Those offended by the images all-too-often are the problem

I couldn’t help but be reminded of an Absolut vodka advertisement from a couple of years ago when I learned of the cover of the latest issue of The New Yorker magazine.

That ad was one that was used to sell the product in Mexico – and it was one that depicted the “fantasy” of a Mexico that still included as a northernmost region the area that has since become the southwestern states of the United States.

IT TICKED OFF the ideologues that anyone would want to even remember the fact that the southwestern region of our nation was once a part of Mexico – and that there are parts of our nation to whom the Spanish were the original European settlers (and NOT the English).

My guess is that those same ideologues are the ones most offended by the latest New Yorker magazine cover. It depicts people dressed in “Puritan” garb slipping through a hole in a wire fence erected in the southwestern desert.

Those pilgrims can be seen dodging cactus just before, and immediately after, slipping through the “border” fence. And one Pilgrim woman appears to be caught in that fence.

Which plays into the line of logic used by some more stringent Latino activists who will joke that the Pilgrims were the original “illegal aliens.”

PERSONALLY, I THINK the magazine cover is kind of corny. On the potentially tacky and offensive level, it doesn’t really compare to the cover The New Yorker published several years ago when Easter Sunday and the IRS tax filing deadline technically both came on the same day.

The Easter Bunny being crucified on an IRS 1040 tax form is just garish on so many levels.

Also, I’m not one of those who thinks there is a perfect parallel between pilgrims and those people now trying to come to this country from Latin American nations – even though the bureaucratic mess that is our federal immigration policy currently tries to prevent (unsuccessfully) many of them from even thinking of coming here.

That is because the people who already were on this continent that we now think of as North America weren’t about to impose “laws” meant to make people “illegal” just because they wanted to come here.

IF ANYTHING, ONE can argue that the reason these ideologues are so fearful of newcomers is because they remember how badly they behaved when their ancestors were the “newcomers,” and they fear everybody else will behave as badly as they would.

Perhaps those tribes native to the Americas would have been justified in adopting such an attitude about “legal” and “illegal” people. They could have said that no one else should think of coming to “their” country unless they were exactly like them.

Because the whole concept of “legal” and “illegal” is such an artificial distinction. “Legal” is whomever we say it is. Those of us with any sense realize how ridiculous the ideological rhetoric has become.

Which is the point all too often missed by those people who argue they’re not bigots because they support “legal” immigration, then start spouting tacky theories about who should be “legal.”

THOSE PEOPLE ARE the ones who are going to be offended by this latest bit of artwork – while the rest of us will either chuckle or shrug our shoulders.

Because we’ll realize that by next week, most of these covers will be sitting in recycling bins for so many of the magazine’s readers. New covers come and go each and every week – just like advertisements.

But some of the nonsense attitudes that those images stir up manage to linger around for far too long.

  -30-