Getting Creamed
Honors — of a sort — for Mexican President Felipe Calderon.
When I was a pie-eyed innocent, I watched way too much "Captain Kangaroo" and "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood." Their worlds were pretty ideal, with boatloads of honesty, openness, fairness and cardigan sweaters. Everybody was either a friend or a stranger who was eager to be a friend. Of course, with age come the narrowed eyelids of experience, and our youthful innocence hardens and crystallizes on the outside to protect the soft inner core. To this day, I'm not sure why some people act the way they do, but it was summed up pretty succinctly recently on a television show I watched. One of the actors put forth the proposition that people are "bastard-covered bastards with a bastard filling."
I still think that most people are good-hearted, considerate carbon units, inclined to be fair and charitable. Some people, though, seem to excel at being bastards, and making life tough for those non-bastards among us. To recognize the efforts of these overachieving bastards, I would like to take a few moments to launch what I hope will become an annual tradition. With respect to all existing libel and slander laws, welcome to Lightcap's first annual Creamy Bastard Awards!
You might expect the nominees to consist almost entirely of politicians, and you would be close to correct. Politicians excel at being creamy bastards, even though some do it unconsciously. Regardless, in an act that bravely shows an international flair for this fledgling but august award, our first annual Creamy Bastard goes to none other than Mexican President Felipe Calderon. "Who is he," you may ask, "and what makes this foreign head-of-state so deliciously creamy?"
President Calderon is the product of a representative form of government that has been broken for so long, nobody can remember how it's supposed to work or where they left the toolbox to fix it. Normally, Mexico's dysfunctional form of government is contained south of the Rio Grande. No longer content to just sabotage his own nation's affairs, however, President Calderon recently commented that America's failure to pass the ramshackle immigration bill is "a grave error."
While this bill is a subject of much controversy within the borders of our country, I'm not sure how much voice Calderon should have in the process. He runs a nation with 15 percent inflation, where the annual gross national income per capita is about $7,300. Recent estimates put a full 10 percent of his fellow citizens within our borders, so he kind of has a vested interest in having a bunch of his constituents working abroad and shipping back money. Money comes in without having to pay for additional social services or infrastructure. That's good economic development!
It takes a genuine International Creamy Bastard to comment negatively on American immigration policy when you consider that Mexico's primary industries are, in descending order, oil, foreign remittance and tourism. As hydrocarbon-hungry Americans, we buy bucket-loads of Mexican oil; we go south to visit exotic Mexican locales to get good tequila and dysentery; and, legally or not, we create foreign employment opportunities for one out of 10 Mexican citizens. If the US were to deport every illegal Mexican worker, Calderon would have another 10 million unemployed people stomping around, and Mexico's second-largest industry would disappear overnight.
To put the creamy filling in his bastard-coated outer layer, Calderon made his displeasure with America known to the press while standing next to Daniel Ortega, the night-walking zombie pinko leader of Nicaragua. That sends more mixed messages than the United States Postal Service. Is Calderon a socialist-leaning fiscal conservative dedicated to clean industry? Is he a hard-line nationalist that wants to import American dollars while proclaiming independence? Is he a posturing, wing-tipped buffoon with a split-personality disorder and a penchant for wearing women's undergarments? We may never know.
The creaminess doesn't stop there, amigo. Last March, Mexico's presidente met with the American presidente for a soiree on immigration. In a speech obviously inspired by some tainted seafood and a case of lukewarm Tecate, Calderon noted that the US is rich in capital and Mexico is rich in labor. Therefore, he reasoned, both countries need to work to improve Mexico's economy to lessen Mexican desire to seek work in the US. Presidente Bush, never exactly being the sharpest knife in the drawer, didn't immediately respond with the obvious, "What the hell are you talking about?" It is a new age in national leadership when a head of state can propose the idea that one nation is responsible for fixing another nation's domestic problems. In that spirit, I'd like to ask Canada to fix our health-care system immediately.
I'm a big fan of Mexico and its people. The nation has so much history and so much potential, and I believe that things are getting better for them, despite some of the most consistently obtuse political leadership in the free world. With President Calderon, I think the Mexican nation has really hitched its wagon to a star. Mexico's economy is a big problem, and Calderon is trying to encourage small business in his nation, as well as creating a more secure environment for foreign investment. But with an estimated 1.2 million new workers annually entering a Mexican labor market that can't create enough jobs, it seems Calderon is content to make emigration his economic policy.
Let's have a big round of applause for Presidente Calderon, the Creamy
Bastard award winner and a politician not afraid to sell his country to
America, one paycheck at a time!
Henry Lightcap breathlessly awaits his
own awards
at his ranchero in Las Cruces.