Signs of the Times

For starters, I’m a city guy. Sarah Palin’s convention speech comments, about small towns and their values, quoting a known anti-Semite though not by name, probably played well with some of the “base” that the McCain candidacy desperately needs. The problem for them is that most of the country lives in or near cities and depends on metropolitan America to fuel the economy and the culture. This is in no way meant to denigrate or disrespect the values that Gov. Palin meant to extol. The problem is, however, that to make the most of our future and thrive in the world of 2008, we need to understand our cities and how they have changed and evolved since our presidential (and vice presidential) candidates were born.


Because I spend a lot of time in New York City, not just in Manhattan but out in Queens where I grew up, I’m struck by how things have changed since I moved west, back in 1979. If you don’t know NYC, Queens is where working people live. They are transit workers, cops, firemen, teachers, laborers, among them new immigrants, lots of new immigrants, who are trying to make it in America.

For the TV news folks reading this, these new immigrants represent a part of your viewing population that is usually under served and also not well represented inside the newsrooms.

My new camera in hand, I took some pictures of my old neighborhood, in the Rego Park/Forest Hills area of Queens. The first two pictures on this page are a block apart on 63rd Drive, near Queens Boulevard. The Irish, Italian, Eastern European Jews and non Jews, Germans and other early to mid 20th Century immigrants, have been replaced by Asian, Russian, and Hispanic newcomers, eager to make it in their new homeland.

One TV station general manager I know recognized the power of this group of new viewers, their intelligence and potential. He encouraged us to understand and work for the strugglers and strivers in our community. Another GM I know, confessed, when I asked him about it during an interview, that in NYC, he had no native Russian speaker on his news staff.

In San Diego, where I have lived for 19 years, there are neighborhoods throughout the city where Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, and other Asian languages are widely spoken and part of the local culture. The picture on the left is from San Diego's City Heights neighborhood. New York and San Diego are typical of many North American cities in that way. Just about any big city is home to native languages other than English. Friends I know in Toronto, Canada, proudly proclaim how that city welcomes newcomers from around the world. When Rudy Giuliani was mayor of New York, he made it clear that he would gladly accept the immigrants other cities didn’t want. Of course, that was before Rudy ran for president. It was also before he denounced Barack Obama for supposedly thinking that Gov. Palin's hometown was not "cosmopolitan" enough. For those of you missing the irony of the ex-mayor of NYC ascribing big city elitism to Obama, I have a bridge in Brooklyn you might like to buy.

In this era of global economies and flat world enterprise, we are fortunate to attract the world’s ambitious and hopeful citizens who recognize the opportunity to contribute and thrive in the USA.

For those hard line opponents of immigration, perhaps you ought to reflect on the reasons we still attract men and women eager for a better life. Sometimes the only way to enter is illegally, probably not the first choice for those seeking work in the USA. Yet we do little to make the path to legal immigration more accessible. Our future and greatness as a country depend on continuing to be the best place in the world to be a refuge for

“...your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free..."

Those words, by Emma Lazarus, enshrined on the Statue of Liberty, resonate more eloquently, for me, than the Westbrook Pegler homage to small towns, quoted by Sarah Palin.

We need our small towns and our big cities. We are one country, big enough and strong enough, for all to enjoy the benefits of the American dream.