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FWD.us Remixes the Statue of Liberty Greeting
theodp writes "In the days leading up to the Senate's passage of the landmark immigration bill, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a new ad from FWD.us, his pro-immigration reform PAC. The ad, 'Emma', contains an altered version of Emma Lazarus' famous 1883 poem 'The New Colossus' ('Give me your tired, your poor...'), which is engraved on a bronze plaque inside the Statue of Liberty. 'In doing so,' notes the Latin Times, 'it [the ad] departs radically from the meaning of Lazarus' original — which exalted the Statue of Liberty as a "mother of exiles" and redeemer of the world's rootless poor — to accommodate the PAC's call for more high-skilled workers from abroad be allowed to work and live legally in the United States.' Instead of the original's call for 'the wretched refuse of your teeming shore' and 'the homeless, tempest-tossed', the FWD.us remix asks for 'the influencers and the dreamers...talent that is searching for purpose...those dedicated to the doing'. Here's a YouTube Doubler of readings of both versions — pick your fave, kids!"
From the summary:
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled a new ad from FWD.us, his pro-immigration reform PAC.
This is inaccurate. The main focus of the PAC is on guest workers, not immigrants.
Seriously fuck that guy. I'm sure that if it wasn't him, some other unscrupulous douche would be in his place doing basically the same shit but he's the one here and now so fuck him and his abuse of the powerless.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
"Keep your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
Send me your young, your rich,
Your highly skilled, willing to work 18 hour days.
They will soon be returned to you as wretched refuse,
on your teeming shore."
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
The idea was that the USA would be a shining city on a hill, an example for other nations.
It wasn't supposed to be a beacon for immigrants.
"Hey, you can do this too"... not "Hey, come over here cause you can't get your shit together over there"...
Whose idea?
Why did the people who wrote our constitution include a clause granting citizenship to those who are born here? Had *they* already perverted the idea?
When I was a schoolboy we were taught to take pride in the fact that we were and always had been a melting pot. Somehow we've run off the rails since then.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
I am a brazen giant of Geek fame,
Who conquered networks astride from lan to lan;
Here at our white-washed, paywalls shall stand
A nerdy man whose torch lights flame wars
Master of walled gardens
Father of social Exiles. From his mouse-hand
Glows the world-wide web; his code wileding minions command
The air-gapped harbor that geocities frame.
"Keep, ancient pictures, your funny stories!" cries he
With silent lips. "Give me your engineers , your admins,
Your huddled masses yearning to code C,
The wretched refuse of your Mac store.
Send these, the clueless, tempest-tost to me,
I need more fodder for my golden horde!"
Are you Native American? If not, you're a hypocrite.
Do you seriously think the Native Americans don't regret the way they left their borders open to anyone who turned up?
If they could go back in time and build a wall to keep Europeans out, I suspect most would eagerly have done so.
The statue of liberty didn't originally have that inscription, that was added later and itself had nothing to do with the symbolism of Libertas.
The poem was written in 1883 and read at the Opening of the Statue of Liberty to the public in 1886. While it took almost 20 years before a plaque was added to memorialize the poem in 1903, it was very much in the original spirit of the the Freedom the Statue represents.
It was not like the addition of "In God We Trust" on our money, or "Under God" to the Pledge during the McCarthy era of rampant fears of God-less communism.
Anyone who thinks America should adhere only to the original wording of the declaration and the original constitution is an idiot. Basing society which has experienced 237 years of social change on an equally old document is ludicrous.
You want to discard the Constitution? Sorry, but the NSA beat you to it.
Every other country that ever existed was based on ethnicity. ... The melting pot idea was introduced by people who had something to gain.
First you praise the US for not being based on ethnicity, and then you criticize the melting pot. Talk about a confused argument.
I think that he is the one who should get fucked. If he was on fire i wouldn't piss on him to put him out.
Why is Snark Required?
The lefties thought that if everyone had a college education it would make us all richer.
Don't blame the lefties for that one. I remember reading the Wall Street Journal editorial page during the 1970s, and their solution for all the problems of poverty was that anybody in this country could get a college degree if he worked hard enough, and a college degree was the ticket out of poverty. No need for the federal government to order desegregation, they said. If the negroes want good jobs, all they have to do is go to college. (Like Condi Rice, playing Chopin for success.)
The idea that education solves all problems is a popular one and appealed to liberals and conservatives alike.
To people on the left (not liberals), education was desirable but education alone wouldn't solve the fundamental problem of an unequal, unjust society.
Once again good intentions prove no substitute for understanding what the heck is going on.
You're right about that one.
When I was a schoolboy we were taught to take pride in the fact that we were and always had been a melting pot.
Yes - I've always found it amusing that the US is so proud of being a "melting pot". This suggests that all cultural distinctiveness will be lost and you have to become just like everyone else - it's the Borg approach to immigration. Not sure why you would want to be so proud of that but, having once been a US resident, I'll grant that it is an accurate metaphor.
Although the metaphor isn't perfect, part of the idea of the melting pot is that you take the best parts from every culture. As for the cultural distinctiveness, the original cultures remain in whatever land they came from - where they still fight with their neighbors over those differences.
If you're born here, you're not losing your culture - you're living the culture you were born to. If you came here, well, why did you come if you didn't think the culture had a lot to offer? If you want to come here and embrace American culture while keeping a few of your own things that you honestly think are better, great! But if you want to come here and make is just like the place that was so much worse that you wanted to leave, then WTF?
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
The thing that scares me most is that the people who wrote it probably have no idea how bad it is. Have we really dropped that far culturally, that even writers don't know how to write?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."