Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Politics English Only, The Sequel: Three Amigos
Posted by Jack Silverman on Tue, Sep 23, 2008 at 1:00 PM
"Another English First post on the same day?" you may be asking. But a charter amendment proposal this colossally stupid demands rigorous ridicule.
As the City Paper's Nate Rau reported early this morning, Metro Council member Eric Crafton planned to submit his 5,000 petition signatures to the Metro Clerk's office today—far more signatures than the 2,475 he needs to to put his English First charter amendment proposal on the ballot for a special election. You may recall that Crafton's attempt to put the proposal on the Nov. 7 general election ballot failed because it didn't clear the required two-year waiting period since the last referendum vote.
To stand up to the level-headed opponents of Crafton's bill, a group is planning a protest beginning at 6:30 tomorrow morning in front of Jimmy Kelly's Steakhouse, where Mayor Karl Dean and Gov. Phil Bredesen will attend a breakfast fundraiser for state Sen. Joe Haynes. Dean, Bredesen and Haynes are all critics of the proposal.
The protest group's website casts the three politicians as the Three Amigos—get it? "Amigos"? That's Mexican...or Spanish...or whatever they call that language—and features this line: "Evidently, the 'Three Amigos' must not care how much of our tax dollars they waste." That's particularly ironic, since the special election that English First proponents are demanding will cost taxpayers about $350,000 to accomplish...um...we'll get back to you when we figure it out.
Oh, and these fierce defenders of our mother tongue not only spelled Crafton's name wrong ("Grafton"—talk about a Freudian slip), but they did it in underlined, oversized type, as this screenshot shows:
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