Señor Crafton's English is Found Wanting

NashPo catches the irony of the bad English in Eric "English Only" Crafton's plea to Davidson County voters to put his baby on the ballot.

Guess Who's Back

Lord Eric is back and this time he aims to bitch slap anyone who gets in the way of the only issue that's ever gained him any celebrity, whether on Fox News or in the Nashville City Paper: English Only.

You've created a monster, Nashville (or should we just blame Bellevue?). CM Eric Crafton cannot get enough attention with his long string of education-related memorializing resolutions in council. And a homeschooler's church-lady link love is just not enough for him to get some strong play on the intertubes. His few seconds of fame on Fox are now stale. So, he is jumping back in to save us and soak up any notoriety he can get. The mainstream media is more than willing to give him the attention he craves. He is a spectacle.

In the end, Crafton's English Only ballot initiative is a lightning-rod waste of taxpayer resources, since the Metro Council already passed a resolution affirming English as Metro's official language. Like Ben Cunningham's 2006 property tax referendum, it is designed to prey on people's fears, and it will ultimately serve no good purpose. It is intended to micromanage Metro employees who might choose to use any bilingual skills they may have to perform their jobs more efficiently and get folks through hoops faster. Who really cares if a Metro employee helps someone in the process of learning English get through the system faster by using their native tongue?

When immigrants are already learning proper English at faster rates than native born Americans are, Crafton's ballot initiative is grand-standing designed to further his own political ambitions and ultimately destroy progress in our community.

Look at the monster you've created, Nashville. He thinks that he needs to save us all.

A Liability for the Less Extreme Voter of an August Referendum on "English Only"

Reading this got me to thinking: an August monolinguistic referendum would definitely maximize rightwing mobilization of voters. The collateral damage would likely be the election of a whole new class of social conservatives to join the ones who will stay on the Metro Council. That probably whets the appetite of the Davidson County Republican Party, whose only chance in Metro politics is to script a critical mass of their more rabid supporters. If you thought this Council was combative, fanatical, and unrepresentative, just imagine the new one put in place by record numbers of intemperate voters outside of the broad middle, whipped up into an anti-foreigner froth, many of whom might not have voted the last time around or ever. An English Only referendum--and make no mistake, as Sean Braisted has already alluded, there will be no English First on the ballot--would be a single-issue lightning rod directing an ugly charge right through the city of Nashville. It's almost a doomsday scenario for any semblance of moderation in Metro politics.