Immigrants in Arizona were never "required by law to carry papers or risk being charged with a crime and detained," as the first line of this article incorrectly suggests.

AZ SB 1070, to which the (typically for The Stranger) uniformed author is presumably referring, was signed into law but never actually enacted. As far as I know most of its most controversial components are still in legal proceedings and if the bill ever sees the light of day (in anything resembling its original form) it will have been severely weakened.

This is a perfect example of someone reaching erroneous conclusions formed around their own pre-existing prejudices based on snippets of things they've heard others say.

Whether or not I support SB 1070 is not the point I'm trying to make here though (I don't support it at all). But rather that The Stranger, and publications like it, are essentially the far left's versions of FOX News. They use flip, misleading (or flat untruthful) statements (see this article's first line) and vitriolic language to stir up a monolithic indoctrinated base. For every time FOX calls someone a socialist, unpatriotic or a terrorist-supporter The Stranger is calling someone a fascist, gay-basher or bloodthirsty warhawk.

Just because I tend to agree with The Stranger more than FOX do I think that makes The Stranger any more morally right in their moronic, myopic, destructive, counterproductive approach to *cough* journalism? Absolutely not.

Go Ming! And go Singapore!

(By which I mean the people and the utopian ideals of liveable multiculturalism we grew up with, not the authoritarian nature of the government.)

@1 Thanks. I'm altering the wording of the lead, and you're right, I wasn't up on the particulars. We're correcting the text.

For symbolic power, though, the passing of the law (and it was indeed passed, although it was blocked while it is being legally challenged) is by no means empty -- and in fact makes the same point. So I am a bit perplexed by your hyperbolic reaction.

Excellent review, Jen. I was mesmerized by this show; it offered a glimpse into a world I knew nothing about and delighted even as it confounded. Its inherent and unforced multiculturalism is something not often seen in the Northwest, and a reminder I'm thankful for.

Jen,

My (admittedly) hyperbolic reaction wasn't really to this article itself, just a general trend at The Stranger. The distortion in the first line of your article was just the straw that broke the camel's back for me -- you didn't really deserve the brunt of it.

I'm sure you didn't mean to distort facts, but the truth is it happens a lot in this paper, and because the distortions always bank to a certain ideological side the end result sometimes feels like a define-our-own-reality pep rally for Progressive values.

And yes, you're correct, in this case the symbolic power of the passage alone was significant, as is the bill's continued popularity (even just in hypothetical opinion polls). But also significant is the fact that our legal system stood up to the tyranny of the majority and stopped the bill from becoming enacted. As bad as one part of our governmental system may have acted (in this case the AZ legislature and Governor) the checks of the judicial system worked, more intelligent minds prevailed and the minority was protected. That, certainly, is not a mere side-note (though I understand it's not really pertinent to the point you're making in this review).