The unmentionability of Latino Littering is THE issue says the MSM
Will a pro-Trump insult comic's joke about Puerto Rico's littering problem be the "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion" of 2024?
According to the Establishment news media, the Issue of the Century is suddenly that at Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden, some insult comic named Tony Hinchcliffe made a joke about Puerto Rico’s littering problem:
"I don't know if you know this, but there's literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. I think it's called Puerto Rico."
Since 2013, I’ve been covering one of the craziest fetishes of respectable discourse in modern America: the widespread belief that anybody who mentions the Latino Littering problem is some kind of Nazi who wants to round up Hispanics and gas them all.
The media had been priming itself on casting Trump’s rally at MSG as the Second Coming of Hitler, and, now, here was proof: somebody mentioned “Puerto Rico” and “garbage” in the same breath!
And we all know what that means!
After all, elite journalists reason, what else can you do with litterers besides genocide them? Ask them to litter less? Make fun of them? Issue tickets? Run ad campaigns appealing to local pride with local heroes, like the successful Don’t Mess With Texas series?
Racially shame litterers, like white Americans were shamed into littering less by the famous Crying Indian in the hugely influential 1971 anti-littering public service announcement?
No, of course not, says the liberal conventional wisdom. Unlike, say, IQ, the Latino Littering problem is not socially constructed. So it can’t be socially deconstructed. Instead, littering is in Latinos’ DNA. So, all we could possibly do about it is to murder all Latinos or to never ever mention what we all see with our own eyes because if we admit it’s a problem, then Hitler Was Right. Make your choice: a new holocaust or litter?
Seriously, the elite press is seriously nuts about noticing Latino Littering. They routinely cite it as the most shocking thing ever said by thought criminals like Tucker Carlson and Amy Wax. For example, here’s how the New York Times led off its massive three part series in 2022 attempting to get Tucker fired by Fox:
American Nationalist: part 1
How Tucker Carlson Stoked White Fear to Conquer Cable
By Nicholas Confessore
Published April 30, 2022
This is the first article in a series on Tucker Carlson. Read Part 2 and Part 3.
Tucker Carlson burst through the doors of Charlie Palmer Steak, enfolded in an entourage of producers and assistants, cellphone pressed to his ear. On the other end was Lachlan Murdoch, chairman of the Fox empire and his de facto boss.
Most of Fox’s Washington bureau, along with the cable network’s top executives, had gathered at the power-class steakhouse, a few blocks from the office, for their annual holiday party. Days earlier, Mr. Carlson had set off an uproar, claiming on air that mass immigration made America “poor and dirtier.” Blue-chip advertisers were fleeing. Within Fox, Mr. Carlson was widely viewed to have finally crossed some kind of line. Many wondered what price he might pay.
The answer became clear that night in December 2018: absolutely none.
When “Tucker Carlson Tonight” aired, Mr. Carlson doubled down, playing video of his earlier comments and citing a report from an Arizona government agency that said each illegal border crossing left up to eight pounds of litter in the desert. Afterward, on the way to the Christmas party, Mr. Carlson spoke directly with Mr. Murdoch, who praised his counterattack, according to a former Fox employee told of the exchange.
“We’re good,” Mr. Carlson said, grinning triumphantly, as he walked into the restaurant.
In the years since, Mr. Carlson has constructed what may be the most racist show in the history of cable news — and also, by some measures, the most successful. Though he frequently declares himself an enemy of prejudice — “We don’t judge them by group, and we don’t judge them on their race,” Mr. Carlson explained to an interviewer a few weeks before accusing impoverished immigrants of making America dirty — his show teaches loathing and fear.
Of course, New York Times reporters in New York City have to live with Latino Littering themselves, and are annoyed by it, so they sometimes write about it, dropping plenty of clues about who is doing the littering. From the NYT local news section:
If the Parks Are Strewn With Garbage, It Must Be a Monday Morning
By LISA W. FODERARO
September 8, 2013All summer and into the fall in Upper Manhattan, barbecuers and picnickers flock to the Riverside Park waterfront on Saturdays and Sundays to enjoy the Hudson River views and breezes. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people descend on a grassy stretch in the northern part of the park where grilling is permitted. Carne asada and barbecue chicken sizzles, children run, tattooed arms bop volleyballs and couples watch the sun settle over New Jersey.
Then comes Monday morning, which presents a Sisyphean struggle for maintenance workers like Willie Fitzgerald — a weekly encounter with the paper plates, confetti, plastic straws and food scraps that wind up on the grass, along paths and under picnic tables. ...
Local residents who arrive in the park early on Mondays, before cleanup crews arrive, are greeted with a jarring sight. “At first you think a flock of sea gulls is spread out on the lawn, but it’s paper plates and cups and litter everywhere,” said Nancy Maldonado, 48, who was sitting on a rock by the river. “If this was their house, they would never do this. We need better enforcement.”
Despite such complaints, park officials say their options are limited. ... The officers, who carry clubs and mace, focus mainly on loud music and alcohol, which, he pointed out, were the source of even more complaints.
Littering regulations are difficult to enforce for a few reasons, especially when it comes to large groups of relatives and friends who remain in the park for hours. “For the officers, it’s time-consuming to observe, and then who are you going to give the summons to?” Mr. Castro said. “If you go into a large crowd and the person resists, arguments happen and things spin out of control.”
It's interesting to contrast this behavior to the Burning Man festival on a dry lakebed in Nevada, where the damn dirty hippies from Northern California remove at the end of the week every single thing they've brought, including their dirty water from washing dishes.
If you read this article closely, you can get a sense of who the prime littering culprits are in Harlem ("carne asada" for Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, and Mexicans, "barbecue chicken" for African-Americans, etc.). But the sizable role of Latino culture in littering today is never explicitly mentioned.
It's not as if littering is some tragic flaw permanently inscribed in Latino DNA. It's a bad habit, a cultural defect. White Americans littered a lot during the postwar era when disposable containers and wrapping became widespread, so the manufacturers of the litter started a campaign to shame people into not littering. The culmination was that classic of racial shaming, the 1971 Crying Indian commercial showing how the White Man had made a mess of the Native American's landscape.
But, today, you can't shame any culture other than white Americans. Thus, when I Google the alliterative phrase "Latino littering" I just come up with references to my use of the phrase. Latino littering, while a real world problem, is just not a Thing in the indeasphere.
A reader writes:
This is funny...all about how the parks in Manhattan are covered in trash every Monday morning...well not all the parks, but the ones in Upper Manhattan are.
I have been to parks uptown like the Dyckman Fields which on weekends are filled with a thousand drunk Mexicans watching soccer games and buying tacos from illegal food vendors. Funny, but the parks downtown don't seem to be littered with so much garbage.
When I worked in Corona, Queens for the city the constant refrain from Dominicans about garbage was "Look at the streets here, they are dirty...the streets in the Jewish neighborhoods don't look like this!" They never seemed to make the jump to "maybe some people don't throw their trash in the streets." The implication was, Everybody naturally litters...but the Jews make sure that the city cleans up their streets.
Obviously, Jerry Seinfeld just drops trash all over the sidewalk in front of his Upper West Side home. What else is possible?
Lefty environmentalists say nothing about the mountains of litter at the border, where millions of illegal immigrant Latinos have crossed. Many fragile ecosystems of flora and fauna have been destroyed. They won't notice if their neighborhood turns into a favela landfill, cuz at least there's delicious taco trucks!
The annual Puerto Rican Day parade is a Festival of Garbage (and mayhem).