Driving While Brown, Once More (Updated) 1

Rachel Maddow looks at the persons behind Arizona’s “I Know One When I See One” law. Many of them have long histories in the racial and ethnic bigotry and hatred biz.

(Early in the video, the Governor confesses that she does not know what an illegal immigrant looks like. I guess someone is going to sprinkle pixie dust on the Arizona constabulary so they can magically know one when they see one.)

Maddow opens the video by summarizing how Republicans, while caterwauling about immigration for years, have also prevented Congress from taking up the issue, even to the point of turning on George W. Bush when he tried to address it.

Refusing to address a problem festers fosters further demagoguery.

The discussion of the persons behind the bill starts about three minutes in (partial transcript here).

Brendan is boycotting companies based in Arizona. Follow the link for a list of big outfits headquartered there (Warning: He’s upset. Language).

Shaun Mullen (where I found the link to the video) isn’t sure whether a boycott will do any good:

The UFW (United Farm Workers’ California lettuce–ed.) boycott worked, while I have little doubt that a boycott of anything having to do with Arizona will be ineffectual even if big players like Mexico, the state’s largest trading partner, get on board. The neo-Nazis, supremacists and nativists have gotten their way, and there will be no turning back.

But that is not the point, so I will not be flying into Phoenix to see an old friend this summer and making damned sure that I don’t buy anything made in Arizona at the stupormarket.

It comes as no surprise that the movers and shakers behind the law are as vile as they come. Nor that the state government has the chutzpah to ask Washington to help fund the 15,000 officers tasked with hunting down people simply because they have brown skins.

But he’s in, because symbolism matters.

So am I.

(Ahhhh, they want Washington to supply the pixie dust. Frankly, I think that producing pixie dust would be a horrible overreach of federal power under the terms of good witch/bad witch clause of the United States Constitution.)

Addendum:

Anonymous Liberal, who is a lawyer, analyzes the pixie dust.