Tuesday, April 03, 2007

Boro Park Shudders

A few days ago, Newt Gingrich spoke out against bilingual education by saying that people should "learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto." Most people assumed he was referring to Spanish, as that is the primary case of bilingual education in America, and controversy ensued.

Now Gingrich has tried to clarify. The statement did not mention or "refer to Spanish." So, what did he mean? Gingrich goes on:
Now, I'll let you pick -- frankly, ghetto, historically had referred as a Jewish reference originally. I did not mention Hispanics, and I certainly do not want anybody who speaks Spanish to think I'm in any way less than respectful of Spanish or any other language spoken by people who come to the United States.

Ah, it's Hebrew that is the language of the ghetto! We better dispatch some red-blooded Americans to integrate Kiryas Joel, pronto. Otherwise they'll never learn the language of prosperity, and Jews will be stuck in their American ghettos for all eternity!

2 comments:

leetucker said...

No no, you miss the point. If we teach Hispanic students bilingually, they'll end up like those unfortunate ghetto Jews, i.e. economically successful and well-integrated into society. Surely we wouldn't want that. ;-)

Anonymous said...

Come on guys.

Let's stop taking things out of context. "Ghetto" by definition is an area where people of an ethnic group are seperated from the rest of a community. This is clearly not an attack on any language, unless you want to spin it that way. This is the idea that by learning English, anyone who speaks any different language can integrate themselves into society more easily. You can disagree with that point all you want, but I sure would like it if, just for this election, we actually listened to what people have to say and caring about their hopes for America instead of nit-picking politics and rhetoric. Okay kids?