A U.S. Senate candidate asked people to prove her racist assertion wrong. And boy, did they ever.
Sometimes a politician says or does something so brazenly gross that you have to do a double take to make sure it really happened. Take, for instance, this tweet from Lauren Witzke, a GOP candidate for the U.S. Senate from Delaware. Witzke defeated the party's endorsed candidate to win the primary, has been photographed in a QAnon t-shirt, supports the conspiracy theory that 9/11 was a U.S. government inside operation, and has called herself a flat earther.
So that's neat.
Witzke has also proposed a 10-year total halt on immigration to the U.S., which is absurd on its face, but makes sense when you see what she believes about immigrants. In a tweet this week, Witzke wrote, "Most third-world migrants can not assimilate into civil societies. Prove me wrong."
First, let's talk about how "civil societies" and developing nations are not different things, and to imply that they are is racist, xenophobic, and wrong. Not to mention, it has never been a thing to refer people using terms like "third-world." That's a somewhat outdated term for developing nations, and it was never an adjective to describe people from those nations even when it was in use.
Next, let's see how Twitter thwapped Lauren Witzke straight into the 21st century by proving her wrong in the most delicious way. Not only did people share how they or their relatives and friends have successfully "assimilated," but many showed that they went way, way beyond that.
Some shared their academic credentials, which is not the only sign of assimilating well, but is certainly a well-respected one. Here's a sampling:
One of people's favorite responses came from Viet Thanh Nguyen, who arrived in the U.S. as a baby with his refugee parents. He won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for his novel "The Sympathizer" in 2016.
One person pointed out that the iPhone Witzke used to send her tweet was created by the son of a Syrian immigrant. (The father of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, was a political refugee from Syria.)
Another shared a report that immigrants outperform American-born citizens in key measures of financial success.
Others flipped the assertion around on Witzke, pointing out that her tweet proves she herself isn't functioning well in civil society. And she's not alone.
Others flipped the idea of a "third world" country altogether, pointing out that the U.S. is not exactly a bastion of civil society these days. (Fact check: Gun violence here is not worse than *any* developing nation, but it is worse than many of them.
But perhaps the most comprehensive response, which also happens to be one of the shortest, is this one:
This country does prove her wrong. The U.S. has long been a nation that welcomes immigrants from all over the world, and many of us see that fact as one of our greatest strengths. Immigrants have started some of our most successful businesses, enriched our communities with restaurants and shops that give us a taste of another part of the world, and helped fuel some of our most innovative ideas and products. The primary thing that makes "assimilation" difficult for immigrants, no matter where they come from, is hostile attitudes toward them. All Ms. Witzke's tweet does is make it harder for migrants to do what she's saying they can't do. You can't make it make sense.
The bottom line is there's no place for this kind of racist, classist, xenophobic rhetoric in civil society. Bigotry needs to be rejected at every turn, including—perhaps especially—at the ballot box.
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An Irish woman went to the doctor for a routine eye exam. She left with bright neon green eyes.
It's not easy seeing green.
Did she get superpowers?
Going to the eye doctor can be a hassle and a pain. It's not just the routine issues and inconveniences that come along when making a doctor appointment, but sometimes the various devices being used to check your eyes' health feel invasive and uncomfortable. But at least at the end of the appointment, most of us don't look like we're turning into The Incredible Hulk. That wasn't the case for one Irish woman.
Photographer Margerita B. Wargola was just going in for a routine eye exam at the hospital but ended up leaving with her eyes a shocking, bright neon green.
At the doctor's office, the nurse practitioner was prepping Wargola for a test with a machine that Wargola had experienced before. Before the test started, Wargola presumed the nurse had dropped some saline into her eyes, as they were feeling dry. After she blinked, everything went yellow.
Wargola and the nurse initially panicked. Neither knew what was going on as Wargola suddenly had yellow vision and radioactive-looking green eyes. After the initial shock, both realized the issue: the nurse forgot to ask Wargola to remove her contact lenses before putting contrast drops in her eyes for the exam. Wargola and the nurse quickly removed the lenses from her eyes and washed them thoroughly with saline. Fortunately, Wargola's eyes were unharmed. Unfortunately, her contacts were permanently stained and she didn't bring a spare pair.
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Since she has poor vision, Wargola was forced to drive herself home after the eye exam wearing the neon-green contact lenses that make her look like a member of the Green Lantern Corps. She couldn't help but laugh at her predicament and recorded a video explaining it all on social media. Since then, her video has sparked a couple Reddit threads and collected a bunch of comments on Instagram:
“But the REAL question is: do you now have X-Ray vision?”
“You can just say you're a superhero.”
“I would make a few stops on the way home just to freak some people out!”
“I would have lived it up! Grab a coffee, do grocery shopping, walk around a shopping center.”
“This one would pair well with that girl who ate something with turmeric with her invisalign on and walked around Paris smiling at people with seemingly BRIGHT YELLOW TEETH.”
“I would save those for fancy special occasions! WOW!”
“Every time I'd stop I'd turn slowly and stare at the person in the car next to me.”
“Keep them. Tell people what to do. They’ll do your bidding.”
In a follow-up Instagram video, Wargola showed her followers that she was safe at home with normal eyes, showing that the damaged contact lenses were so stained that they turned the saline solution in her contacts case into a bright Gatorade yellow. She wasn't mad at the nurse and, in fact, plans on keeping the lenses to wear on St. Patrick's Day or some other special occasion.
While no harm was done and a good laugh was had, it's still best for doctors, nurses, and patients alike to double-check and ask or tell if contact lenses are being worn before each eye test. If not, there might be more than ultra-green eyes to worry about.