Stupidity affects both parties, equally.
About a month ago I began to see a Republican ad on televisionthat tried to portray Mexicans as the bogeyman of the 1996presidential election.
The commercial portrayed what seemed like hordes of illegalimmigrants climbing over the fence separating the United States fromMexico.
It was clear from the images that these "illegals" were ofHispanic origin. Even though there are Polish, Irish and Chineseillegal immigrants, not one of the figures climbing the fence lookedlike Boris, Sven, Natalia or Sean.
The thunderous Republican voice in the background explained thescene. The Clinton administration was doing nothing to prevent theillegal immigrants from invading our neighborhoods, taking our jobs,living on the dole and filling our streets with terror, said thevoice.
Leave it to the Democrats to screw it up.
"Yes, we are!" was the Clinton campaign's response TV ads.
"We've done more to throw out these pesky, dark-skinned heathensthan any other administration in history," the TV ad proudly seemedto say.
The images in the Democratic ad show border patrol agentsrounding up a bunch of people with the intent of sending them backwhere they came from.
And none of them looked like Boris, Sven, Natalia and Sean.
As an American, I am offended. I am offended because thesepolitical soap sellers think so little of the American people'sintellect that they really believe the racist, anti-Hispanic messageis subliminal and subtle.
It wasn't. It was racist and it aimed at the fears of Americansborn here that our social and economic ills are caused by the darkerskin of the hordes coming over the fence.
It was the same way that Benjamin Franklin once complained thatthe German immigrants settling in Pennsylvania were lazy and smelledbad.
And the same way complaints were voiced about the hordes ofIrish people coming to this country in the 1840s and 1850s.
And the way all Italians coming here around the turn of thecentury were portrayed as Mafiosos.
And the way Russians, Polish and other Eastern Europeans wereportrayed as heroin addicts, rapists and anarchists when they filledthe tenements of New York's lower East Side.
And the way "concern" was expressed about the northernmigrations of African Americans from the rural South in search ofjobs and life opportunity in the industrial Midwest.
The Republicans' and Democrats' anti-Mexican commercials did notplay very well in Chicago.
I have a theory about this: Since our westward movement was inoverlapping stages, the farther west we go, the more removed peopleare from their ancestors' generational arrival in America.
The little old ladies in Pasadena, and the sun-baked gods andgoddesses who spend the day surfing on Santa Monica beach are - morethan likely - fifth-, sixth- or seventh-generation Americans whoforgot that their great-great-grandparent was named Sven, Griselda,Boris or Sean.
But in Chicago, almost everyone has a browning photo hanging onthe wall of a grandfather in a bowler hat with his arm around a womanin a long, old-country dress as they got off the boat that broughtthem here.
And when we see the picture and remember them, we do not callthem illegals, undocumented or burdens.
We simply call them grandma or grandpa.
Jorge Oclander is a Chicago Sun-Times staff reporter.
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