U.S. Senate Race
Conrad Burns Gets Heat for “Little Guatemalan” Comments
By Courtney Lowery, 8-22-06
Conrad Burns just can't get a break. Earlier this week, he was blasted for looking a little sleepy at a farm bill and today, he's getting heat for a comment he made at a speech about his roofer -- a "a nice little Guatemalan man."
Kevin O'Brien, the Democrats' videographer, was on hand to catch the comments, in which Burns recounted a story about asking the roofer for his greencard. (And here's the real story: All this fodder is coming from video released by the Dems. Click here for the recent AP story on the use of video and YouTube in this election cycle.)
The Associated Press has the full story (complete with the standard last few paragraphs dredging up the "rag heads" comments and the other shiners the senator has taken for his foot-in-mouth moments) out on the wire this afternoon. And, this time, it's not just Dems criticizing Burns.
Burns' office maintains his comments were meant as an anecdotal story, but some say it wasn't appropriate even in jest. Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for Federation for American Immigration Reform tells the AP, "If you have the very people who are responsible for making the laws mocking them, it's a pretty good indication of why we have 12 million people breaking the law."
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Is it Warner or Allen in Virginia that got caught in a similar comment?
What this does is reduce interactions with politicians to the blandest pablum of scripted sound bites.
My favorite part of the whole thing on youtube is that he stops his stump speech to take a cell phone call from his "little guatemalan" friend. His constituients aren't even important enough to him to miss the call. Might be a lobbyist or a GOP hack, right Burnsey? Nope, it was his "little guatamalan man."
What a boob!
Nobody could script this:
http://www.wonkette.com/politics/conrad-burns/conrad-burns-says-something-stupid-the-video-195963.php
Politics have been reduced to soundbites since the birth of the modern newscast, and it's our own fault. If we did the necessary legwork to make our electoral decisions and didn't allow lousy network news stations to make up our minds for us, we wouldn't be in the predicament.
A video poses no questions. People do. What I've seen from videos is democrats showing Conrad nodding off at a hearing, big whoop, and most famously, Baucus' video of his republican opponent cutting someone's hair while in a knit suit.
As far as using a video camera to find out where someone really stands, how is using the excerpts to expose faux pas or a sleepy senator accomplishing that? All this sniggering isn't "addressing the issues".
If you haven't been "doing necessary legwork" in order to make your electoral decisions, that's probably your own fault. But I won't need some jerk with a video camera stalking candidates to help me.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/08/24/MNGE7KO8FL1.DTL