Fox News Refers to American children of undocumented immigrants as "Children of the Corn"

[Emit]

Latino Journalists' Group Blasts Fox News Over Undocumented Immigrant Smear



The National Association of Hispanic Journalists has condemned Fox News for smearing the American children of undocumented immigrants as "Children of the Corn." In a post on the association's website, NAHJ president Hugo Balta wrote that the segment was not only "disappointing" but that there "were many things wrong" with it.

In a September 19 segment on Fox News' Special Report, guest host Chris Wallace discussed new data from Los Angeles County officials showing that an "estimated 100,000 children of 60,000 undocumented parents receive aid" in the county. The total aid is projected to cost about $650 million by year's end.

During the segment, several graphics bearing the image of a man appearing to vault over a border fence lined with barbed wire flashed on-screen. Text accompanying the graphic read "Children of the Corn" and "Alien Nation."

In his post criticizing the segment, Balta stated:

There were many things wrong with this segment, beginning with the use of the derogatory term "illegal immigrant" and undocumented in the same breath as if these terms are interchangeable -- of course they're not. That inaccuracy was compounded by the use of a graphic that read "Children of the Corn". There have been many speculations as to what this meant -- but one thing is certain it invoked a negative image.

~snip~

More at http://mediamatters.org/blog/2013/09/25/latino-journalists-group-blasts-fox-news-over-u/196091

[Skinner]

1. "Children of the Corn"? What does that even mean?

WTF?

[Jefferson23]

3. It does not have an established meaning in relationship to immigrants.

But that would not stop the right and Fox from coming up with a negative
slant on corn in their diet.

[Jim Lane]

10. It means that someone at Fox reads Penthouse.

From the Wikipedia article, "Children of the Corn":

"Children of the Corn" is a short story by Stephen King, first published in the March 1977 issue of Penthouse, and later collected in King's 1978 collection Night Shift.[1] Several films have been adapted from the short story and it spawned a successful horror franchise in 1984.

In brief, a nice young couple is driving along on vacation, but they make the mistake of stopping in the wrong town. They are killed in gruesome fashion -- the husband by a demon that lives in the corn fields, and the wife by the children who are the demon's acolytes.

The phrase offers the combination of corn as a Mexican staple (as others have pointed out) and the right wing's horror of "anchor babies" (children whose terrible sin is to have been born here to undocumented parents), all wrapped up in one term with strong negative resonance for a lot of people.

As I explain this now, I find myself wondering why Fox took so long to come up with this tactic. I guess the producers were lingering over other articles in that issue of Penthouse.

[Initech]

7. Something racist I'm sure.

[Emit]

17. scary children?

[Jefferson23]

2. Keep it up..dumb racists. What year does your party think you'll win back the WH?

[Comrade Grumpy]

4. Probably a scary reference to the "Children of the Corn" movies, but...

also, corn has historically been a critical Mesoamerican food crop. I recall Guatemalan novelist Miguel Angel Asturias' "Men of Maize."

The indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica were quite literally children of the corn.

But I don't think Fox was thinking about that.

[Cirque du So-What]

6. Corn! Now we can make whiskey!

Sorry, I'm occasionally overcome with an irresistible urge to drop obscure Firesign Theatre references into everyday conversation.

[cojoel]

8. We've been waiting for this for hundreds of years

I just invented the Tom Collins.

[hatrack]

15. Antelope Freeway, 1/512th mile!

[SoCalDem]

16. Maybe they edited out the word

tortilla..

[TlalocW]

5. Well, if there wasn't a horror movie called, "Children of the Corn..."

And it wasn't Fox calling them that, that could be a poignant name for the children of immigrant laborers as 1) they do rely on harvest work to survive, and 2) many Meso-American cultures believed that their ancestors were created from corn irrigated by the blood of their gods.

However, they're going for the snide horror movie reference probably.

TlalocW

[name not needed]

9. Funny, I always thought the term applied to Fox viewers.

[yuiyoshida]

11. Once again proving....

[REP]

12. Ruth, standing in tears amid the alien corn?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

13. $650,000,000 = $2 per citizen per year. N.T.

[hatrack]

14. Ooh!! Scary!!

Keep on keepin' on, Fox - nail down your cable news dominance by running vague references to frightening brown people on the televisions of 74-year-old white residents of Kentucky, northern Arkansas and rural Nebraska.

The path to decades of riches and fame is the one you're on!!!!