Daily Beast Unclear On The Concept Of Anchor Babies
10/20/2011
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Mickey Kaus writes, in a post entitled Dumbest Daily Beast yet:

“Tina Brown’s youthful webworkers, trying to come up with a feature riffing off the Republican debate, have produced a slideshow of “anchor babies.” The only problem is that, embarrassingly, they missed the part in the definition of an “anchor baby” (including the one they themselves cite) where it notes that an “anchor baby” is the child of illegal immigrants born on American soil (the idea being that having an American citizen child anchors the entire otherwise-illegal family by insulating them from deportation).

Is even one of the celebrities offered by Daily Beast as “anchor babies” an anchor baby? I doubt it. If Gov. Nikki Haley’s immigrant parents or Colin Powell’s immigrant parents were illegals, I think we would know by now. Same for Olympia Snowe, Joan Rivers (“Russian parents”), Michelle Kwan, and Larry King.  “

The Larry King reference is particularly weird:"Larry King (Russian mother, Austro-Hungarian father."

While there was such a  thing as an Austro-Hungarian empire, there was no such thing as an Austro-Hungarian. I looked it up, and Larry King's parents were born in Belarus, one in Minsk, the other in Pinsk.

The history of Belarus, which you may also know as Byelorussia, is complex, but it was never part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

But that's an aside, it's just another example of ignorance which I suppose we'll have to file under "kids these days."

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