-By Warner Todd Huston
If you are looking for an eyerolling, maudlin Mother’s Day story, you don’t have to go any farther than the pages of the Washington Post to get a doosie. You see, Ashley Surdin of the WaPo gave us a tear-jerker of a tale about how the border fence between Mexico and the United States keeps Mothers from being with their children. Yes those mean Americans and their insistence on border security hurts Mommies. To that all I can say is, Oh brother!
In fact, the WaPo is even claiming that those poor Mexican Mothers can’t put their fingers through that nasty, rotten fence to touch the tears on their baby girl’s face because if they did they would be punished by the eeeevil U.S. government. And these poor, innocent Mommies are worried that things are getting worse because the U.S. is building “more fences.”
Again, I have to say “Oh, brother.” Are these people serious with this nonsense?
Look at this schmaltz…
You can walk to the U.S. border, Francelia Menchaca’s immigration lawyer advised her, but don’t put your fingers through its fence. It may hinder her immigration paperwork, the lawyer said.
But when, after a year apart, Menchaca’s mother arrived in her flowered straw hat to the border in Tijuana on Saturday and put her small, wrinkled hands up to the cast-iron gate, Menchaca reached out and touched them.
“Were you anxious to touch my hand?” Menchaca asked in Spanish. Tears stood on her lashes.
“Yes,” said her mother, Francisca Rodriguez, a resident of Tijuana, as her three grandchildren, including a 10-month-old girl she had never seen, strained to be near her.
What rot!
Then, after whining that the fence is only “just wide enough to slip a hand or a homemade taco through” the WaPo regales us on how things are getting worse for these poor Mothers.
Safe gathering spots such as these are few along this increasingly violent boundary, and Saturday may mark the last time families can use them. Amid escalating drug wars — which have recently erupted in bloody nighttime and daytime street shootouts, sending people into hiding in their homes — officials are fortifying the border.
Within the next few weeks, the U.S. government will build more fences in this beachside area. The idea anguishes visitors such as Rodriguez.
Interesting how the WaPo doesn’t mention that these drug wars are fought between Mexicans and all the violence is on the Mexican side of the border!
Now, I’m all for Motherhood, it must be pointed out. I feel that all Mothers everywhere should love and nurture their children. But, much as I think this story is all kleanex and BS, I have a solution for all the Mexican Mothers straining to touch the faces of their little girls that reside on the U.S. side of the border. Keep your kids in Mexico with you! See, I do want to keep families together.
Anyway, if anyone can divine the purpose of this WaPo story other than to make it out as if the U.S. is the bad guy for daring to want to keep their borders under control, I’d like to know what it is?
(Photo credit: Sarah I. Voisin, the Washington Post)
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston