[Ads-l] RES: QOTY candidate

[David Daniel]

-----Mensagem original-----
De: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] Em nome de
Stanton McCandlish
Enviada em: quinta-feira, 10 de outubro de 2024 00:20
Para: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Assunto: Re: QOTY candidate



For a Trump QotY, I would think it'd have to be the one from the debate,
about immigrants eating our cats and dogs. It's the nuttiest thing a
politician has said since "Jewish space lasers".

It may be nutty, but it's not new. The following is from the New York Times,
August 9, 1982, Section A, page 14.
"Every so often a news report reminds us that sizable communities of Vietnam
War refugees now in America brought with them customs that war with American
law.
In 1980 Southeast Asian refugees were reported poaching and eating
squirrels, ducks and dogs in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park.
With their old world hunting and trapping skills, they were attempting to
carry on the way of life they had known, in a place they did not know.
In 1981, a similar problem confounded wildlife authorities in Utah.
Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian refugees were poaching deer, porcupines,
skunks, doves, woodpeckers, robins, baby birds, duck eggs and fish.
Officials translated state game laws into the refugee languages and even put
on slide shows, to no avail.
Now comes news from Seattle that Laotian Hmong refugees have been growing
opium poppies in their vegetable gardens. Someone asked the police to
identify the bright red flowers. Seattle police found more than 4000 Papaver
somniferum.
Vietnam remains with us, in odd and unpredicted ways."

The same page has a Times opinion piece about a senate bill to crack down on
illegal immigration and cap legal immigration. When I lived in San Francisco
in the late 80s the running joke/rumor was that park pigeons had been
disappearing ever since the arrival of Southeast Asian refugees. Anyway, US
politicians accusing immigrants of varied un-American behavior to rouse the
rabble against them goes back at least to the 19th century. 
DAD 

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