April: Aryan-zona

Nothing gets my eyes rolling more than the lazy poop-slinging of the label “Nazi”— like when some nerd calls another nerd a “grammar Nazi” for nitpicking split infinitives or when a spelling-inept Tea-Bagger sharpies a Fuhrer-stache on a pic of Obama, under a banner that reads (ironically) “communist!” But if the moniker of Nazi should be tacked onto anything in recent American history, let it be the great state of Aryan-zona. Yeah, it’s funny but unnerving nonetheless.

You might be a Nazi if…

You enact Senate Bill 1070, aka the Safe Neighborhoods and Happy Klansmen Act. As Saturday Night Live observed so hilariously a few weeks ago, certain folk in Arizona liken President Obama to Adolf Hitler, yet their state just passed a law that allows police to ask anyone they suspect as illegal immigrants for their papers. To quote Seth Meyers, anchor of SNL’s “Weekend Update,” “there’s never been a World War II movie that didn’t include the line, ‘Show me your papers’…Every time someone says, ‘Show me your papers,’ Hitler’s family gets a residual check.”

You might be a Nazi if…

Your department of education bans people with accents from teaching English, regardless of experience or proven efficacy. Now this has nothing to do with fluency, but a concerned and (budget-rattled) group of state officials that cringe at hearing “biolet” instead of “violet” or burrito instead of meat-and-veggie wrap.

You might be a Nazi if…

You are so ignorant and paranoid that you bar ethnic studies programs in public schools because they “promote the overthrow of the U.S. government” and the “resentment of a particular race or class of people.”  What devilish images of Latino-littered classrooms must these idiots conjure when they imagine the goings-on of Tucson’s successful Mexican studies program: a cluster of kindergarteners learning how to spell “Kill Whitey” on a whiteboard and a group of teenage Latinos running a Taliban-inspired obstacle course on the other side of the room. Uh-oh, they’re on to us…

And lastly, you might be a Nazi if…

Your “top cop” is the spitting image of Satan himself—well, let’s not be too loose with our metaphors; I’d say, “America’s Toughest Sheriff” (not named in fear of being snuffed out in the middle of the night) recalls a wrinkled, bloated Col. Hans Landa, “The Jew Hunter” from “Inglorious Basterds.” After all, you’d have to be a pretty twisted guy to be under constant investigation by the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the FBI, and most civil liberties unions in America.

For these reasons Arizona is April’s Tarado del Mes. Oh, what the hell, let’s give them May’s honor too, for good measure.

Oh yeah, Arizona refused to make Martin Luther King, Jr. Day a state holiday in the 80s…thought we should get that in too.