Ask a town full of outraged, progressive crybabies
After the Savage love fiasco earlier in the year, Eugene Weekly is in hot water again for one of its syndicated columns, this time “Ask a Mexican!”* by Gustavo Arellano. Community activists are calling for EW to stop running the column, and the paper’s letter section has been flooded with angry complaints for weeks now.
Last week, EW ran a cover story on Arellano and his column, giving the author a chance to defend himself. Here’s a snippet of what he had to say:
The point [of my column] is to debunk the stereotypes that people do have about Mexicans, to aggressively go after racists, but at the same time, do it in a way that people will want to read it every week and get entertained — whether it’s Mexicans laughing at ourselves or people laughing at stupid racists or at stupid questions.
Poor Arellano. He has no idea how people in Eugene think, does he? We’re not allowed to laugh at anything like that ever! Outrage predictably continued unabated. According to this week’s story in EW, members of the paper recently met with concerned community leaders, including local Latino activists, who demanded that EW pull the column and replace it with content from local Latino sources.
As a real, honest-to-god Mexican, Arellano fields questions that range from the silly (Why do Mexican girls scream out “papi” during sex?) to the honest (Why do Mexican restaurants in the U.S. use yellow cheese instead of traditional white cheese?) to the downright racist (Why do you wetbacks keep stealin muh’ job?). His column is nationally syndicated in 32 papers, and it has won several awards, including the National Hispanic Media Coalition’s Impact Award for Excellence in Print Journalism.
While most people seem to be of the opinion that Arellano is either the funniest thing since groin injuries or some sort of evil, shapeshifting reptile, I will take the middle road and say that he’s kind of funny. He approaches immigration, race and racism in a satirical way that’s, frankly, refreshing after years of weepy protest marches and pot-bellied hicks sitting in the desert with rifles.
And that’s the reason, I think, that Arellano pisses so many people off. He doesn’t fit in progressives’ neat, little box of what a pro-immigrant, pro-immigration voice should sound like. He doesn’t write about The Cause with absolute seriousness and gravity. It’s the same reason that people got butthurt over Savage Love. Neither writer is afraid to make fun of his group (Mexicans and gays, respectively) or throw in an off-color joke.
And so the deluge of hand-wringing and tears begins, with progressives responding stereotypically by calling both columnists “hateful,” “cruel” and, in Arellano’s case, “racist.” While “Ask a Mexican!” isn’t the greatest, let’s hope that EW doesn’t bow to community pressure and pull it. If they did, it would only mean more of EW‘s “news coverage” or another local columnist (shudder).
*Note: the actual title of the column has an upside down exclamation point at the beginning (you know, like Spanish), but I couldn’t figure out how to add it on WordPress. My bad.
