In a funny confluence of pseudo-intellectualism and the freedom that the internet offers to its teeming subscribers, I have come to the conclusion that most of the supposed internet commentators are just ignorant people looking for hits – and getting heard through unconventional ways – by obsessing, to the point of idiocy, over another person’s business.
So, it wasn’t all that surprising to see that Ann Coulter, in trying to make a point about Obamacare website, decided to drag Nigeria along with her. What better way to get the hits and be controversial than poking the ‘bloody Nigerians’? The buzz and anger generated by Ted Cruz’s badly conceived joke about Nigerians was enough to give people like Coulter a sense that this was going to work out as well. She was right after all; her twitter handle was bombarded with several messages that would have confirmed that she got heard.
Several of Coulter’s prejudices resonate well enough and are not exactly new or original. Her application however shows a deep-seated hatred for Nigerians –and blacks in the larger sense, while the Obamacare and Ted Cruz provided her the best platform to air them.
Statistics on internet fraud and scams are however curious. Take this list of top 12 countries that internet scams originates from, it did not support her assertions as Nigeria came as an afterthought. And then, lists of notable con artists and drug cheats did not really agree with her ill-informed prejudices against Nigerians. Grudgingly, I will accept that some online scam emails originate from Nigeria, but we even failed to make top twelve in the list. Why, then, is Coulter fixated on Nigerians?
The isolated statistics that Ann Coulter would have anyone listening to her believe was that of 2011 where migrants from Nigeria was more than those from the UK by 98. What she however failed to expand on, while picking on Nigerians, was that between 1986 and 2012, UK ranked higher than Nigeria in the number of immigrants to the US (383,037 to 227,497) with countries like Pakistan, Cuba, Haiti, Iran, Jamaica and Colombia effectively having a higher quota than Nigeria.
An easy look at the table also shows that of the immigrants (40,381,574) in the US at the time Coulter quoted, 2011, Mexico represents 28.95% of that number while Mexico, India, Philippines, China, Vietnam, El Salvador, Korea and Cuba all combined to make up 53.7% (21,698,738). Of the 84 recorded countries with high population in the US, Nigeria was 32nd with just 0.57% of the immigrant population, and one begin to wonder why Coulter failed to pick on any of those countries if the massive immigration to the US was her problem.
Since she was talking about health and crimes to specifically put down US immigration law while reserving most of her bile for Nigerians, it is important to look at simple facts – from professionals – that nullified whatever half-baked theories she is clinging to. According to Wikipedia, Julian Lincoln Simon’s study in 1995 shows that immigrants pay more into the health system than they take out, while “Researchers have also found what is known as the “healthy immigrant effect”, in which immigrants in general tend to be healthier than individuals born in the U.S.”
Studies have also shown that there is a lower incarceration rate for immigrants in the US; with the “Immigration Policy Center, citing data from the 2000 US Census, native-born American men between 18 and 39 are five times more likely to be incarcerated than immigrants in the same demographic.”
What then is Ann Coulter’s obsession with Nigerians? Her protest/complaint about Obamacare, which incidentally should have been objectively pursued, became a load of tosh when she failed to effectively hold down a topic to vent on: Scam, Nigerians, Obamacare, American politics, website malfunction or whatever she had in mind at the beginning of the piece.
Coulter needed someone to blame her idleness and low-brain activity on, and Nigerians – being the butt of several idiotic jokes recently – provided her a perfect platform. She never pretended to present fact. In fact, except from culling a list of names which only one sounds Nigerian, her other ammunitions were just baseless assertions, excitingly-worded aggressiveness and extremely amusing drivel. I bet she doesn’t know that Nigerian-Americans are the most educated of all groups in the US and that they are excelling in different fields that are of importance to the US economy.
If not that Nigerians exclusively look out for whatever any irrelevant list says about them, we wouldn’t be listening to people like Ann Coulter. One moment, the President is getting congratulatory messages in the media for making a list of 100 most influential in the world and the next, they are disagreeing with the World Bank assessment that 100million destitute are in Nigeria. Why are we so obsessed about what they think of us really? Why can’t the government, with the stupendous and embarrassing earnings coming in, provide leadership and take the fight against corruption serious to shut up the likes of Ann Coulter?
I’m pretty sure Benjamin Franklin, as gleefully enthused by Coulter, will have to crack his brain to recognize some of the names she listed out; His concern however, were he to be alive, would be the shameful vituperative article where she did her best to demean some of the qualities that have been religiously worshipped by Americans for centuries. She doesn’t care if there are scammers; her point is that they should be kept in the family. She wants an all-American scammers club.
In her quest to lay the blame of not having an exclusive all-American scammers club squarely at the feet of Nigerians – the jobless but very determined ‘graduate’ beef-roll seller on the street of Lagos, the new breed of entrepreneurs that are working assiduously to change the image of their country, the Doctor turned Cleaner on the street of New York to make ends meet and their likes – she exposed her ignorance on the workings of her government and country.
Rather than blaming the shoe for pinching, Ann Coulter would do well to question her judgment of the purchase in the first place. If Obama and his policies rile her that much, maybe the next best person to blame should be George W. Bush Jnr who laid the platform for his emergence by bastardizing their economy and embarking on a vendetta rush around the world looking for manufactured weapons of mass destruction.
She should remember that for every successful email scam from “the Nigerians” she mentioned there is an avaricious, corrupt and covetous American at the end of it. Someone whose only aim, also, is to profit where he did not sow; someone who will provide a safe haven for stolen/looted funds, unclaimed family wealth and take advantage of a supposed illiterate who knows little about the trappings of the financial market.
To rid herself of her obsession with Nigerians; I will advise her to probe the light of her vituperative prejudices on the thousands of weird and absolutely ridiculous news coming out of the US daily. Paris Hilton, Lady Gaga, George Zimmerman, the Kardashians, Playboy mansion, Kanye West, Lance Armstrong, Edward Snowden, Marion Jones et al should provide her the needed material to pen something deserving of her talents, which to me, says so much of her lack of it. Now, STFU!
I’m @deboadejugbe
The post Debo Adejugbe: Ann Coulter, for excitingly-worded ignorance and amusing drivel, Press 1 now! appeared first on Ekekeee.