Pres Naps While Island Makes News

Obama's vacation is so quiet it makes VT want to lay down and take a nap. The big news from this week-long retreat on the Island is that there is no news. Instead of covering the president's lazy days, reporters are turning their notebooks on us. Will we like what they see?

While the national and international media cover events like the recent bike ride by our noggin in chief, sans helmet, the press has been forced to justify their expensive trips by tearing into the fabric of Island life. The easiest story to get, and therefore the most popular, has been THE BRAZILIAN.

Who is this hard working immigrant? VT knows plenty, so do you. They are more than likely here illegally, having overstayed a visa. They work harder than most of us, go to church more and save more money. They start businesses, send money back home and will likely retire before you or VT. If it wasn't for the color of their skin, their lack of English skills and illegal status, the Island might have been happy to have such industrious, modest people calling the Vineyard home. Alas. But they are integrating, whether or not they are welcomed with open arms. Soon enough they will want more money for less work, get fat, stop going to church and deride the Ecuadorians for failing to integrate.

Perhaps just as easy, with more bracing copy too, is the rivalry between the Times and the Gazette. From the WSJ: "The journalistic trash-talking reflects long-standing friction on an island where wealthy people vacation, and the less-wealthy people make a living mainly by servicing them." VT guesses that would be the Times, for working class folks who don't care much for real reporting or writing, and the Gazette, for the elite who don't care about the pitiful details of trying to earn a living on this rock. Yup. Check out the WSJ article for the comments alone.