AS A PASSIONATE ADVOCATE for the inclusion of an assortment of fruits and vegetables in the diet in generous portions as part of a healthy lifestyle, and as a strong supporter of the agricultural sector in the United States, I was as appalled as any fruit and vegetable farmer might be (and many were) upon reading an unsigned editorial in the Los Angeles Times dated October 11, 2010. The editorial alleged that a U.S. congressman from Iowa, in a House subcommittee hearing on farm labor, suggested that Americans could do without undocumented workers if we just stopped eating fruits and vegetables. It was, indeed, a ludicrous thing for a congressman to say.

The only problem is -- the congressman didn't say that.

My first reaction when I read the editorial was a suspicion that there could be some self-interest at play here on the part of the congressman; that being from Iowa, he was perhaps pandering to his corporate farming constituents who would love for us all to stop buying California-grown produce and subsist on a diet of Iowa-grown, machine-harvested corn, grains and soybeans.

But after going to the source and listening to an archived C-Span video of the hearing (I have this nasty habit of verifying my sources), I discovered that the L.A. Times editorial had misrepresented what the congressman said.

Here's what the L.A. Times editorial alleged:

A particularly bizarre moment in the immigration debate came and went almost unnoticed…. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who opposes legalization for the undocumented workers who plant, pick, harvest and package a substantial portion of the nation's crops and produce, offered this alternative: Americans could simply wean themselves from fruits and vegetables. Salad, broccoli, spinach, tomatoes, etc., cannot be all that important to human health, King suggested, huffing, "I'm wondering how the Eskimos got along all those centuries without fruits and vegetables!"

But Mr. King did not suggest that we do without fruits and vegetables. True, he does not approve of amnesty (or what the supporters of the legislation under consideration in the hearing call "earned status adjustment") for undocumented workers who entered the country illegally. But he believes (rightly or wrongly) that there are other ways to meet the labor needs of fruit and vegetable growers and still keep their operations viable. Nor at any time during his remarks did he, in any degree of seriousness, question the health benefits of fruits and vegetables in the diet, even less the right of consumers to purchase and consume fruits and vegetables or whatever other foods they choose.

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It is true that King wondered aloud "how the Eskimos got along all those centuries without fruits and vegetables." But he was most certainly not huffing when he said it; on the contrary, he  was attempting a bit of light humor. And that exclamation mark the L.A. Times inserted at the end of the quoted line was totally without justification, suggesting an emphasis that was not there. That constitutes a deliberate misquote on the part of the paper's editorialist!

In actuality, King was making a good-natured, totally inoffensive, and apparently impromptu quip -- a throw-away line, if you will -- before starting into his prepared remarks, which focused on the demonstrated willingness of Americans to do hard work and to take on tough, grueling, dirty jobs when they need to be done. Not once in his entire statement did he suggest that Americans should wean themselves from fruits and vegetables as a solution to reliance on undocumented farm labor. Obviously, the unidentified L.A. Times editorial writer just made that up.

Not satisfied with merely bearing false witness, the L.A. Times editorial descends further into the gutter by invoking an offensive stereotype of Eskimos and implying that it was Congressman King who had done the stereotyping. "A diet of whale blubber is certainly a novel idea, but it seems unlikely to be embraced," the editorialist wrote, insinuating that the idea came from King. But King's only reference to the traditional Eskimo diet was its dearth of plant food. It was the L.A. Times writer who equated that diet with whale blubber, whereas the traditional diet of Eskimos was in reality much more complex than that, and the traditional Eskimo culture was much more complex and sophisticated than that stereotype implies.

If a conservative columnist or commentator made such a stereotypical aspersion of an ethnic minority group as did the writer of the L.A. Times editorial, he would be excoriated by the liberal press for hate speech.

The specific legislation under discussion in the House subcommittee hearings to which the L.A. Times piece referred was H.B. 2414, the AgJOBS bill, which has been in committee since June 2009. The provisions of the bill deserve discussion on their merits, and I will address those in an in-depth analysis in the near future here on PerspicacityPress.com, examining primarily the question of whether the legislation as written will, in fact, provide agricultural employers with the solutions to their labor problems that its authors and advocates in Congress and the liberal media are promising. For the moment, I will just say that it has some good things in it and some very bad things in it, and it needs extensive revision before it moves out of committee and on to the floor of the House.

But the Los Angeles Times has its own agenda for supporting H.B. 2414 that has very little to do with keeping fruit and vegetable farming operations viable. It is shameful that rather than make an honest case for his position on the issues involved, the writer of the L.A. Times editorial would choose to lead off his piece with a deliberately dishonest characterization. Clearly, the intent was to distract readers from the issues and to garner gut-level emotional support for the bill from casual readers by trying to make an opponent of the bill appear moronic. It is a tactic used much too often in politics and, regrettably, in journalism as well -- or what purports to be journalism -- and those who use it need to be called to account.

In the end, whether AgJOBS is or is not good for farmers, whether it is or is not good for farm workers, and whether it is or is not good for the country has absolutely nothing to do with how many centuries Eskimos survived on a fruit-and-vegetable-deficient diet and even less to do with whether one of the bill's opponents made a humorous allusion to the traditional Eskimo diet.

The body of the L.A. Times editorial does make some good points, as well as some questionable ones, that are relevant to the issue, for those who bother to go beyond the first three paragraphs -- which, of course, the writer of the L.A. Times editorial knew most readers never do. I will examine each of those points in my coming analysis on the AgJOBS legislation.

But the last paragraph in the L.A. Times editorial stoops to even lower depths. It states: "King's Eskimo diet musings, while laughable [So now he admits King made his remarks in jest, not in a huff] are probably an accurate indicator [Probably an accurate indicator? How's that for totally prejudicial conjecture!] of just how far congressional Republicans are willing to contort logic [But it was the L.A. Times editorial that contorted logic and falsely and maliciously attributed the contortion to a congressional Republican] to thwart sensible immigration reform."

Aha! The writer of the L.A. Times editorial finally admits that from his perspective, the AgJOBS bill is not about fruit and vegetable farmers or the American diet after all. For farmers, AgJOBS legislation may be about ag jobs. But for the L.A. Times and others in the leftist media establishment, as for those in the ruling Democratic entrenchment in Washington, it is all about "immigration reform." And to them, immigration reform means amnesty and eventual citizenship, the sooner the better, for as many as possible of those who have entered or will enter this country illegally, with preference over those who have been obeying the law and waiting in line. It's something the Leftists want desperately, to assure the perpetuity of their rule, and it is something they are going after in every way they can.

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