Stop making sense (With apologies to Talking Heads, the band)

Today I start with the headline and see where matters find themselves at the end. Why not, it’s Labor Day weekend, for me at least.

Why the headline reads: “Stop making sense” is  because that is the sentiment I want to express to Gov. Haley Barbour, R, Miss. Bringing up the parenthetical rear of the hed is as it is, I suppose, “stop making sense” used as a pun when used with “talking heads.” I’m talking about the term as in the nickname for today’s pundits. However, “Stop Making Sense” is also the name of a concert album from 1984 featuring the new wave group Talking Heads. And yes, I’ve been a fan of David Byrne and the rest since I heard those life-altering lines: “You may find yourself living in a shotgun shack/You may find yourself in a different part of the World/You may find yourself behind the wheel of a large automobile/You may find yourself with a beautiful wife in a beautiful house/You may ask yourself, well, how did I get here? — from “Once in a Lifetime.”

Of course, I heard these lines when the song was first released, which was a few years before the movie. I just want to get that straight so some of my friends won’t ask: “You mean you never heard “Once in a Lifetime” before “Stop Making Sense?” Why of course I did. You were there, don’t you remember? And you—and you—and you—and you were there. Maybe your little dog too!

If you wish, you may veer off from this discussion completely and listen to the Talking Heads for awhile. Or perhaps put “The Wizard of Oz” in the video and play Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon.” I will understand.

Or else, you can stay here and see why I would like the potential GOP presidential candidate to stop making sense.

Barbour, unlike most of his Republican counterparts from their dark corners in their fetal positions who are shaking 8.0 on the Richter Scale due to the “Tea Party Terrors,” has what I feel is a pretty sensible position on immigration.

Chris Good at TheAtlantic.com writes a really interesting piece on Barbour and how he faces thrashing from fellow GOP candidates in the early primaries all because this former Republican National Committee chairman talks straight. At least on immigration matters.

Barbour shares a point of view with me that following the hurricanes of 2005 on the Gulf Coast, no one seemed to be complaining about Spanish-speaking folks when they wanted their roofs shingled — yesterday. Not exactly how he put it — of course the wonderful coastal portion of his state was destroyed by Katrina and my area was wrecked by Rita — but close.

A reality that should be slapped in the face of all Americans who are “tough” on immigration emanates from Barbour, saying that it is foolish to think we can jail or deport 10-14 million people. The math just somehow doesn’t work. What would we do with the nearly five million inmates of mostly American citizenship locked up in our own jails and prisons?

I do question Barbour’s contention as to how more immigrants who graduate in professional fields should be given citizenship. His analogy is that all Indians with Ph.D.s who graduate from Stanford should get citizenship so they will start businesses and employ workers here rather than going home and starting a business. That sounds simplistic and perhaps Barbour meant it to be, but I think it needs a lot of work.

*Refers to an incident at the University of Houston in the late 1960s when then Texas-Gov. Preston Smith was confronted by an angry mob that was chanting: “Free Lee Otis. Free Lee Otis.” The “Lee Otis” to whom they referred was Lee Otis Johnson, a black activist with the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. Johnson had been sentenced to prison for 30 years for giving one joint of pot to a Houston undercover officer. Smith thought the crowd was shouting “frijoles” and he told a reporter that he didn’t know what they all had against “Mexican beans.” Johnson was released  after serving four years in prison. I don’t know why this came up. It just did.