Links Roundup 1.31.13
In the end, AZ won the game 5-0, but not before Wiedemeijer did suspend the match briefly as Den Bosch fans threw bottles and snowballs at the officials. (Den Bosch club administrators apologized to Altidore on Wednesday and pledged to identify and punish the participating fans.) Altidore would go on to convert a penalty for his 20th goal in all competitions this season, a career high, and while he didn’t mock the abusive fans afterward he did feel like it was one of the best responses he could have given to them.
“Of course, of course,” Altidore says. “They weren’t happy to see us win by that margin. I don’t think anybody expected that.”
Yet Altidore earned even more global respect for the way he responded after the game, striking a stance well beyond his 23 years and saying he’d be praying for the offending fans.
“That’s the first thing I was thinking about,” says Altidore, who grew up in Boca Raton, Fla., as the son of parents, Gisele and Joseph, who were born in Haiti. “The way I was raised, we never looked at black and white. My family has always stressed to me, yes, you will come against things that are different for a young black kid growing up. Let’s be honest about that, we’re still not over that. But at the same time, they always told me you can’t judge anybody by their color. You have to respect everybody for who they are and what they stand for.”
Everything is moving in the right direction, and in record speed, giving a case of whiplash to even the most veteran and cynical of immigration advocates. It seems that congressional leaders are holding on to what was once a third rail in American politics. In an interview with ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, John McCain, a crucial and, at times, unreliable ally, said he now backs not only the DREAM Act, but also a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. (As early as three years ago, the Arizona senator called such a pathway “amnesty.”) The following day, a group of senators (the “Gang of Eight,” as they have been coined) offered an imperfect and enforcement-heavy but (here’s the key word)bipartisan blueprint, laying out its principles for a workable immigration bill. Not to be left out, a group of House Republicans said on the same day that they too have a bill in the works.
If there were any doubts that the president viewed immigration as the top legislative priority of his second term, those were laid to rest when he said yesterday: “And if Congress is unable to move forward in a timely fashion, I will send up a bill based on my proposal and insist that they vote on it right away.”
Obama, as only a lame-duck president can, is staking his claim and going for the history books. And just as important as putting pressure on a bitterly polarized and often paralyzed Congress, Obama is framing the issue economically and culturally. He reminded us that, in recent years, one in four technology startups in America were created by immigrants, as were one in four new small businesses. He implored Americans to honor our country’s rich history of immigration and to remember that our country is in constant evolution, from the Pilgrims, the Irish, and Eastern Europeans, to the Asians and Latinos.
In the speech’s single most memorable line, this president who is still considered by some as “the other,” viewed as a foreigner in a country that twice elected him to the White House, eloquently said: “Before they were ‘us,’ they were ‘them.’”