Leftist amnesty-pushing Rep. Luis Gutierrez of Chicago is either a rooster or a civil rights idol, according to his journalistic booster Manuel Roig-Franzia of The Washington Post. This is the same reporter that's tried to trash Sen. Marco Rubio for allegedly lying about his parents.
"The 59-year-old Illinois congressman stands 5 feet 6 inches tall, which is only one reason he got his nickname, 'El Gallito' — the little fighting rooster,” oozed the front-page Style section story on Monday. He’s either a chicken...or the Latino Martin Luther King? That's right, the Puerto Rican MLK:
Gutierrez’s centrality in the nation’s immigration debate prompts some activists to describe him as a Martin Luther King Jr. of the Latino community. It’s a nod to the tens of thousands of immigrants he and his staff have helped fill out citizenship applications and to his persistence in the often heated fight over immigration reform.
Roig-Franzia is helping Gutierrez sell a new memoir, and there is a bit of anti-Obama posturing in it: “The book, in parts, reads like a political indictment of President Obama, portraying him as a defensive, cavalier and calculating politician who betrayed his promises on immigration reform.” He added:
“I knew a long time ago I wasn’t going to be at the head table at a state dinner,” Gutierrez says during a thoughtful moment later in the day. “I knew I wasn’t going to get a good seat on Air Force One. I’m not going to play a round of golf with the president. I get that.”
Later, Roig-Franzia warmly notes that in college, Gutierrez "was the one with the Che Guevara and Malcolm X posters on his dorm walls, the one who wanted Puerto Rico to disengage from the United States and become an independent nation."
The story ended with Gutierrez and his buddies feeling warm and fuzzy about sitting down in the street so they could make a show of getting arrested:
Mid-thought, he pops off the bench and bear-hugs Raul Grijalva, the Arizona Democratic congressman. Grijalva was arrested with Gutierrez and Rangel at the immigration demonstration earlier in the week, and they’re still animated by that moment of civil disobedience.
“Una buena memoria,” Gutierrez says as Grijalva moves on. A good memory.
Gutierrez takes a few steps toward the exit and runs into John Lewis, the Democratic congressman from Georgia and African American civil rights legend. Lewis was arrested with Gutierrez, too.
“He led me there,” Lewis says in that low, sonorous voice of his, nodding toward Gutierrez.
Lewis has been arrested dozens of times, tracing a line through the history of the civil rights movement. But does getting arrested accomplish anything now? Does being a troublemaker pay? Gutierrez thinks so.
