From: harry@hershele.alf.dec.com (Harry Katz)
Subject: Re: STATUE OF IMMIGRATION
Followup-To: misc.headlines,talk.politics.misc,alt.conspiracy
Organization: DEC - Customer Support Center, Alpharetta, GA
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL8]
Date: Fri, 22 Jan 1993 21:27:24 GMT

In article <C0IKz3.3G9@ddsw1.mcs.com>,
arf@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Jack Schmidling) wrote:

    The Statue of Liberty was given to Americans by the French 
    government in 1886 as a token of friendship between the two 
    countries.  The statue was to symbolize America's hard won 
    freedom and liberty.

    However, as a result of a propaganda campaign by immigrant 
    lobbyists, most Americans have come to think that the statue 
    represents some sort of inalienable committment to an "open 
    door", immigration policy.

    The truth is that in 1926, Emma Lazarus successfully lobbied 
    to get her now famous lines added to the statue.  The result 
    is that everytime the idea of limiting immigration is 
    brought up, these lines are quoted and the subject dropped 
    as just plain un-American.


In article <1993Jan15.170530.2758@netnews.alf.dec.com>,
harry@hershele.alf.dec.com (Harry Katz) responded:

    The truth is that Emma Lazarus was born in 1849 and died
    in 1887.  Apparently, Mr. Schmidling believes that she rose
    from the grave in 1926 to lobby "to get her now famous lines
    added to the statue."

    Clearly, the only propaganda campaign here is being waged
    by Mr.  Schmidling, who always insists on displaying his
    ignorance in public.


In article <C117q3.E3@ddsw1.mcs.com>,
arf@ddsw1.mcs.com (Jack Schmidling) makes some pitiful attempts
at damage control:

    Thanks for pointing the typo.

What Mr. Schmidling dismisses as a typo is actually a reckless
disregard for facts that inevitably leads to erroneous conclusions.
I do not waste my time with typos, especially Mr. Schmidling's, whose
errors in spelling, punctuation, grammar, syntax, and usage are too
numerous to catalogue.


Mr. Schmidling continues:

    You need not look for an evil conspiracy.

Once again Mr. Schmidling displays his renowned confusion.  He was the
one who suggested an evil conspiracy was afoot, not me.


Mr. Schmidling continues:

    The correct date for the dedication of the statue was 1886.

This fact is indeed correct, as it was in his original article, so
this cannot be the "typo" that Mr. Schmidling refers to.  Perhaps he
means that it was in 1886 and not 1926 that "Emma Lazarus successfully
lobbied to get her now famous lines added to the statue."  The rest of
his comments shed no more light on what he means, but before we take a
look at them, let us once again correct Mr. Schmidling:

Emma Lazarus wrote her poem, _The_New_Colossus, about the Statue of
Liberty shortly after its dedication in 1886.  She passed away the next
year.  Her poem was inscribed on a bronze plaque at the base of the
statue in 1903--not in 1926, as Mr. Schmidling first claimed, nor in
1886, as Mr. Schmidling later implies.

What this proves is that Mr. Schmidling cannot get anything right even
when given a second chance!


Mr. Schmidling continues:

    And according to the Britanica.... "she devoted the
    short remainder of her life to the cause of Jewish nationalism"....
    
The fact that Emma Lazarus devoted the last year of her life to
"Jewish nationalism" has nothing to do with the fact that her poem
was added to the Statue of Liberty sixteen years after her death, when
she could not have lobbied anybody for anything.


Mr. Schmidling continues:

    You insist on bringing Jew into the discussion again and then
    call me an antisemite.

Once again Mr. Schmidling's legendary mental confusion has gotten the
better of him.  If he could only understand what he reads, then he
would see that I have never called him an anti-Semite and that he
himself is the only one here who insists "on bringing Jew into the
discussion" in a transparent attempt to change the subject and draw
attention away from his own appalling ignorance.


Mr. Schmidling continues:

    She turned the  the Statue of Liberty into the Statue of
    immigration and there is litle dobut just which immigrants she
    was most interested in.

There can be no doubt whatsoever that Emma Lazarus was most interested
in those immigrants who helped build America into the world's leading
industrial nation.

There is also no doubt that Mr. Schmidling is more interested in
promoting his prejudices than arriving at the truth!


Harry Katz

Newsgroups: misc.headlines,talk.politics.misc,talk.politics.medicine