O’Farrill to Chicago's jazz fanatics at festival: We don’t need no stinkin’ wall

It seems we’re truly in the Age of Trump; we can’t escape it no matter where we go.

Arturo O'Farrill works immigration reform, a border wall and Donald Trump-bashing into jazz fest. Photo by Gregory Tejeda

Not even at the Chicago International Jazz Festival, which wrapped up Sunday at the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park.

AMONGST THE PERFORMERS who appeared on the final night was Arturo O’Farrill and his sextet – which consists largely of his sons. Who are the grandchildren of Chico O’Farrill, the legendary bandleader and performer of Afro-Cuban music. A family affair?

It was a pleasant-enough performance, but one that felt the taint of partisan politics. What with the way Arturo felt compelled to work political pot shots related to immigration reform and the possible erection of a barricade along the U.S./Mexico border into his performing patter.

Such as his riff off the ever-quotable line from the 1948 film “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.” With O’Farrill telling his Chicago audience, “We don’t need no stinkin’ badges. We don’t need no stinkin’ border. We don’t need no stinkin’ wall.”

And yes, I know that the line “We don’t need no stinkin’ badges” never actually appeared in the film in that form. But that didn’t stop the jazz gathering from appreciating the humor.

THE LINE DREW applause from the jazz fanatics in attendance, along with O’Farrill’s line that avoided using the name “Donald Trump,” but said we can always tell when he’s being dishonest. “His lips move,” O’Farrill quipped.

And just in case the audience had Trump fanatics amongst it (not that any of them felt compelled to react publicly), O’Farrill said that the fact we as a society are filled with people who disagree, “is what makes us great.”

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Pure political posturing, is all that Trump visit to Mexico ever was

Fact: Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who has targeted Mexicans in the United States as a way of gaining the votes of nativists come Election Day, was in Mexico City on Wednesday and appeared with President Enrique Peña Nieto.

TRUMP: Talking tough, or trash, with Mexico

Fact: There are no other facts. Or at least none that matter.

BECAUSE THE WHOLE point of the event was for everybody involved to be able to tell stories about how tough they were in the presence of the enemigo.

What really happened? Who knows!

In reality, probably nothing of substance happened. The meeting was purely about creating a situation that would allow everybody involved to tell stories meant to make themselves look great.

Which means the relations between the United States and Mexico aren’t likely to be impacted in any significant way by this meeting. It might as well have not happened.

THERE ARE THOSE who want to believe that Trump went to Mexico to try to temper the hostile rhetoric he has spewed throughout the campaign season – from the fact he kicked off his campaign by making denigrating comments about Mexicans in this country to his constant stupid talk about wanting to erect a barricade along the U.S./Mexico border.

It is very clear that the Mexican-American segment of the electorate is all riled up to vote against Trump, and will also include those of other Latin American ethnicities in solidarity against The Donald.

Peña Nieto was more than willing to have a meeting with Trump so he could say later how he told him off and stood up for his people – even those expatriates now living in the United States because the opportunities for a worthy life in the home country were just too lacking.

PENA NIETO: Smacking down, or wimping out to, Trump

While Trump wants to be able to say how he faced off with the Mexican president and told him in no uncertain terms how Mexico WILL BE PAYING to build that Trump-desired wall and how he had better learn to like the idea.

WHAT AMUSED ME about this event in Mexico City was that there really wasn’t an effort for the two men to talk. The language barrier was in place.

The press conference format was in Spanish, and Trump didn’t make any effort to speak en Español. They were talking past each other. They could just as easily have been talking about Mexican League baseball batting averages or the measurements of the latest Miss Mexico in the Miss Universe competition, and it would have had the same significance as any talk about the issues.

I found it interesting that Peña Nieto made a point of saying Trump never brought up talk of “the wall” during their time they were face-to-face. While Trump insists he did.

Of course, he waited until after he was back across the border and in Phoenix – speaking English again and talking to a gathering of electoral fanatics who will want to believe anything Trump chooses to tell them.

BECAUSE THERE WERE those people who complained how Trump didn’t bring along any of the reporter-types who have been traveling about the country to cover his campaign. Likely, Trump didn’t want any outside observers trying to interject fact into the tale he wanted to tell.

Which was of a weak, meaningless nation being put in its place by none other than Donald Trump himself.

While Peña Nieto wants it known that Trump is nothing more than a loudmouthed Yanqui, an out-and-out blowhard and un gringo pendejo.

Which makes it seem that the sad truth of this confrontation is that U.S./Mexico relations are probably about as low a priority for Trump if he were to become our nation’s president, no matter how much nonsense rhetoric he spews about the issue in coming weeks.

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Our friends, the Mexico drug cartels? Or will ISIS soon be at O’Hare?

I got my laugh Friday from The Inquisitr, a website that I suspect likes to think it’s giving us serious news but seems to have a sense of the garish in terms of how things get reported.

What I found humorous was their story headlined, ISIS Plans to Invade United States through Mexico, But Drug Cartels Could Fight Back.

THEY’RE CLAIMING THAT the militant Islamic State organization that is the newest troublemaker in the news is slowly, but surely, building up their forces by getting people into Mexico.

One day, those people will be large enough to be a military-like force who will then move north into the southwestern United States – then beyond.

First, Truth or Consequences. Then Phoenix and Albuquerque. Pretty soon, they’ll be marching down Michigan Avenue and desecrating the lions out front of the Art Institute of Chicago and camping in Millennium Park – while pondering the “decadent Western” mind who created the concept of “the Bean.”

Of course, the web site threw the potential oddball factor into the equation. To get to the United States, they’d have to go through those northern regions where drug cartels have been fighting for control with the Mexican military for many years.

WOULD THOSE DRUG dealers object so much to anyone trying to come through their “turf” that they’d wind up providing resistance? It almost reminds me of that 1990 film “The Rocketeer,” which had a scene where gangsters suddenly found themselves fighting alongside FBI agents against a common enemy – Nazis.

Would the future security of the United States wind up being supplemented by the same people who are spreading so much of the illicit drugs that are causing so many social problems in our society?

Writing these past few paragraphs has been unusual, because what I have basically spewed is a nonsense theory – albeit one that I’m sure the conservative ideologues of our society are way too eager to believe. Just look at the way Texas Gov. Rick Perry has made claims that some Islamic State agents already have entered the United States through Texas!

They have been spreading for years the idea that these subversive elements of our world would use Mexico to try to get at the United States. Usually as part of their cockamamie idea to fortify, and militarize, the U.S./Mexico border – while also deporting everyone who doesn’t fit their image of who ought to be allowed to consider themselves an “American.”

IF ANYTHING, THIS ought to be evidence enough of why we ought to be encouraging of friendly relations with Mexico, so that our interests and theirs remain as one. Unless we want to have to count on a real-life scenario like the 1942 film “Soy Puro Mexicano” (where a man at his local bar overhears talk at another table, realizes the people are Nazi agents with plans to enter the United States, then spends the rest of the film fighting them off – because no self-respecting Mexican would want to be a Nazi!).

On a more serious note, it is encouraging to learn that a Department of Homeland Security official testified this week before a Senate committee that the current intelligence level and capability along the border is capable of handling a threat – should it occur.

Many news organizations (including the New York Daily News, CNN and the Daily Mail, to name a few) have reported that this is more the latest topic for the kind of people who take Twitter too seriously! It also should be noted that federal officials are more concerned about those people with ties to the Islamic State organization who manage to get passports, then catch airplane flights into a U.S. airport – just like any other international tourist.

Does this mean that if there is an “invasion,” it’s more likely to be with a group of these people flying into O’Hare International Airport?

I CAN JUST see it now. They get off their flight, seize control of the food court (where they declare the concept of stuffed “Chicago-style” pizza to be “decadent”) and work their way to taxicabs that they commandeer.

Where they then proceed to get stuck in rush hour traffic on the Kennedy Expressway.

Be honest; that scenario is about as legitimate as the notion that an ISIS “army” is going to be wading through the Rio Grande any time soon!

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Roland rails against virtual Wall

Sen. Roland Burris, D-Ill., is keeping himself busy this week, using his participation in a Senate committee hearing to question whether or not the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on a “virtual wall” along the U.S./Mexico border has been a waste.

Burris and Sen Joe Lieberman of Connecticut were the two most outspoken critics in Washington on the issue. It seems Roland wants to do something to get himself noticed for his partial term in Washington.

I WILL CREDIT Burris for showing a little bit of sense on this particular issue, even though I realize he has nothing to lose by speaking out because the rest of his life is going to be spent in retirement back in Chicago.

This site’s sister weblog, The South Chicagoan (http://southchicagoan.blogspot.com/) offers up more details about Burris’ activity.

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