Most people who know me know that I am a strong individualist. I am so much of an individualist that I sometimes wonder if I’m doing it just to piss people off. Most notably, you can see this in my political and spiritual choices. And it doesn’t end there. My favorite sports team is the Detroit Lions. Nobody likes the Detroit Lions. I think that it has a little to do with Detroit itself, but for the most part I think it’s because the Lions never win. Everyone’s clamoring around the Colts, the Steelers and the Eagles because they win. Well, let the lemmings have their favorite teams, cause I’ve got mine and it’s the Detroit Lions.

Which is why I’m huddled around the TV at high noon on draft day. You have to be there early if your team perennially sucks. I’ve been there for the Andre Ware draft, the slightly less lame, but still lame Joey Harrington draft pick and the past three first round receiver picks. I thought that this year had to be better. Enough draft picks have been spent on offense lately, I was certain that it would be a defensive pick. I didn’t know if it would be a good one or not, since I don’t watch college sports. Watching college sports might lead me to watching high school sports, which would lead to middle school sports. Eventually this road leads you to have kids solely for the sake of them playing pee wee league sports. You’re the one who wants to be a big sports star — the kids just want to run around until they are tired and then get some ice cream. Most of the mock drafts that I saw had Detroit drafting either A.J. Hawk or Michael Huff. Again, totally meaningless to me, but at least they were highly touted defensive players.

This year, the fear set in for me after the fourth pick. The Titans decided to take Texas quarterback Vince Young with the third pick. Some were projecting the Jets to take the other heralded QB in the draft, USC’s Matt Leinart. But they passed him up to take an offensive lineman. The commentators all started saying that Leinart wasn’t capable of throwing in cold and windy games in New York. The thought then hit me — there’s no wind in a dome stadium and Detroit plays in a dome. Would this be a replay of the last umpteen years of first round offensive busts? I had a long wait to find out.

The Lions eventually took Florida State linebacker Ernie Sims with the ninth pick in the draft. Matt Leinart went tenth to the Arizona Cardinals. I drew a major sigh of relief. Except for the fact that this Ernie Sims guy has some sort of head problems. In the post-pick discussion there was a lot of talk about his concussion problems. That’s good. If he sucks, he’ll just knock himself unconscious so he won’t be able to embarass the team with his sucky play. But he better not suck, cause I want to see some wins — just like everybody else does.

I should have expected something like this. However, I was shocked by the timing and format of it all. I happened to be surfing around with the intent of locating opportunities to better myself. I decided that I had this overwhelming urge to take another seminar from the Duke University Nonprofit Management program. So I pull up their website with an intention to check out the current schedule of courses. And there it was — a picture of me from the seminar that I attended three weeks earlier!

Now when I was signing the release to possibly be in a photograph, I didn’t think that this would really happen. I don’t really think that I have a look that people want to associate with their prestigious programs at their top-notch educational institutions. So I did it without fear. Luckily, the only thing you can see is the back of my head. Since my face is obscurred, I am now able to retain my Internet anonymity. Well, as much as you can with a blog named “The Real Johnny Crawford”.

All in all, I’m glad it wasn’t some sort of porno photograph that would blow my chances at being the next American Idol all to hell. I really need the singing gig.

The seminar that I took that day was called “How To Become A Consultant”. It was taught by Frank Cizerle of the Dake Institute. I’d been waiting to take this one for a couple of years now, and it was well worth the wait. It covered all the important steps to becoming a one-man (or woman) company. The most important things that I learned were why my previous freelancing attempts never had the success that I had hoped for. I’m sure to correct those mistakes on my future solo business endeavors.

I thought that amassing large groups of non-citizens in American cities while waving the Mexican flag was a terrible marketing idea. However, this week in conjunction with congressional debate over illegal immigration legislation, a number of Latin American musicians will be releasing a Spanish-language rendition of the national anthem. To add fuel to the fire, “The Star Spangled Banner”, which they will call “Nuestro Himno”/”Our Anthem” will be in a style reminiscent of tradional south-of-the-border music. This is such an amazingly bad idea that, if the recording of this song gets the type of television coverage that the original protests received, the eleven million plus illegal immigrants in this country will be lucky if they all receive deportation instead of a brutal and harsh interment.Not that I support deportation or interment. I’m the same person who set up the extremist “declare war on Mexico” strawman argument that I then declared to be maniacal (see post from April 2nd: The Ultimate Solution to Immigration). I’m even, for all intents and purposes on social issues, a near bleeding-heart liberal. And now I’m starting to get really, really turned off by the thought of turning illegal immigrants into citizens (or guest workers or bald eagles or whatever).

See, it just seems like those forces that are advocating or pushing the issue of immigration reform have no idea what they are doing. Massive protests were organized. There’s nothing really wrong with protesting. Citizens have a right to do that according to the First Amendment to the Constitution. But illegal immigrants aren’t citizens. The average Joe American at home watching TV could figure that one out. But some of the people protesting are citizens, so that’s not that bad of an issue. However, what about all those Mexican flags? Okay, so it took a week or so to figure out that they should be flying American flags to show that they wanted to be citizens of the United States and NOT Mexico. Now we’re going to have the holiest-of-holies of traditional American songs done in Spanish.

I’m not sure how they’re going to undo this one, but don’t worry because May 1st will be the mother of all protests meant to shut down all of American industry (and on a Monday no less). In Mexico, there will be a corresponding one-day boycott of American goods and services termed “Nothing Gringo”. Irregardless of how these individual events succeed or end up flying over like a lead zeppelin, the true colors for this illegal immigrant movement appears to have been revealed.

The illegal immigration activists need to consider who their audience is. While they may be trying to convince Senators to pass legislation favorable to their agenda, ultimately they must consider current American citizens to be their primary audience. What? You didn’t realize that these major protests all across the country would be televised to average Joe American? If you want a Congressman to side with you, you got to make it easy for him. Don’t do something that’s going to get him grief from people who actually have the right to vote him out of office. People in Congress want to get that really bitchin’ pension plan and all the perks of Washington, D.C. life. They are even more scared of getting sent back home than most illegals are.

What Joe American sees when he turns on the television news is coercion. Coercion is force. It is the opposite of persuassion. Persuassion is based upon the free exchange of ideas. Through persuassion, those ideas that work are adopted, utilized and perhaps improved upon. Those ideas that are completely worthless are thrown on the scrapheap of failed ideologies and broken isms. While Joe American would rather have a six-pack and watch the big game most of the time, he does react to discussion and ideas that make some amount of sense. However, one thing that pisses off Joe American to no end is being told what he will do by a perceived outside force. Herein lies the base problem with the illegal immigration movement.

[Author's Note: Taking a suggestion that was made regarding the length of past blog posts, I have decided to break this post into two separate articles. One will be posted today. The other will be posted on or around May 1st.]