FOX News: Americans "keep marrying other species and ethnics"

[Iason Ouabache]

Did he really say "species"?  WTF?

[Cainad (dec.)]

HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA! Oh fuck, the look on Carlson's face as he's spluttering his babble out is priceless.

[AFK]

PROTIP: Do nevar listen to his radio show "Brian and The Judge", it will make you want to swerve into oncoming traffic. 

[Kai]

Not to mention this was about people who stay married are less likely to get Alzheimer's, having nothing at all to do with "species or ethnics".

Which means the idiot, thinking he had an opening for his idiocy, took his completely unrelated bigotry and spewed it out in this "picture unrelated" conversation. Even his like minded co-hosts were stunned at his stupid audacity.

Did he get fired?

[Verbal Mike]

It's nice to see racists talking about European countries as "ethnically pure" while on this side of the lake the racist rhetoric argues the opposite. Each in their own little demented world with its own little demented problems.

[Suu]

So wait...according to this logic, I was already fucked because of the fact I'm a Greco-Italian-Anglo-Irish-Japanese-Czech-American, but then I married a Puerto Rican, and then divorced a Puerto Rican, therefore, I probably already HAVE Alzheimers. Nice. Thank's Fox News for the prognosis!

[Corvidia]

My mother's family is of the "never forget NINA" strain of Irish American. Both my parents are FOX fans. I can't WAIT to tell her about this.

[Requia ☣]

NINA?

[Cain]

No Income, No Asset?  National Iraqi News Agency? 

Yeah, I know, its No Irish Need Apply.

[Jenne]

Across varying cultures that are "afraid" of losing their "ethnic identities," this is a common theme.  The Afghan "wedding" I was at (more of a reception, really, but Afghans have no real "ceremony," just one big damned party), a speech was made by the groom's father which basically translated into:

DAMN I'M GLAD MY SON MARRIED A FELLOW AFGHAN AND NOT SOME DAMNED AUSTRALIAN CHICK LIKE HE WAS TEMPTED TO DO!

Luckily, it was said 1) in Farsi, so there wasn't a hope of me understanding it until someone translated it to me and 2) was a good 10 mins after I had left the party to put my kids in the car since it was after 2 for fucks sake.

...and that man was sooo nice and gracious asking if I enjoyed myself.  And now everytime I look at him should I see him in the near future before we leave here, I will think, "And you think *I'm* a mistake, and therefore my KIDS are a mistake...well fuck you!"

Sad.

And yes, the "white, Anglo-Saxon" male of the US has been feeling this sort of "they're gonna getcha" from immigrants from a long, long time ago.  That it can persist in today's mass media is well...an unspeakable horrormirth of epic proportions, but like I said above...it's everywhere.

[Corvidia]

NINA?

Sorry. No Irish Need Apply, as Cain said.

My dad's said crap like that, Jenne. Except, it was masked as "we're going to loose our diversity if we keep marrying out!" Riiiight.

[Golden Applesauce]

NINA?

Sorry. No Irish Need Apply, as Cain said.

My dad's said crap like that, Jenne. Except, it was masked as "we're going to loose our diversity if we keep marrying out!" Riiiight.

It's another one of those statements that, while literally true, is total bullshit.

I've never really understood the whole idea of "heritage."  I'm half-Irish (and apparently technically a member of the Fitzpatrick clan) - both of my grandmothers were Irish, neither of my grandfathers - and... as far as I can tell the total sum of cultural heritage I've gotten from that is that my mom occasionally cooks dublin cottle, some kind of potatoe stew.  (but she's more likely to cook lasagna.)  I know a some Irish folk legends and fairy tales, but that's only because I like reading about mythology in general (heck, I know more Egyptian mythology than Irish mythology.)

From one of my grandfathers my family tree goes far back enough for some of my ancestors (or maybe just blood relatives?  dunno, not big on geneology) to have fought in the American Civil War.  I discovered while eating dinner with one of my moms cousins last year.  HE was big on geneology and Heritage and was trying to fill me in on everything that's been done by a relative in the past two hundred years.  Apparently his grandmother or somebody was labouring under the impression that the guy in question was a Confederate scumbag, and they just recently uncovered that the soldier was in fact a Union soldier, and therefore brave and honorable.  Everybody in that cluster of the family was now able to take pride in this - that because they shared a miniscule amount of DNA (on top of the stuff that everybody shares) with one soldier more than with the soldiers on the other (losing) end of the musket.  I asked him why it mattered, and he told me that it meant I was therefore going to be a brave, patriotic citizen (and probably the same for himself, I think.)  His identity was partially based on the deeds of an ancient relative and was changed when he learned which side of the war said relative fought on.

I'm all for cultural diversity and cultural mixing (I'm living in the same dorm as all the foreign exchange students next term) but the concept of Heritage, that you have a claim to a chunk of history and culture just by virtue of having been born to someone with the same claim, doesn't make any sense to me.

[Corvidia]

There might be a little more to your Irish culture than you think, actually, aside from food. That's more or less what I thought until I was reading up on Irish speaking habits (for lack of a better term). There are no words that translate directly as "yes" or "no," and the way they talk reflects this. Also how you swear will tell, supposedly. Excessive use of "fuck" and use of God's (or his family) while swearing are apparently very Irish. Even if your family's been in the US for a while, those ways of talking can still show up in the way you talk, given the way the Irish tended to stick together.

Anyway, yeah, it's almost bizarre the way some people cling to heritage like that. This is something else my dad does. He clings to the idea that our ancestors are the descendants of a rather fierce tribe from Scythia--we happen to share the last name but that's it. He's convinced we are and it's apparently integral to his pride or something, since he flipped out when I corrected him.

[Verbal Mike]

Modern Racism: protecting homogeneity in the name of diversity.

[Jenne]

That is one nice thing about coming from mutts--we can't claim anything but our family name.  But you end up getting the same thing nevertheless.

I have to say my dad made some damned fine arguments against me marrying into my husband's family based on the fact that since we came from a completely different set of cultures, this would cause extra tension and a lot of strain on a relationship that was already going to be difficult since marriage is pretty tough no matter what for a lot of people.

Different base religions, cultural practices, different languages...that does add up.

BUT and BUT...I don't know ANY marriage that DOESN'T have these things in subsets anyway.  So to say that two people from two completely different backgrounds, religions or cultures shouldn't hook up and have a life together/have kids together...it's as close-minded as you can get.  There are nextdoor neighbors who get divorced all over every damned country.  Hell, in Afghanistan, they marry their first cousins all the time thinking this keeps it even FURTHER into the family...and damn, you don't WANT to scratch even the surface of what's wrong in their microcultures vis a vis in-law treatment, what happens to the kids when there's too many or there's custody battles, and how many wives it takes before the guy's figuring he's got it "made in the shade."