Editor’s note: Without warning, Onion Publisher Emeritus T. Herman Zweibel violated his state-imposed retirement and mandated space for a weekly column which he will send via modem from the medical wing of his 800-acre estate. As per his explicit instructions, these columns are printed in their entirety and without copy-editing.
When a war’s on, there’s no excuse for not standing by your country, right or wrong. The Japs are our enemy now, whether we want them to be or not, and it’s our duty to mistrust them.
Mexicans are no better.
I’m not quite the fighting man I used to be. The Mexican–American War was my war. And I fought hard. Remember the Alamo! Go, Fighting Eighth!
Well, I’m still fighting Mexicans. Now it’s Yolanda, my damned nurse.
Bring me iodine, you cow! My IV is infected! I’m going to get gangrene. Your Latin jungle voodoo medicine can’t help me. I need chemicals!
She’s enormous, and colors her hair an unnatural yellowish brown that makes her look more like a Vaudeville dancing girl than a Mexican. I can’t understand a word she says, with her ooga-booga tortilla-village talk. I glare at her blankly, but that’s only because of my lowered muscle control. Inside, I have death in my eyes as she babbles and bobs around my bed, changing my bed pan and wiping away the drool.
Is this why I fought in the Mexican-American War? Is this why I rode Tinker’s Hill and lost my best friend to the bayonet of a Brownita? To be cared for in my last years by the devilish brown enemy herself? I think not!
Write your Congressman. Cry out from the hilltops. We will not stand for enemies of these United States fraternizing with citizens. Put the Mexicans in internment camps and lock the doors. Throw them in there with the Japanese and the Germans. Throw the Irish in just for good measure.
But first get me some god-damned iodine.
T. Herman Zweibel, the great grandson of Onion founder Friedrich Siegfried Zweibel, was born in 1868, became editor of The Onion at age 20, and persisted in various editorial posts until his launching into space in 2001. Zweibel’s name became synonymous with American business success in the 20th century. Many consider him the “Father Of American Journalism,” also the title of his well-known 1943 biography, written by Norman Rombauer.
