Dear Mr. Ebert,
First and foremost, I want to wish you all the best in your fight against cancer. I am praying for your full recovery and many more years of you doing what you enjoy.
I read of the controversy you generated on twitter. I also read your clarification “Hey! Don’t call ME a dirty Commie!” on your Chicago Sun Times web site. I accepted you invitation to the thought experiments, and I think I learned more about your position; specifically the problems with it.
In your clarification you equated the wearing of an American flag during Cinco de Mayo, (in America mind you) with:
1. wearing Union Jack t-shirts in Boston at the St. Patrick's Day parade.
2. wearing a Joseph Stalin t-shirt in Chicago on Pulaski Day.
3. wearing a “My granddad was at the Rape of Nanking and all I got was this lousy t-shirt." t-shirt in San Francisco's Chinatown parade.
4. wearing a Confederate flag t-shirt In Chicago for the Bud Billiken Parade.
5. wearing the hammer and sickle on the Fourth of July at a NASCAR race.
Did you really intend to suggest this? Do you actually think that wearing an American flag in America can be equated to a “Rape of Nanking” t-shirt? Do you truly expect to persuade anyone with such rhetoric or are you just playing to anti-American bigots?
It seems to me that you are very quick to judge the intentions and thoughts of students who wore American flags. Why were you not as quick to negatively assess the thoughts and intentions of any Hispanic students who were angered by the display of an American flag?
Quite a number of years ago I worked with an outstanding individual. He was Intelligent and thoughtful, a tall good looking guy; a family man. It was my enjoyable privilege to be his coworker. He also happened to be black. I never gave it much thought until Martin Luther King’s birthday came around. He told me he was being pressured by other black professionals. It was not a day off where we worked but they were planning on skipping work that day. His reply spoke volumes. He told them;”You don’t understand. What Dr. King worked for, stood for and died for were the principles that made it possible for me to BE HERE in the first place. Why would I celebrate that by using it as an excuse to avoid a day of work?”
So I ask you: what does it say about the attitude and intentions of those Hispanic students if they bristle at the very symbol of the country that has provided them the opportunity to excel? My friend could have focused on the possibility that management harbored racist attitudes regarding MLK day. He didn’t. He chose to celebrate the freedom that Dr. Kings struggle provided by continuing to work hard. Yet you and other thought police focus on what you have decided are negative intentions, saying that the American symbol of freedom that is for African Americans, Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, indeed for all Americans is offensive. Shame on you.
There is nothing wrong with celebrating Cinco de Mayo. But there is something very wrong with the idea that symbols of the very country that provides such freedom need to be obscured.
I urge you to rethink your untenable position.
A communist, good hygiene or bad, is still a communist...
Ebert: You and four friends are in Boston and attend the St. Patrick's Day parade wearing matching Union Jack t-shirts, which of course you have every right to do.
Me: You and your friends are in Ireland on St. Pat's day, flying a Union Jack. That'd deserve a butt-kicking.
Ebert: You and your pals are in Chicago on Pulaski Day, and wear a t-shirt with a photograph of Joseph Stalin, which is your right.
Me: You and your pals are in Warsaw on the anniversary of the Katyn Massacre with Stalin posters. That'd deserve a buttkicking!
Ebert: In San Francisco's Chinatown for the parade, your crowd wears t-shirts saying "My granddad was at the Rape of Nanking and all I got was this lousy t-shirt."
Me: In Bejing for the Chinese New Year parade, you wear t-shirts saying "My granddad was at the Rape of Nanking and all I got was this lousy t-shirt." You would end up on a Chinese gulag or hospital on life support (being harvest for your internal organs).
The truth of the matter is, this is AMERICA. There is no such thing as a inconsiderate day to wave or wear an American flag in AMERICA. If these kids had shown up at the Cinco de Mayo celebrations in Puebla, Mexico waving American or French flags, they'd deserve the butt-whooping coming to them but they are in their own country, wearing their own flag, which they have the right to do anytime they want.
When you are in the United States, and get insulted by someone displaying the American flag, it is time for you to go elsewhere. It doesn’t matter what day it is, even if it is a semi-joke of a Mexican holiday that is intended to encourage drinking beer. Would anyone be offended by American flags on Saint Patrick’s Day? That would be an appropriate comparison. The very fact that these Mexican-American students were offended shows that the left, commies or whatever you prefer, have gone to far in driving wedges between ethnic and racial groups, and the left will be responsible for the bloodshed that will inevitably come. May they not win that battle when it happens.
Obviously Ebert has no idea what kind of surnames they had ~ every single one of them was arguably Hispanic!
We've been over that issue the other night and I think my oldest reference on one of the names went all the way back to Magolis, the Celtic ally of Hannibal in the Punic Wars, although "Gallicia/Galicia" certainly has an origin around 700 BC.
Anyway, Ebert's put his words to paper/pixels without bothering to examine the story. His reaction is the sort that rises straight out of someone's most basic bigotries. He has no idea there are Americans who could be "white", or "black", or "brown", or whatever.
I think most of the comments are missing a pretty important aspect of Ebert’s comments.
Each of his examples of offensive T-shirt wearing is a classic example of weating a symbol of an actual enemy of the particular ethnic group to the wrong event.
IOW, he is just assuming the American flag, and by extension Americans, are enemies of the Mexican people and heritage.
I’d like to see some evidence to prove that particular point. Sure, the US and Mexico fought a war 150 years ago, but that doesn’t mean we’re forever enemies. We fought a war against UK not too much earlier than that, and we’ve been very good friends for a long time now. 60 years ago we fought a war with Germany and Japan, and we’re sort of allies today.
As someone else said, which days would he ban Mexican students in Mexico from having their flags on? July 4th I guess? Ok Mexicans, you can’t have any Mexican flags on during July 4th down there, sorry.
Very eloquent...thank you!
I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume he bathes...which would just make him a commie.
Good for you, Roger, for bringing some light to this. You'd never know any of that to listen to the VERY COMMUNIST hispanic activists who get all the air time.
That said; it's not right to call you a dirty commie. You seem like a pretty clean cut commie to me, Rog.
The commie fool rolls around in red paint and expects not to get redder.
Oh, and thanks for the fashion pointer, guys. I'll add American flags to my suitpack whenever I go off to visit Liberaldom.
“five white California kids”
I believe he is incorrect.
If the shoe fits, stick it up your...