Dog Whisperer, cesar millan say's, "Americans are lazy & illegal aliens work harder"

Cesar Millan was a 21-year-old farm boy when, in his words, he "jumped the border." He was without Mexican friends or family, and didn't speak any English. If he had known the language, he told me while in D.C. last week, he simply would have crossed the border through immigration. "I would have said, 'I'm an American citizen,' and they let you in. I saw a lot of people doing it, but they were confident about it. They were illegal but confident about it, and I just didn't feel like I could say the words 'American citizen' without an accent." Now, 20 years later, he's one of America's most famous TV personalities — on cable, anyway — as the host of Dog Whisperer, a National Geographic Channel show that begins its seventh season at 8 p.m. tonight (with a terrorized Howie Mandel as its subject).

On the program and in person, Millan is no longer short on confidence. With neatly trimmed gray hair but a youthful face, he's an American citizen now — "This immigrant pays good taxes," he said, winking at me — and he's unafraid to share his thoughts about "privileged," "lazy" American workers and the treatment of illegal immigrants in the U.S.

"We're here to make the pack move," he said, using his favorite canine metaphor. "Empty places without immigrants to fill them — the pack would not move the same. We don't just come and work for very little. We come and give everything we have. We're working and we're singing. Energy is so important in a job. Americans come to a job, and they're lazy about it. They feel entitled. We don't feel entitled. We feel privileged to be in the country.... We're not getting paid what Americans get paid, and we work more." I hope no one in Arizona is reading this.

If the U.S. wants to stop illegal immigration, Millan argued, then it should educate people in Mexico. (Perhaps he's unaware we have a hard enough time educating our own people.) "Building physical walls won't solve the problem," he said, "but if you give education to people in other countries, we don't have to come to look for opportunities. If you teach our leaders to be more like your leaders, you see, then why would we leave our pack?" He then went on to reinforce the stereotype that Mexicans overcrowd apartments and cars, adding, "Other races, they have to have their own car to drive to the party." And for good measure: "We don't leave our elders in a convalescent home."

How, exactly, did we get started on this subject? We were talking about my cynophobia — my fear of dogs, and my allergy to them. I told Millan how I hate dogs for invading my personal space, and that staying calm doesn't stop them from, say, leaping at my crotch. Please, I begged him. Please tell me how to stop these slobbering beasts from assaulting me.

"It's a two-part formula," he explained. "The body is calm and the mind is confident. And that's a very important part because people like yourself, people who don't like dogs, people who wear white — they don't want dogs to come into their space. This is a place where people who own those dogs have to understand how important the social behavior is. You see what I mean? It's a very selfish way of loving a dog, because they want the dog to be in their intimate space even though the dog is absolutely unstable. And then people in your situation pay for these consequences. You can go to Mexico, you won't have the same problem. They're very respectful about intimate space."

You hear that, dog owners? You're selfish! Be more like Mexicans and keep your dogs away from me.

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On tonight's show, Millan visits the home of Howie Mandel, a fellow cynophobe who happened to marry a woman, Terry, who loves dogs.

"When the human is a source of affection, the human sees the dog as babies, or as humans, and then the human becomes a follower," Millan tells them. "The dog is going to fight for what he owns, so in a way the dog owns the humans that they live with."

Upon learning that they're babies, and that their dog owns them, the Mandels look at Millan with blank stares, their faces slack. Later, Terry says she "fell in love" with Lola, her rat Chihuahua, when she saw it at a pet store. "It was one of those purchases you just don't even think about," she said, "and then you get home and you say, 'What have I done?'" She's exactly the type of dog owner I'm talking about, people.

"I've always needed to have dogs," she adds. "The warmth a dog gives
you, and the love, is like no other — even more than humans!" Then she emits a gaspy laugh that makes me want to shove a dirty sock in her mouth.

http://www.tbd.com/blogs/tbd-arts/2010/10/-dog-whisperer-cesar-milan-on-lazy-americans-illegal-immigration-and-my-cynophobia-2851.html