Now, isn’t that just special?

I thought this was a joke at first, then I pulled up the paper and there it is:

He breaks the law by his very presence. He hustles to do hard work many Americans won’t, at least not at the low wages he accepts. The American consumer economy depends on him. America as we have known it for generations may not survive him.

We can’t seem to live with him and his family, and if we can live without him, nobody’s figured out how. He’s the Illegal Immigrant, and he’s the 2007 Dallas Morning News Texan of the Year – for better or for worse. We can’t seem to live with him and his family, and if we can live without him, nobody’s figured out how.

He’s the Illegal Immigrant, and he’s the 2007 Dallas Morning News Texan of the Year – for better or for worse. Given the public mood, there seems to be little middle ground in debate over illegal immigrants. Spectacular fights over their presence broke out across Texas this year, adding to the national pressure cooker as only Texas can.

They’ve apparently taken a page out of Time Magazine’s act and for the sake of controversy have made a spectacularly stupid choice that will be sure to rile most Texans. Unless I’m misjudging the character of Texans, of course.

The article is a long one, and it needs to be to justify their choice. It makes a half-hearted attempt at dealing with both sides of the controversy, both anti and pro illegals, and in doing so uses a lot of ink. And also fails miserably in the attempt at fairness, the pro illegal writer’s and his editor’s bias towards the illegals jumps out at you. Here’s one of the more balanced samples:

If critics are correct, we could be seeing the advent of the kind of fractiousness that bedevils public life in Canada and other nations where peoples who speak different languages, and come from different cultural backgrounds, live together only with mutual suspicion and unease.

On the other hand, perhaps the alarmists are wrong. Maybe these ambitious, hard-working immigrants, whatever their documentation, will write the next great chapter of a story that’s still deeply American, though with a different accent. If the optimists are right, much work remains to be done to incorporate all immigrants fully into new cultural traditions.

Texans of Year. The liberal mindset never ceases to astonish.

Two salutes to Tammy Bruce for this one.