The innocent – and apparently rather dead – animal pictured to your left is a member of a species commonly known as the Asian carp, and it has become the unlikely epicenter of a racial controversy.
The entire hubbub was touched off when conservative talk show host Sean Hannity blamed the fish for an attack on an Illinois man. It would seem that a certain Tad Newell – if that really is his name- was riding along on his jet ski when the villainous Fu-Manchu fish leapt out of the water and knocked him off his machine.
Despite the fact that neither the authorities nor “Tad Newell” claim any malice aforethought on the part of the fish, it wasn’t long before right wing pundits were calling for the borders to be closed to all fishes of Asian origin. Rush Limbaugh even went as far as to call for the immediate detention of all Asian Carps till it could be ascertained that they did not pose a terrorist threat.
Now, call me paranoid if you must but i see a subtle anti-Asian subtext running through all this! And my suspicions were confirmed when Glenn Beck called for the immediate deportation of all Asians, fish or otherwise, from the United States on the grounds that individuals of Asian origin are more likely than others to leap out of the water and knock people off their jet skis! He even went so far as to claim that during a promotional visit for Rush Hour 2, Jackie Chan committed this crime over a dozen times, with the added insult of stealing the jet skis and shipping them back to his innumerable relatives in Hong Kong! This kind of knee-jerk reaction, alas, is what comes of having a country as ideologically divided as the U.S – when will this madness end?