Today's Fine Writing

Comes from Matt Drew of Minneapolis:

While I wasn't surprised that Miss USA was the target of cruel, classless and misdirected heckling by the Mexico City mob that comprised the audience during Monday's Miss Universe pageant, I was certainly surprised to learn that more than 9,000 people still live in Mexico.

But based on the vociferous boos aimed at a smiling, 22-year-old Rachel Smith, it was apparent that many of the remaining Mexicans who haven't yet decided to simply stroll across our wide-open border and enter the United States illegally were inexplicably upset with Miss Tennessee.

Donald Trump, owner of the Miss Universe pageant, said the audience wasn't booing Miss USA, but rather "some policies of the United States." Which policies? If anything, Mexicans should be enthusiastically and infinitely grateful to their northern neighbor for acting as a de facto jobs program for millions of poor, uneducated Mexicans who, after finding the work here that doesn't exist there, in turn wire billions of American dollars to their relatives back home.

Meanwhile, far too many of our jails, emergency rooms, maternity wards, public schools, courtrooms and social service programs are occupied by illegal immigrants who have no right to be in this country, but are still treated fairly, yet somehow the gringa in an evening gown's the villain? Mexicans looking to assign blame to those responsible for the plight of their people should direct their anger, not at beauty pageant contestants, but toward their own notoriously corrupt government and economic system that has failed its people for generations.