You might think they would have learned their lesson by now. At the end of 2005 Republicans in the House of Representatives passed a bill that cracked down on illegal immigration, while doing nothing to regularise the position of the 12m or so people, mostly of Hispanic origin, who were living and working inside the United States without the proper papers, or to create a mechanism for allowing in people from Mexico and other southern neighbours to work with temporary permits. The bill never became law, but its one-sided nature helped stamp the Republicans (92% of whom voted for it in the House) as an anti-immigrant party. In April 2006 Latinos organised a day of protests in more than 100 cities; more than 500,000 people marched in Los Angeles alone. In the 2008 election 67% of Hispanics voted for Barack Obama.Now it is all happening again. Until now, the detection of illegal immigrants has invariably been a matter for the federal authorities.Republican-governed Arizona has just enacted a tough new law of its own: it requires state police to check the papers of anyone whose immigration status they have "reasonable" cause to doubt. Opponents say this is sure to lead to racial profiling. The bill is popular with angry white locals, so much so that the previously reform-minded John McCain, who is running for re-election to the Senate in Arizona, has not dared to oppose it. But in a country that is turning Hispanic at a rapid rate (by mid-century white Anglos will be another minority), the Republicans are once again hellbent on being on the wrong side of demography. The backlash will surely last longer than any bump in popularity gained by looking tough. The marches have begun again: on May 1st, up to a million people across the country took to the streets, by no means all of them Hispanic.For those who yearn for America to have a sensible immigration policy, the Arizona bill is a reason for both despair and hope. The first is easier to spell out. By any measure, Arizona’s offering is deeply illiberal. It would require all non-U. S. citizens to carry documents proving their immigration status, and would require police to check those papers in any contact with anyone who might be illegal. The obvious danger is that it would lead to the systematic harassment of brown-skinned people, including legal immigrants. As for illegals, it would simply drive even more of them underground. It would also criminalise anyone who shelters or helps illegals. Even the plan’s fans acknowledge that this is the toughest such bill ever passed in America.Paradoxically, the reason for hope is much the same. The bill is such a shocker that it is restarting the national debate. The Arizona law passed largely because the government is failing to do its job. The border is not secure; employers can and do hire people who have no legal right to be in America; and cross-border crime is on the rise. Better enforcement is needed. But on both political and moral grounds, better enforcement can only he part of a comprehensive immigration reform. The 12m illegals cannot be wished away, but must be given a chance to earn their citizenship; a guest-worker programme is needed to match the demands of employers with the desire of Mexicans and others to work. Mr. Obama’s administration has talked a lot about an immigration bill. It is now long past time that they produced one. Otherwise, expect to see more Arizonas. The Arizona bill is believed to be().
A. intolerant.
B. deceitful.
C. ironic.
D. illegal.
Kathryn Harrison is a wonderful writer. It seems important to get that on the table right away, since for most readers, her name will elicit one fact: Kathryn Harrison wrote a memoir about having slept with her father. Back in 1997, that notoriously hyper publicized book, "The Kiss"—in which she recounted an affair she had in her 20’s with the father she had not seen since she was a child—set critics scratching furiously at the welts it raised in the culture, largely neglecting the book in the process for its lurid cover story. Skip to next paragraphIn the hubbub, few pointed out that "The Kiss" is a pretty terrific memoir. Poetic and compressed, it is not a pointed finger, or an artless blurt, but a grimly hypnotic horror story, making human what might in other hands seem merely grotesque. That’s Harrison’s particular gift as a writer; and while her output, from memoirs and essays and novels, has been of varying quality, she has continually circled around her central, obsessive themes: narcissism, family violation, sexual taboo and physical suffering. For better or worse, this is a writer who veers toward what others find distasteful; in her novels, she has found parallel torments everywhere in history, from foot-binding in China ("The Binding Chair") to the Inquisition ("Poison").The setting of "Envy" is less exotic. Will Moreland, a New York psychoanalyst, thinks at once too much and too little. His son has died. His twin brother—a world-famous swimmer—is estranged. His wife is distant. In fact, everything in this grief-stained but otherwise normal existence feels a little distant, and Will himself appears, if not precisely unreliable, then slightly clueless. In his struggle to wriggle out from his own anxieties, his remarks can seem like witty meta-comments on the narrative itself: "Yes, he’s obsessed with sex. How else could he escape the inside of his head, where every thought refuses to be fleeting and instead waits its turn to be hyperarticulated, edited, revised and then annotated like some nightmare hybrid of Talmudic commentary and Freudian case study"In the spellbinding opening chapters, Will attends his college reunion and confronts an old girlfriend who may or may not have gotten pregnant by him years back. The ex is a grade-A wench, and their run-in is a startling rat-a-tat of mutual accusation. "Ironic that she’d become a dermatologist," Will thinks. "She’d always had a personality like a rash, itchy, chafing, the kind of woman who just won’t let you get comfortable." She ends the scene (and it does feel like a scene—the best elements of "Envy" are its most theatrical) with the fair-enough remark, "You are an excellent example of why it is that people think shrinks are nuts."The pages that follow ignore this electric showdown, or at least repress it. There’s a lot going on here, perhaps too much: a married couple drifting apart in grief, tension between Will and his philandering father, identical twins with non identical faces, a patient whose seductive behavior spills insistently over the edges of her shrink’s couch. And despite Will’s agitated attempts to interrogate the meaning of his life, he is surrounded by people who would prefer that he stop his inquiries immediately. As much detective as psychoanalyst, he’s too blinded by over thinking to give in to his own intuition.Then abruptly, with one traumatic sexual sequence, these disparate story lines cohere to reveal a new pattern: a Rorschach plot, in essence. The book’s muted family problems become elements in a Greekish tragedy, one filled with the tropes of sexual violation for which Harrison is best known. It’s like one of those souvenir 1950’s pens that tilt upside down to strip an innocent cheesecake model to her pornographic double, and Harrison’s witty, lucid, poetic sentences do carry us quite a long way through passages rife with the kind of ickiness bound to alienate some readers and rivet others.Unfortunately, her consistently skillful descriptions aren’t quite enough to make the novel pay off in the end. As heightened as this hidden plot turns out to be, it is frustratingly formulaic at its deepest level. It’s a dream horror that finally feels all too dreamlike, too embeddedly symbolic to have the pang of real life. And when the villain of the book is unmasked—and there is a villain, as blackhearted as a medieval troll—it’s disappointing to find a sociopath standing behind that particular door. So rank an antagonist renders the whole question of analytical motivation moot: the human flaws of the other characters pale by contrast; their struggles seem weightless next to such grave crimes.Still. there are standout moments here, mainly in the most chaotic and unmediated confrontations: the sequences, especially, in which a waifish, tattooed, sardonic, compulsively sexual graduate student is transformed into the world’s most disturbing therapy patient. What finally marks the book is Harrison’s abandonment of the tragic mode. After a series of lurid turns that would leave most families in seizures of distress, her characters do not collapse, or brutalize one another. Instead, they fulfill Will’s deepest psychoanalytic desires, and confess—reeling out monologues far less con vincing than the showdowns that came before. We are left with the loving attempts of well-meaning people to heal their wounds. In real life, that would be a beautiful ending; but in a novel soaked so deeply in horror, it feels too much like wishful thinking. What does Will Moreland think of his old girlfriend rash, itchy, chafing().
Attractive
B. Seductive
C. Hard to stay with
D. charmless