Art vs. Life

After attending the Air and Sea Show yesterday I got a ride home and ended up falling asleep on the couch around 5 p.m. When I awoke it was around midnight and AMC (I think) was airing the movie Gangs of New York. At the same time over on CNN Anderson Cooper was throwing his two cents into the immigration debate with his many hour long special 24-Hours on the Border, a look at life in southwests border towns and the law enforcement folk who occupy them. It, like the movie I was flipping back and forth from, both focused on gang violence involving immigrants.
It was a strange juxtaposition to have them on at the same time. In Cooper's special there was talk about being a native verses being an immigrant, and in the Scorsese flick the main character Bill the Butcher is constantly rambling on about what it takes to be a native and how great it is to be a native, and paralleling the Minutemen, that immigrants are a scourge to be fought.
This reminded me of the recent, "Day without a Mexican," rallies that took place throughout the country.
I took a few minutes off work and walked over to the protest outside the Federal Building on Broward Blvd near Las Olas. While the two incidents looked totally different (I didn't see any bludgeoning objects or cleavers being tossed about on Broward Blvd., at least not at 3 p.m. when I was there), there was a similar energy from the protesters downtown, and the Dead Rabbits in the movie. Both just wanted to stay here and be left alone.



While FOX or CNN post headlines such as, "Immigrants trying to cripple our economy," or "Immigrants launch nationwide boycotts," it doesn't really seem to be the case. A true nationwide boycott would be very interesting to see go down.
As you can probably tell by my rambling, I don't really have strong feelings about the immigration issue one way or another. I'm just getting a lot of amusement out of watching how both sides of the issue overreact and turn a two-hundred year old American talking point into this election years soundbite. I'm guessing that this will soon give way to talk of gay marriage and abortion when November gets closer. Oh, and lets not forget gas prices.





Never forget the price of gas.

I usually won't be posting anything about national issues because they really don't interest me as much as what's going on in South Florida. The only reason I brought up immigration in general was so that I could show off a few of the pics I took at the protest. This blog will be very photo heavy in the future, and it will focus on entertainment and local events. It was just the combination of being a somnabulic sunburned victim of middle of the night movie/news absurdity.