So, Freedman, Where Were You?
Seeing how manipulable he is, I would like to know where Judge Freedman was sixteen years ago when I was going through what was laughingly referred to as a divorce. At least three members of my family have not yet recovered, emotionally, from the episode. Meanwhile, the craven Judge Freedman renders a decision that gives another lusty kick in the stomach to Mexican culture, which already was reeling.
No Favors for Mexicans
The inaptly named Judge Freed-man is the kind of blinkered liberal — there I go being redundant again — who keeps others enslaved. You could have put a five-year-old addle-pated child on the bench and gotten the same ruling. Judge Freedman would ply a drunk with drinks because the drunk said he was still thirsty. The sad legacy of Mexican culture in America is that most Mexican-American parents have low expectations for their children. Education barely qualifies for a parental list of priorities. Success is a job, any job. You don’t have to rise to the level of a professional. Employment at Fred’s Faded Sox Factory is regarded as a fine accomplishment. Ambition is a foreign concept. Check back in twenty years. You will find the same chap in the same place, possibly having advanced by one or two steps. And this, boys and girls, is why too many Mexicans in this country are taking orders instead of giving them. Routinely, Hispanics, Latinos and Chicanos of a mature age keep one eye on the minimum wage because they have been taught that the bottom level is their most comfortable work station. Their parents never inspired them to aspire for more because their parents never did. Their teachers never did, either. If that does not make you cry for them, it should.
Benedict Arnold, in Spanish?
How many enablers does it take to screw in a Mexican light bulb? While you ponder the answer, I shall tell you about a Mexican lawyer, my candidate for the Most Disappointing Mexican Professional of the Decade. As long as the turncoat Arturo J. Gonzalez is around, good-hearted Mexicans never will lack an enemy. At forty five years old, the swift-moving, slick-talking hotshot already has a resume that would impress Clarence Darrow — or Brad Gage. From his twenty-ninth floor office in downtown San Francisco, he talks about his rise from Mexican poverty, charges clients $600 an hour and earns more than one million dollars a year.
Why Did He Take the Case?
A trial lawyer who graduated Harvard Law School, he is an award winner. Besides scoring huge settlements, he was voted one of the nation’s top attorneys under the age of forty and then one of the top twenty lawyers in California. Supremely confident of his rhetorical skills, he seems to believe that, besides selling ice to Eskimos, he can convince anyone of anything. Which makes Judge Freedman the Boob of the Year or the latest victim of Mr. Gonzalez.
In both an email and a telephone call, I asked why, given his own trajectory, he took on this case (pro bono, by the way). I have seen this calculation played out before. It is the remarkably ignorant Affirmative Action principle: I made it, but the kids behind me are too dumb to tread my trail. After the Freedman ruling last Friday, Mr. Gonzalez said: “With the bold stroke of a pen, Judge Freedman has given 47,000 students an opportunity to walk the stage with their classmates and to receive their high school diplomas.” As for the children themselves, they learned how to scam the system young. They learned that they can run to their mommies, complain school is too hard, mommy will say, I will fix that, and finds a dandy like Mr. Gonzalez who says, I know a judge named Freedman who will tumble for any line. Presto, the dumb student grows dumber. What will he say when he is allowed, artificially, to graduate high school equipped only to work minimum wage the rest of his days? Do you think he will want to thank Messrs. Gonzalez or Freedman? Only in America.
Postscript
Must be a cultural handicap. Notice, dear reader, you don’t see a Chinese lawyer named Sing petitioning for Asian kids, a Jewish lawyer named Epstein begging for Jewish kids or a Polish lawyer named Kowalski begging for Polish kids. That is why the members of their cultures succeed. They would rather issue commands than take them. In any language.