Rep. Micky Hammon, R-Decatur.

Every week at Reran Tragedy, Editor-in-Chief Cal Alabaster Jr. draws on his considerable experience in Southern politics to round up news, notes, and blatantly pasted-in press releases that readers may have otherwise missed.

MONTGOMERY — Responding to a prominent civil rights group’s report showing that Alabama’s tough new immigration law has inspired harsh and profane harassment by the state’s harshest residents toward many who are not even immigrants, Alabama legislators who passed the law say the report overlooks the “good racism” it has caused.

Last week, the Southern Poverty Law Center released a compilation of hideous, racist treatment of people who merely look like immigrants caused by the law, which legislators often pitched last year with a focus on Spanish-speaking immigrants in particular. Some believe the calls SPLC received show in clear terms that the law has inspired and licensed Alabamians to carry out discrimination and harassment by the state’s worst elements.

Still, despite the harm the law has done to Alabama’s image and perhaps its economy, its legislative backers say that the racism the law has sparked is merely another benefit of targeting those with inherent differences for legal and social derision.

“This is that good racism, and the crybaby liberals need to recognize that,” said Rep. Micky Hammon, R-Decatur, one of the law’s co-sponsors. “Sure, Puerto Ricans are U.S. citizens and it sounds absolutely absurd for the state to empower a clerk to be enough of an ass to tell a Puerto Rican that they need an ‘American’ birth certificate to get a car tag. But how do we know whether that so-called ‘Puerto Rican’ isn’t a Cuban who swam to Puerto Rico after birth, obtained a Puerto Rican birth certificate, emigrated to Alabama and now is trying to bring down the American government and install a Communist regime through the Alabama Motor Vehicle Division?

“I think we all should applaud the vision our Legislature has shown in keeping us safe and free from Communism.”

Though it may have great economic costs, Senate President Pro Tem Del Marsh also touted improvements to Alabama’s security because of the immigration law.

“Absolutely, some have raised concerns that, say, that Texan lady who was an American who had a note telling her to go home left in her car might send a bad message to the foreign manufacturers we’ve spent billions recruiting here the past two decades,” Marsh said. “But how do we know that woman is not a member of the secret Mexican branch of al-Qaeda, El Qaeda? How will she know we mean business to her types unless we tell her to go back to the lawless Mexican city of San Antonio where El Qaeda was formed by a bunch of mariachis defiling Davy Crockett‘s ashes?

House Speaker Mike Hubbard.

“When a mariachi band doesn’t suicide bomb those big rockets at the [U.S.] Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, you’ll know who to thank.”

And House Speaker Mike Hubbard touted that racism can actually be an “engine of economic development” in Alabama.

“Oh sure, kids have been harassed at school and denied government benefits they’re entitled to as American citizens,” Hubbard said. “But those little bastards cost money. And if we had to pay for anything like the decent social services a poor, working class state like Alabama needs, we might have to raise taxes instead of tossing cash at people we think might perhaps kind of sort of create jobs here.

“These brave, racist Alabamians are just doing their part to take us back to a time when people like us could do what we want, and we thank them for that.”

Sources: Original Beason ads crossed lines, but official ads released last week underwhelming

ABOVE: A scene from the ads Scott Beason's congressional campaign released last week. BELOW: A leaked image from the original ad, digitally altered in the official release primarily because it contained an image of John McCain.

Campaign consultants said this week that they are happy that the “deranged and highly offensive”  first cuts of State Sen. Scott Beason‘s congressional ads did not air, but still think the ads shown go a little too far.

The Gardendale Republican, severely financially outgunned by incumbent Spencer Bachus, debuted his first television ads last week, mindbogglingly not mentioning the tough immigration law that he co-sponsored that propelled him into the March 13 GOP primary.

“Yeah, it’s really good he took out all the parts with blackface where he said the only good Jefferson County is a dead Jefferson County and that he’d pass a federal segregation amendment to keep Barack Obama from your kids,” said one consultant, who did not want to be identified to avoid compromising his business. “I know you don’t have money to spend, but at least toss a line in there about hating Mexicans in there—though not actually ‘I officially hate Mexicans’ like he says before tearing into a profanity-laced rant in one of the original ads.”

“I’m surprised, with how little bank he’s carrying, that he got that Smurf in that ad,” another consultant said. “Though I never quite knew that the Smurfs or their rights holders bought that whole Reconquistador conspiracy theory about illegal immigration or that they would choose to express that theory with a long rant about Orthodox Jews. Makes me think there was a lot more going on with Gargamel than you’d figure from the cartoons. Don’t think that would’ve gone over really well with the Mountain Brook Hebrew crowd.

“But yeah, no immigration? At all? What the hell, Scott?”

Ultimately, one consultant said that Beason has struggled to strike a balance between someone who people would trust to represent them in Congress and the conniving, racist douchebag we’ve all come to know and love.

“Yeah, lighting that Hispanic church on fire was a little much,” the consultant said, “but he’s not even running oppo to Bachus in any of the crap he has on the air now.

“I mean if you’re not going to be even a fourth of the dumb, incompetent ass that’s really riled people up, why even get in the race, man?”

This week in Alabama history

In March 1861, the first Confederate flag was flown at the Capitol in Montgomery. And while the Confederacy may not have survived, the tireless spirit of the nobel Rebels who hoisted that first flag and showed that they would rather spark war than cotton to being told how to treat other people has never left our fair state—and based on how things are going these days, it never will.

Oh, and that whole Selma March thing happened this week too.

How’d that work out again?

Reran Tragedy is Weld’s satirical blog about politics and life in Alabama and the South. Much of what you will read here is fictionalized, except for all the parts that are unfortunately true because they are about politics and life in Alabama and the South.

The artist known as Cal Alabaster Jr., if that is his or her real name, may or may not also be the author of the Alabama humor blog called “King Cockfight.” If true, you may read Cal’s work there at kingcockfight.wordpress.com. You can also follow Cal on Twitter @KingCockfight or email Cal at king.cockfight@gmail.com.