Brace for Impact

Now that Arizona has legislated a pig, its governor is worried about the lipstick:

Acknowledging that Arizona has developed a serious image problem because of its tough new immigration law, Gov. Jan Brewer and tourism-industry leaders said Thursday that they will launch a new effort to stanch the flow of lost trade and convention business in the state.

The legislation and firestorm of negative publicity that followed brought calls for boycotts, moved groups to back out of local conventions and led several cities to cut business ties with Arizona companies.

The loss of business is critical in a recession-battered state vitally dependent on visitor spending.

“It’s up to us to get the truth out there. This is impacting Arizona’s face to the nation,” said Brewer, who blamed the controversy on misconceptions about the law.

This is impacting Arizona’s face to the nation. Sounds like Arizona’s superintendent of public instruction should be focusing on the governor’s grammar instead of ethnic-studies programs.

Governor out to rebrand Arizona over immigration law criticism [Arizona Republic]
11 Comments

Note to Gov Jan Brewer: Whatever you do, don’t call it White Washing.

Too bad nobody in the AZ legislative or executive branches could have remembered that many Americans grew up watching Gestapo agents checking papers on TV shows and movies. Oppressive police states aren’t usually considered the most appealing travel destinations.

The bright side is that Arizona will soon run out of water and nobody will live there anyway.

Thank YOU. “Impact” is not a verb.

@JNOV: I agree, but neither was “contact” in the nineteenth century. Usage evolves, sometimes not to our pleasure.

@Capt Howdy:

Mr. Bean is adorable. I don’t care what anyone else says.

Despite what she said, Brewer isn’t concerned about how Arizona looks to the rest of the country. This is about sucking up to state business interests who’ve started sweating because of the unexpected attention paid to these new laws. (As I’ve said before, there’ve been a bunch of anti-immigrant measures enacted in the past 5 years but none drew national attention.)

Brewer is in the middle of a hotly contested primary for governor and that’s all she cares about. One of the early favorites in the race (Dean Martin) has been having trouble raising money so she’s doing this to make sure the tourism business people don’t jump ship and revive his moribund campaign.

@TJ/ Jamie Sommers /TJ: I flew through Sky Harbor airport a week or so ago. I peed, but did not buy anything.

Is “impact to the face” spelt Bukkake? or Brown Shower (to match the shirts).

The thing that really pissed me off about this whole AZ=US thing is that only Arizona based documents are acceptable as proof of residency,

not a valid visa issued by the feds, or a out of state driver’s licence. I mean fuck them! Build a wall and burn them out. Fuckwads.

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