Save Our State  

Go Back   Save Our State > General Forum (non official Save Our State business) > The Media

The Media Topics and information relating to the Media (publications, television, press, first amendment issues, etc) of interest to SOS Associates and Users

WELCOME BACK!.............NEW EFFORTS AHEAD..........CHECK BACK SOON.........UPDATE YOUR EMAIL FOR NEW NOTIFICATIONS.........
Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1  
Old 08-19-2013, 05:30 AM
ilbegone's Avatar
ilbegone ilbegone is offline
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2009
Posts: 2,068
Default Wrong in any language

Esther Cepeda: Wrong in any language

By Esther J. Cepeda

08/17/2013

CHICAGO -- Here's something that made me laugh so hard that tears leaked from my eyes.

"You knew there was trouble brewing when salsa surpassed ketchup as America's favorite condiment," began the blog item on the Huffington Post Latino voices site in early July. "Now ... we shine the spotlight on fertile, plotting (smirking) Latinos who have made it so that in California whites are no longer the majority."

Its tongue-in-cheek conclusion: "Latinos are engaged in a patient revolution through procreation -- a dastardly, shameless and obviously very effective plan. ... Wax your sinister handlebar mustaches, mi gente. Victory is ours. Proceed and turn your rattling car stereos up to the max. The final stage of Operation Reconquest begins today. The timing is perfect. So much attention is on bombing brown people across the world that we must strike now. Bring your rusty blades, chimichangas, and bands of small children."

Written by "El Guapo," the lucha libre-masked editor and writer of The Daily Refried, a bitingly funny Latino satire website, the missive lampooned two stereotypes at once.

It laughed at those leftist Mexican-Americans who really do fantasize about taking back the parts of the U.S. that had once been Mexican territory and now console themselves with gaining dominance over whites by becoming the largest ethnic minority. And it sneered at the many non-Hispanics who actually believe that all Latinos in America are a foreign-born, Spanish-speaking swarm of invaders seeking to make white people extinct via procreation.


All in jest, of course. But believe me, it's not funny when someone goes on national TV and says things like this seemingly in all seriousness.

Enter Diego Luna, a Mexican actor probably best known for the films he's starred in alongside fellow Mexican heartthrob, Gael Garcia Bernal, such as "Y Tu Mama Tambien," "Rudo y Cursi" and the most recent "Casa de Mi Padre," all of which I loved dearly.

Luna is directing a soon-to-be-released movie about civil rights activist Cesar Chavez, a task I'm wondering if he's up to since he apparently doesn't understand what it means to be a U.S.-born Hispanic.

[Note: Chavez was a second generation citizen born in the United States, I believe he was born in Arizona. His namesake grandfather fled Mexican hacienda slavery in the 1880's. Chavez has been slandered in Mexico due to his opposition to Mexican illegals breaking his strikes for better wages and working conditions, with his ancestry described as mixed Guatemalan and American Indian - anything but Mexican. ilbegone]

He may be immensely talented, but Luna's fantasies about Mexican supremacy and his ignorance of Hispanics' daily struggle with stereotypes about immigration, sexuality and language didn't do anyone any favors.

Luna went on "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" to promote his new futuristic movie "Elysium" and quickly verified for everyone who already felt uneasy about Hispanics that we have a lot of sex and a lot of kids, and that white Americans are pretty much shafted because, soon, we're going to make everyone speak Spanish.

O'Brien: "In the future, they're prophesizing in this movie that everybody speaks Spanish, 'cause that's sort of the way it's going."

Luna: "Yeah, and it's not going to take so long. ... If you want to keep your job at this network, you're going to have to learn Spanish."

O'Brien: "Yes, 'cause the country, it's all changing over."

Luna: "47 million people speak Spanish today and we like having sex, so multiply that for eight in 10 years, another eight in another 10 years. "

In one of the most uncomfortable live-TV moments I've seen in a while, actress Lisa Kudrow of "Friends" fame, who was sitting with O'Brien sidekick Andy Richter, interjected, "If only the rest of us liked having sex, we'd have a fighting chance."

Awkward.

Satire is one thing; Latinos can take the jokes that El Guapo is always making. But it is quite another for a Mexican superstar who wants to cross over and become a U.S. celebrity to imply something so absurd and utterly misinformed.

Diego needs to get himself on the email list of the Pew Hispanic Center, and pronto.

Their recent reports on language acquisition tell the tale of a community that, like all other immigrant groups before it, is embracing the English language despite the many barriers to mastery.

"A record 31 million Latinos now speak English proficiently, up from 8 million in 1980," notes a recent PHC blog post. "Our studies show that among Latinos born in the U.S., significant majorities get their news in English, watch television shows in English, listen to music in English and even think in English."

I dream in both English and Spanish, and in my best dreams foreign movie stars don't reinforce stupid and inaccurate cliches about me on one of the most popular late-night shows on TV.

http://www.sentinelandenterprise.com...g-any-language
__________________
Freibier gab's gestern

Hay burros en el maiz

RAP IS TO MUSIC WHAT ETCH-A-SKETCH IS TO ART

Don't drink and post.

"A nickel will get you on the subway, but garlic will get you a seat." - Old New York Yiddish Saying

"You can observe a lot just by watching." Yogi Berra

Old journeyman commenting on young apprentices - "Think about it, these are their old days"

SOMETIMES IT JUST DOESN'T MAKE SENSE.

Never, ever, wear a bright colored shirt to a stand up comedy show.


Last edited by ilbegone; 08-19-2013 at 05:57 AM.
Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -8. The time now is 01:05 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright SaveOurState ©2009 - 2016 All Rights Reserved