Tag Archives: HispanicLatino

South Carolina Sends Message to….Obama

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In this uproarious year, it now is not outside the possibility that President Obama could lose this election.  One does not have to be an expert in these things to sense something is not plumb with things-as-usual.  I have been around journalistically and politically long enough to be confounded totally by what has happened in South Carolina.

For conventional thinkers, this is not the year to be conventional.  My thoughts have been all along that Obama was going to sweep over any of the Republican candidates.  Now I am not so sure.  Will Florida tell the tale?  Perhaps.  Watching Mitt Romney on television was looking at someone who, it turns out, is not as good as he thinks he is.  This business of running for President is not like directing a takeover of another company – running for President is not insider work.  Romney talked tonight as if he were talking to his staff instead of the country.  His spiel was canned and repetitive.  Newt Gingrich offers something new: New language, new energy, new anger – the stuff of which most elections are made and won. Continue reading →

Time + Ideas = Success

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I recently sat down with a mid-career HispanicLatino who wanted my advice about where he stood in his professional life.  At the age of 35, he is in a job that he sort of likes, but not really.  I asked him if he had other interests than his job and, of course, as I feared, he responded energetically with a list of activities related to entertainment and sports.

This is a reasonably young man who had he had better schooling and better counselors should have his own medical practice.  But he spends his truly invaluable time seemingly irrationally – a product of the kind of neglect that seems to be a societal curse these days for even the brightest of HispanicLatinos.  By the time they mature and are ready to raise families, young men and women such as these who remain unfocused end up underperforming for themselves and for the country as a whole.  But perhaps there is madness in their method. Continue reading →

Accenting the Positive

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So yesterday’s blog that Mitt Romney perhaps should consider spelling his name Romñey given his Mexican heritage got me thinking about the use of accents in names and words when presented visually on English-language television.  More and more, television stations and newspapers are using accents and punctuation marks to spell properly the names of individuals, places and things.  Little by little, the media is reflecting the new demography of the country. Continue reading →

Enough already! ¡An eñe for Romñey!

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Presidential elections can be learning moments or lead to moments in which the electorate can transcend history.  In 1960, Americans came to know quickly that the world would not soon end when a Catholic became President. Perhaps, too, this year’s election can lead some uniformed voters to learn a thing or two about Mormonism – and about Mexico.  Odd, often contradictory moments in life can teach important lessons, educate people and move them out of self-induced ignorance.  Sometimes the news that informs people can be mundane, sometimes riveting.

Some Republican voters who were once head-over-heels in love with Newt Gingrich are still reeling from the news that this schlock anti-government conservative politician took millions of dollars from semi-governmental agencies Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae to act as a historian.  The mundane should be amusing at best.  That Mitt Romney’s father was born in Mexico should not be shocking – in another time and place, that is.

In today’s Republican Party, however, anything associated with Mexico, immigration and the Dream Act that would help immigrant students is electric to GOP voters.  And Mitt Romney is personally associated with all three in deed and in concept:  With a father born in Mexico of a family that emigrated there and then emigrated back to the United States and that received government aid to get them started upon their return, Romney perhaps ought to consider using the ˜ over the ‘n’ in his name.  In an age when an anxious public pines for authentic men and women to lead them into the future, spelling his name Romñey would be a more accurate representation of who he is.  Continue reading →

A People More Worthy than a Monument

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An insistent wind under a pewter sky inconvenienced the crowd of about 150 that last week had come to break ground for a new Tejano monument on the grounds of the Texas state capitol.  The statue commemorating the role of one of the original populations of Texas is just about complete and will be laid and dedicated on March 29.

Around me huddled in the cold were faces and names I had not seen nor heard of in a long time.  Some of the activists of the past had joined the leadership of more establishmentarian types to make the monument a reality – a reality that will end hundreds of years of exclusion of HispanicLatinos from any presence on the grounds of the capitol of a state in which they are 40 percent of the population.  As unbelievable as it sounds, in all of the commemorative statues, plaques and other monuments at the Capitol, not one – not one – pays respect to the population that settled and organized the land as Tejas that later became Texas.

It was impossible to look around me and not think of an era ending so much as a new era blowing into being in which a new history far different from the one of the past takes hold.  Continue reading →

Tim Tebow, South Carolina and ¡Rob! What Would Jesus Do?

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Three quick thoughts on a Friday.  The sitcom that premiered last night featuring Rob Schneider as ¡Rob! marrying into a Mexican-American family will have a short run.  Stock language.  Stock stunts.  Stock everything.  Notice anything different between it and what preceded it, The Big Bang Theory?  As much as I had hoped it would click and as well-intentioned as its supporters no doubt are, the show lacks minimal interest.  One of the previews for the program suggested it was a HispanicLatino version of the revered All in the Family.  It did not even begin to approach that old sitcom that broke new ground and even set people to think.  It should be of note that the strongest character in ¡Rob! was Eugenio Derbez, a successful Mexican actor of his own right.  In previous attempts at capturing the HispanicLatino angle, Hollywood fails on the core issue: Trying to stuff the HispanicLatino experience into an American model while tripping up on language.  Viewers got robbed.

Enough with Tim Tebow.  Anyone who shows off his religion as much as he does makes me nervous.  The comment sections of any story on any news site on this guy seem fairly certain there is another story there that in time will come out.  The not-so-hidden references to his allegedly unknown sexual orientation are a bit disquieting.  I pray he is not gay. If he is, this circus will last 75 years.  I hope that the Denver Broncos, a team I ordinarily like, lose badly this weekend for purely selfish reasons. Continue reading →

The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of

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So Andrea Mitchell on her program yesterday on MSNBC I think ran a clip of a Mitt Romney ad seeking HispanicLatino support.  I guess that was what he was doing.  It might have been an old ad when he ran for governor or senator.  Three weeks after saying if Congress passed the Dream Act he as President would veto it, the idea of a Romney commercial seeking HispanicLatino votes is indeed an illusion.

True, not all HispanicLatinos support the proposal to assist college-age students who are in the country illegally, most for no fault of their own.  But whether a majority of HispanicLatinos support the Dream Act is not as important as what Romney’s sentiments represent: A red target that he and the other Republican candidates have painted on the backs of all HispanicLatinos.

More interesting than ascertaining if most HispanicLatinos support the act is determining whether any of the dreamers, as I call these holders of our future, are or were the children of the subcontracted undocumented workers that used to take care of Romney’s lawns and shrubs.  I presume the well-resourced Obama campaign is looking into this matter, as well as to the possibility that Romney’s investments in more than 70 companies that led to workers losing their jobs might have included any HispanicLatinos. Continue reading →

Authenticity: The Menendez Margin

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There is a reason beyond the obvious as to why Sen. Bob Menendez could be the most important HispanicLatino politician in the country today.  Yes, being a member of the Senate and of its majority party helps.  But Menendez’ strength is not simply institutionally derived.  Rather, he can speak in a credible way in English and in Spanish that eludes other prominent HispanicLatinos and being able to do so bequeaths him with the most important tool that all political leaders must have: The power to communicate.  Money might be the mother’s milk of politics but the ability to communicate effectively is its currency.  As such, Menendez could be one of President Obama’s most important tools for re-election.  Continue reading →

Another Front in the War Begins in Arizona

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Back when Richard Nixon began the culture-wars that have led America to its current political paralysis, he and his cynical advisors used the friction between a generation bent on change and the so-called silent majority to win elections.  Thus came to be the modern-day Republican Party that exploited the nation’s fears about a new culture dominated by acid, amnesty and abortion and then took advantage of the resentment against movements seeking to affirm women’s rights, the civil rights of minorities, protection of the environment and the rights of gays and lesbian.  The culture-wars were anchored by the infamous “southern strategy” that was – and is – racist to its core.

Instead of incorporating the change that a generation born of television, openness, wealth and mobility were going to bequeath on the nation and bending it to produce a positive result, the Nixon cohort sought to abuse the divisions of a culture-war that after so many bitter years has been won by the generation of change on every front.  Nothing punctuates the victory over reaction than the pre-Christmas lesbian couple selected in San Diego for the traditional kiss by which the Navy celebrates the returning home of a ship.  Seen around the world, the kiss should be seen here for what it is: The end of the Nixonian culture wars.  Nevertheless, a new war is being stoked by Nixon’s political descendants who put HispanicLatinos in the cross-hairs of history. Continue reading →