right Republicans

“we air select comments” = we air several comments that do nothing but say they agree with our editorial position, and perhaps one or two that don’t, but which have been carefully chosen so as to sound unreasonable and off the subject

“homogenized, bland, politically correct news” = objective, professionally reported, high-quality journalism

“stimulates critical thinking” = demonstrates the unapologetic use of crass propagandistic rhetoric

“encourages viewers to get involved” = encourages viewers to lose their lunch

And that’s The Counterpoint.