Giuliani: Obama's Support Of Bilingualism Reinforces Anti-Americanism

Oh really?

Rudy's back.

GIULIANI: This is why he's a popular candidate in Europe, because there is such an anti-American feeling, he's sort of capturing that. The reality is that this is a country that should speak English. Of course immigrants should learn English. That's a problem for some, it is not a problem for others. There should be a lot of emphasis put on that. If we can learn an extra language or two, that's a great thing.

MITCHELL: The fact is that American kids are not competing on the world stage with the kind of jobs they need because they aren't learning other languages.

GIULIANI: But he is making an assumption that isn't true, That all immigrants are learning English. They're not. All you have to do is travel America and you'll find out a lot of people aren't learning English. Most immigrant families want their children to learn English. That has to be done. He's kind of sliding over that as if that's unimportant. That is very important. Then if we're going to learn another language, that's wonderful. If we can learn French or Spanish or Italian or German or Chinese or Russian, that's a terrific thing. But English should be the basic language of this country. He's kind of sliding over that.

First of all, Obama was speaking to a group of American students that ALREADY KNOW ENGLISH. He suggested that they learn Spanish to give him more skillsets. To make themselves more marketable.

I written about my great-niece. She's all of 3 months old. Her mother, my niece, is Black. Her Daddy is Mexican-American. I've bought only two types of children's books for her:

Black themed

and

Books in Spanish.

She's going to be bi-lingual. Period.

I do believe Obama made a misstep. He should have said MANDARIN, considering that the Chinese OWN US. Spanish was a dumb thing for him to say, considering that it was red meat for a certain segment of the population, who then totally misrepresented what Obama meant by his comments.

There is a joke that goes:

What do you call a Middle-Class person that only speaks one language?

An American.

I DO wish that I'd taken seriously the chances to learn a language; it's something that I regret. I learned enough to get by, but not be seriously fluent. You best believe Senator and Mrs. Obama are making sure that the Obama Daughters are learning another language at Lab School. But, I guess to bring that up, would feed into that whole 'elitst' thing, instead of feeding into the ' I'm preparing my children for a global economy' thing.