THE DONALD’S KERNEL OF TRUTH
YOU are hardly a namebrand company if you haven’t dumped Donald Trump over the past seven days.
NBC, Univision and Macy’s have all thrown The Donald under the bus, in the heaviest blow to schlock culture in this country since the cancellation of “Jersey Shore.”
The carnage ranges widely across media, encompassing reality TV (“Celebrity Apprentice”), entertainment properties (the Miss USA Pageant), fashion (the Donald J. Trump Signature Collection) and even fragrance (Success by Trump).
Yes, the 2016 Republican field is so wide and diverse it includes perhaps the nation’s first presidential candidate with his own fragrance, and, it must be noted, not just any fragrance. Success has “a masculine combination of rich vetiver, tonka bean, birchwood and musk,” and “captures the spirit of the driven man.”
To imagine that Abraham Lincoln’s marketing was focused on posing for photographs for Mathew Brady. Poor old Abe — he could never think big.
The shunning of Trump is in response to his uh, memorable presidential announcement that included comments about the alleged criminality of Mexican immigrants that were typically crude. Trump could make a statement about arcane tax policy details related to accelerated depreciation for business investment — and still make you want to take a shower afterward.
Although this isn’t anything new. The companies fleeing from Trump were happy to be in bed with him so long as it suited their business interests. Now, they are acting on what has become one of the foremost principles of American public life: It’s no longer enough to be offended, you
It’s no longer enough to be offended, ’ you must punish the offender.
must punish the offender.
I was skeptical Trump was really running, but now that the boats are burned behind him, watch out. He’s set to be Herman Cain squared — an earlynominatingseason phenomenon with a massive media megaphone.
As for his instantly notorious Mexico comments, they did more to insult than to illuminate, yet there was a kernel in them that hit on an important truth that typical politicians either don’t know or simply fear to speak. “When Mexico sends its people,” Trump said, “they’re not sending their best.”
We aren’t raiding the top 1 percent of Mexicans and importing them to this country. Instead, we’re getting representative Mexicans, who — through no fault of their own, of course — come from a poorly educated country at a time when education is essential to success in an advanced economy.
Immigrants are willing to work. Immigrant men aged 1865 are in the labor force at a higher rate than native men.
It’s just that a lack of education is an anchor around even hardworking people. This is illustrated in an exhaustive report based on government data, by the Center for Immigration Studies, which favors a lower level of immigration.
Immigrants here from Mexico — which has sent more immigrants than any other country for decades — have the lowest levels of education. Nearly 60 percent of them haven’t graduated from high school. Only about 6 percent have a bachelor’s degree or higher.
This puts Mexican immigrants at an inherent disadvantage, and it shows. Nearly 35 percent of immigrants from Mexico and their USborn children are in poverty; nearly 68 percent are in or near poverty. This is the highest level for immigrants from any country.
Fiftyfour percent of immigrants from Mexico lack health insurance. A higher proportion of Mexican immigrants uses meanstested government programs than immigrants from any other country — more than 57 percent.
Immigrants make progress on almost every indicator over time, but are still far behind natives after two decades.
If we don’t want to add to the ranks of the poor, the uninsured and the welfare dependent, we should have fewer lowskilled immigrants — assuming saying that is not yet officially considered a hate crime.
The point surely could be made much more deftly and precisely by anyone not named Donald J. Trump. In the meantime, he fills the vacuum, and enjoys the whirlwind.