Google diddles the right

By Max J. Castro

MIAMI – For Christians, Easter Sunday is supposed to be a day of rejoicing and peace. But this country’s right-wing pseudo-Christian hate machine doesn’t seem to buy into these values or to take holiday breaks. Instead, in a country that still is overwhelmingly Christian and much more religious than other advanced societies, Christians on the right act as if their faith is continuously embattled and are perennially on the lookout for perceived slights. This time that tendency reached a new level of pettiness and absurdity when the self-appointed guardians of the faith went after Google for, of all things, the doodle that appeared on the search engine’s home page.

The specific cause for the outrage was the fact that Google chose to display a likeness of Cesar Chavez, the late pioneering farmworker leader who was born on March 31 (the date on which Easter Sunday fell this year), rather than an Easter theme on its site. The story of the ensuing hubbub was originally reported in the San Jose Mercury-News.

Methinks that there is quite a bit more than pure religious fervor behind the protests. After all, Google hasn’t run an Easter themed logo since 2000. Whatever else they ran on Easter during the last 12 years didn’t raise even a tempest in a teapot. That’s not surprising since Google’s doodles, which change the look of the home page on a regular basis, are as quirky and whimsical as children’s drawings. One has to be seriously out of touch or somewhat deranged to take offense at these fun, cute, and sometimes humorous illustrations.

So why is the right throwing a tantrum over this one? One thing is crystal clear. It’s not about Google failing to use its doodle to mark Easter, since the company hasn’t done that for over a decade and not even a peep had been heard before. It’s about Cesar Chavez.

The critics of Google’s Chavez cover speak as if having Chavez’s face on the biggest web site in the world is a wrongheaded, even laughable choice. Dana Perino, former press secretary to President George W. Bush and now a Fox News contributor tweeted: “I thought the Chavez-google thing was a hoax or an early April Fool’s [sic] Day prank … are they just going to leave that up there all day?”

There are plenty of others, from right-wing demagogue and media personality Glenn Beck to rank and file reactionaries who used social media to express similar reactions. A few even mistook the image for that of the recently deceased Hugo Chavez.   

There are plenty of ironies here. Cesar Chavez, who with Dolores Huerta co-founded the United Farmworkers Union, spent his whole life advocating for arguably the most downtrodden and oppressed people in the United States. He used non-violent means to pressure big farmers and corporations to acknowledge farmworkers’ right to collective bargaining and to earn a living wage. A tough but soft-spoken man, a committed Catholic, Cesar Chavez’s thought and actions follow a thread that stretches from Mahatma Gandhi to Martin Luther King to the current Pope. Who better to remember and honor on a major Christian holiday?

Judging by the reaction of what was once considered the lunatic fringe but lately has virtually become the mainstream of the Republican Party, you would have thought Google had chosen Judas himself as its Easter Sunday logo. The right-wing pundits must be hard up for scapegoats when they need to go after a man like Chavez, especially since he has been dead for 20 years.

In strictly ideological terms, it’s logical that the right would be appalled by Google’s action. It’s not just racism, although that’s certainly a significant element. Cesar Chavez stood for everything the right detests and disparages. Cesar Chavez fought for and believed in social justice. Cesar Chavez believed that in this country farmworkers’ living standards shouldn’t be like those in the Fourth World while the Gallo wine owners and their class enjoyed every luxury. Cesar Chavez believed in unions; hell, he even founded one against all odds in a most hostile environment! Worst of all, Chavez, his cause, and his legacy have been embraced by myriad Democratic heavyweights, from Robert F. Kennedy through Bill Clinton to Barack Obama.

From a political angle, however, what this imbroglio shows is that the suicidal bent within the GOP is still strong. Cesar Chavez is revered by a large swath of the Latino community, especially but not exclusively by those of Mexican origin, by far the largest Latino group. In the 2012 election, Latinos gave the Republican Party a thorough thrashing and an object lesson in the politics of payback. Since then, Republicans have been desperately trying to find a way to reverse what for them is an ominous trend. The sound and fury coming out of the mouths of the likes of Dana Perino over the Chavez-Google affair shows that where Latinos are concerned the GOP is still shooting itself somewhere more vital than just the foot. They just don’t get it.

Democrats were quick to recognize this and to mock the stupidity of it all: “How’s that Latino outreach working out for ya?” Christine Pelosi, daughter of San Francisco congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, tweeted in a response to Perino.

In dealing with the Latino community, the Republicans seem to be working from the same game plan they used to squander what once was majority support among African Americans. It’s a toxic combination of material injury and symbolic offense, and it’s working again.

Meanwhile, the people who run Google, sitting on mountains of money and buoyed by a great deal of self-confidence, were not exactly quaking in their boots. They kept Chavez’s image on the page, ignoring Perino’s rantings.   

The Republicans dearly want to erase the (accurate) perception that they are first and foremost the party of old, rich, white men. But the first rule to follow when you are in a hole is to stop digging, and the Republicans keep breaking that rule. The brouhaha over Chavez on Google only cements the very image the Republicans want to make over. They know it’s self-destructive but they can’t seem to help themselves. Like the scorpion that bit the turtle that was carrying it across the river and drowned, it’s their nature.

The good news for of those of us who see the rise of the modern, reactionary GOP as a scourge upon the land is that Republicans keep digging their own graves. And that is no April Fools’ joke.