Mr. Lou Dobbs represents a tired attempt to speak for “the people.” Of course, he is at the soft front of the larger and more hardened “Populist” cadre, such as the Minutemen and other buttoned-up ideological militias. What is pernicious about this “fluffy” media point of view, this paternal figure that fans its winks and smiles into our living rooms, is that it owns a cool cosmopolitanism, a keen double-standard. On one side it projects a jovial, matter-of-fact, “American Grandfather” conversation of and for the national good and on the other, it carefully constructs views and verbiage against the inclusion of a people, Mexicanos and Latinos in particular, that have historical, territorial, economic and cultural rights in the U.S.

Dobb’s “Populist” gesticulations are not new – Hitler was a populist, Mussolini, Peron, Franco – all populists. A solid read of Chican@ Latin@ literary and cultural production during the twentieth century will provide needed insights into the ongoing formation of a new nation in-between nations with homeland relations to both; this literary perspective is the first step in speaking of and for the people of the United States – I am talking about those of us that are boarded-up and bordered by elite “news” patrones.