Jeb Bush’s attempts to speak up louder than those who to some limited extent do have a voice (regarding immigration) have suffered a serious blow.
At a recent dialogue conference about how to make the GOP more inclusive, an immigration activist, Penelope D Solanas, told Bush and other figures in attendance the story of her life as an irregular migrant.
After recounting some of her difficulties over the course of some years and decades, Penelope concluded:
So, this is my life. And many have similar stories. This is how we live!
A reporter then asked Bush how he felt about Penelope’s story.
However, the ensuing dialogue between Jeb and the reporter was less than pleasing.
***
What do you think about this, Jeb?
I, I, I feel really, really strongly about this person and their experiences… oh God. Oh, oh God, oh my frickin’ gosh, just let me tell you this right now:
NO HUMAN, uh, NO HUMANO ALIEN ES, HIJO DE PUTA!!!
!…WTF?!!!
Huh? Oh no, no, no, you got it all wrong, you have to take it as a compliment!
You ACTUALLY kidding me? You just said: ‘as an alien, you are no human… son of a bitch!’ I mean…
How…
Oh, how the F*** IS THAT A COMPLIMENT, JEB?
No, no, um seriously, yeah, you, you don’t understand. I’m actually an educated person.
I, I mean I was trying to speak Latin, because that’s what all genuinely, non-contrived semi-intellectual types have to do when we want to kind of help people understand what we mean, but not really…
Um, I mean, not fully.
No, no, all this means, it merely mean that no actual human alien can ever be technically, um genuinely, alien to me…
…
Uh… did you by any chance actually mean ‘humani nihil a me alienum puto?’
Uh? Oh yeah, yeah, that’s it, um, ‘humani nihil a me alienum puto!’ Yes, yes, the words were on the tip of my tongue.
It’s not what you said, though.
Yeah, well I was PRETTY DAMN CLOSE, OK? I mean, IT’S JUST SEMANTICS, ISN’T IT!!!
No. It’s not just semantics! You’ve got a whole clusterf*** of dodgy semantics, syntactics, lexicalities…
And worst of all, even the pragmatics are completely messed up, because you supposedly wanted to reach across the aisle, but your stupid jerk-off attempt to do so has ended up with your hand halfway up your ass!
Pragmatics? Now, there’s a word, I haven’t heard for a while. Hmm… I like the sound of that one.
…
Well, within reason.
***
Rumours have it that since this blunder, Bush’s support among Latino individuals has plummeted (if that’s not a rather generous word to describe pretty-damn-near-zero to pretty-damn-zero)…
Although he has made a slight gain in the polling in a couple of other critical demographics.
Still, let’s see how his forthcoming condescension junkets with African-American, Native American and Chinese-American individuals pan out.