Palin “Family Guy” Upset - Political or Personal?

I know most everyone has heard about the Family Guy depiction of a Down Syndrome girl as Sarah Palin’s daughter. Sarah and her oldest daughter took offense to the depiction and felt it was in poor taste. I think it was an opportunity missed by the former Governor.

In my opinion, the Palin family has a right to be upset with the personal nature of the comparison. I believe that children of public figures should be off limits to the political games played by all parts of the media machine. If we can’t have a level of decency around our children’s privacy then we just degrade into a bunch of name calling school yard bullies. I believe we need to strive to be smarter and classier as a culture.

On the other hand, I think Sarah Palin missed a great opportunity to define the public perception of special needs children, while separating it from some political agenda. The representation of this girl with Down Syndrome as socially functional, well mannered, and attractive; was in my opinion an opportunity for former Gov. Palin to denounce some of the stigmas that many people still have around this birth syndrome. Instead, the Palin’s chose to focus on the personal nature of the representation. This was one of those opportunities to turn lemons into lemonade, but it seems that Palin’s handlers aren’t doing their job helping her spin the media’s schoolyard shenanigans into useful fodder to promote an agenda that benefits us all.

They Think We’re Stupid!

On Tuesday February 9th, the U.S. Government reported that the illegal immigration population has fallen for the second straight year. They claim that the number fell by 1 million or 8% between 2007 and 2009. The decline, to 10.8 million people in January 2009 from 11.8 million in 2007 and 11.6 million in 2008, coincides with the national economic downturn.

They must be joking?
Do we look that dumb?
Do they think we’re stupid?

How do you go about counting illegal immigrants with any level of accuracy? Aren’t they hiding? I could have told you there were probably less, but to throw out numbers like this is just plain ridiculous. What do you do, go through the state and federal correctional facilities, and ask for citizen-ship and then multiple by 100? Do you count the number of anchor babies and then multiple by 20?

Don’t get me wrong, I get statistical analysis well enough to understand that you can extrapolate the whole from a sampling of the parts, but this is nothing more than a wild guess. I’ll give you one guess who was responsible for this research? That’s right Homeland Security. Janet Napolitano does it once again. Okay Janet, here is the big question of the day, “If you can count them, how come you can’t catch them and deport them?” Maybe it’s time to stop the acting the role and really do your job. Uphold the law, illegal means illegal, and if you can’t or won’t then get out of the way.



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