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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

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Reuters article to flesh out this low-effort comment

Political leaders from both sides of the aisle and Puerto Rican celebrities bashed comments at a major Donald Trump event in New York by a comedian who called Puerto Rico a "floating island of garbage."

Speaking before the Republican presidential candidate at a rally at Madison Square Garden on Sunday night, comedian and podcast host Tony Hinchcliffe added that Latinos "love making babies" and that they do not "pull out," comments that leaned into a racist trope that Latinos are preoccupied with childbearing and averse to birth control.

"There's literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now," Hinchcliffe said. "I think it's called Puerto Rico."

The presidential campaign of Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, Democrats, several prominent Puerto Rican celebrities and some congressional Republicans denounced the comments, which were widely panned as racist.

The Trump campaign itself said the comments do not "reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign." Trump himself has not commented on Hinchcliffe's performance.

podcast host Tony Hinchcliffe added that Latinos "love making babies" and that they do not "pull out," comments that leaned into a racist trope that Latinos are preoccupied with childbearing and averse to birth control.

The irony is that the age of the big Catholic family in Latin America is over. Mexico has a lower birth rate than the USA. Puerto Rico's TFR is lower than Singapore!

This was an example of an unforced error, albeit a tiny one in the grand schemes of things. It makes me wonder why anyone would book a comedian at all. Politics is very much scripted; comedians by trade are not.

Probably tiny. The problem is that, if the polls are accurate, this is a ludicrously close race and tiny errors can have huge effects.

The Hispanics in the US have a birthrate identical to republicans and in actual Latin American countries it’s, like in Latin European countries, lower than America.

While I don’t think contraception is good, ‘Hispanics have a lot of kids because the Catholic Church tells them to’ is mostly not true, see also, the percentage of those births out of wedlock(very high).