Living in Spanglish

Race Baiting Spikes, Critique of Pragmatic Politics pt. 2

noreply@blogger.com (Spanglishkid) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 16:43:00 +0000

The narrative is all-too familiar. Group of pimply-faced adolescents get drunk and decide to go out and smack down a scapegoated victim, whether it's Bensonhurst, Howard Beach, or Jena, Louisiana. Fueled by racism absorbed through family circles, backyard parties, locker room chatter, and maybe now video games and internet neo-nazis, they take to the streets in a search and destroy mission to erase perceived blight.

But as they televise the above-pictured perp walk again and again, you can't help but thinking, what's wrong with this picture? The lead goon, Jeffrey Conroy, looks the part, and there are always a couple of undersized wannabe thugs trailing in the ringleader's wake, but check out the two black (one half-Puerto Rican) faces bringing up the rear. How do we explain Jose Pacheco and Anthony Hartford?

"It's tragic to see our youth of color adpoting the racist anti-immigrant culture," writes a veteran anti-racist activist in an e-mail.

Long Island has had a noticeable recent history of anti-immigrant hysteria, and one town's case even prompted a well-known documentary. But is it also becoming a site for a new melting pot, where even people of color can band together with racist whites to act out against newly perceived others?

This is actually the second time in a year that someone with partial Puerto Rican ancestry was involved in a race-baiting controversy. The late Daniel Cicciaro Jr. was killed by John White, an African American man who came out of his house to defend his son, who had been chased by Cicciaro and friends flinging racial epithets. The Southern Poverty Law Center reports that a neo-Nazi group bent on making a martyr out of Cicciaro backed off when talking to his mother, who informed them that she was Puerto Rican.

Perhaps some of the facts regarding Pacheco and Hartford's involvement will come out during the grand jury process. And of course this is a great opportunity for the well-meaning members of Long Island's highly segregated communities to make something out of the healing process.

But those of us complacent with the idea that the Northeast, or even the New York metro area is a "safe" multicultural zone should revisit some basic presuppositions. Racial incidents in Staten Island, as well as across the country may be seen as temporary spikes caused by the shock waves from Obama's election, but they also might signal a troubling future.

Critique of Obama Pragmatism, Pt. 2

Well all this smiling and sitting down with previous political foes, this "reaching across the aisle" as it were is all well and good. Still I wonder how Obama (we?) can do this in a way that doesn't assume "all things being equal." How much did the Bush administration concern itself to reach across the aisle? How many Democrats did they put in Cabinet positions (I'm jumping the gun on this, but there is much chatter about Secretary of Defense Robert Gates staying and there was at least a hint about Chuck Hagel and Richard Lugar up for the cabinet)? Today's new stuff about some disturbing CIA connections for individuals picked to head Obama's Intelligence Transition Team doesn't sit well either.

I'm not talking revenge here, nor am I presuming to "descend to the level" of the one-party state Republican thugs that tried to hijack the constitution permanently. It's just that this country was pushed so far to the right in the last eight years, it's not exactly time for meeting people who relentlessly race- and communist-baited you halfway.

Is the essential contradiction in ObamaLogic that the more important "change" to be brought about in his administration is the "break from politics as usual," meaning "partisan politics," rather than a complete break from the catastrophically undemocratic policies imposed by the Bush administration?

Okay, it's true, the guy isn't even in office yet and I'm giving him a hard time. It was pretty great to see the happy couple on 60 Minutes last night.

Rahm Emanuel Update

noreply@blogger.com (Spanglishkid) — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 01:56:00 +0000

Apparently Rahm Emanuel or someone close to him reads the Living in Spanglish blog. Well, maybe they read some Time magazine blog or an ABC News blog or, I don't know, Gawker. Of course all those entries were published the day after mine. At any rate, Obama's recently anointed Chief of Staff has apologized for his father's profoundly inappropriate remarks.

Maybe this is a good sign.

Party Over?

noreply@blogger.com (Spanglishkid) — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:26:00 +0000

Okay it's time to stop snickering at Sarah Palin. Don't want to be a party pooper, but the bad news is starting to trickle in from Iraq, Pakistan, and Gaza. And I'm not even going to get into the economy, or even Madonna and A-Rod. It's time to face reality, and it isn't all that pretty, notwithstanding the promise of presidential puppy. (Could it be? Puppy politics becomes another form of playing the "mixed" race card?)

The first of several matters that may stand in the way of our unconditional love for the "skinny kid from Hawaii with a funny name" (but does he have game?) are some controversial cabinet selections:

1) There are concerns about some crazy stuff Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel's father apparently said, with no word so far on Rahm's desire himself to distance himself from these remarks. Ewan MacCaskill and Suzanne Goldberg of the Guardian UK write:

In an interview with the Israeli daily Ma'ariv, Emanuel's father, Dr. Benjamin Emanuel, said he was convinced that his son's appointment would be good for Israel. 'Obviously he will influence the president to be pro-Israel,' he was quoted as saying. 'Why wouldn't he be? What, is he an Arab? He's not going to clean the floors of the White House.'"

Hopefully something was lost in the translation.

2) Another touchy subject is Lawrence "Larry" Summers potential nomination as treasury secretary. You probably remember his strange comments on the intellectual inferiority of women while president of Harvard University. Perhaps more important was Summers' central role in the implementation of NAFTA which he did at under-secretary of the treasury under Bill Clinton. U.S. labor activist Peter Cervantes-Gautschi writes that Summers "engineered the destruction of Mexico's economy through forced increase of interest rates to unmanageable levels--business and farm loans went from 11% to 56%, credit card rates from 7% to 61%, home loans from 5% to 615, car loans from 7% to 91%. The result was massive human suffering and the forced migration of millions of economic refugees to the U.S."

3) Finally, Eric Holder, of the prestigious law firm Covington and Burling, has been mentioned as a possible attorney general candidate. It turns out that Holder is a lawyer for Chiquita Brands International, which has admitted to paying $1.7 million and supplying arms to Colombian paramilitary death squads, leading to the death of 4000 Colombian civilians in the banana growing regions of that country. So much for Obama's enlightened remarks during the debate on why he was cautious about the Colombia free trade agreement?

To give Obama credit, he has not given in to Bush on tying the Colombia free trade agreement to a bailout of US auto makers. And the Holder appointment is not a given.

But it remains to be seen just what all this talk of "post-partisan" politics really means.

Change Has Come

noreply@blogger.com (Spanglishkid) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 15:14:00 +0000

Barack Obama’s critics have long been skeptical of his main campaign slogan, “change you can believe in.” They have tried to render the idea of change as meaningless, claiming Obama’s promise is vague and unsubstantial. Instead, they have made vague and unsubstantial attempts to paint him as a posturing neophyte, or worse, a danger to America.

Now, with the election of the Senator from Illinois as President, America will finally know what change means.

The most important change brought about by Obama’s victory is the end of the conservative Republican era. It dates back to Ronald’s Reagan’s ascension to power in 1980, an election that was also seen as groundbreaking. This Republican hegemony culminated in the disastrous presidency of George W. Bush, one that brought about a tragically unnecessary war, the destruction of the middle class, and the deterioration of America’s standing in the world.

Obama’s victory, as well as the increased Democratic majorities in the House and Senate, are a clear mandate that repudiates the Republican policies of reckless militarism and the redistribution of wealth from the majority of middle and lower-class Americans to a small, wealthy elite.

Voters have expressed a desire to change foreign and domestic policies so that wars are not entered into cavalierly, government spending does not wind up in the pockets of political cronies. They also want the next administration to prioritize education, health, and environmental issues.

Another change that Obama’s election brings is equally important. Despite the Senator’s own campaign’s minimizing of the importance of his race, the election of a black president is a change that this country has long needed.

Since the Civil Rights movement of the ‘60s resulted in the elimination of overt discrimination against blacks, Americans have often disagreed over whether the problem of racial prejudice has been resolved. Much has been accomplished, and people of color have made great strides. But the continued impoverishment of the majority of black people, as well as an atmosphere of inflammatory racially tinged attacks on Obama demonstrate the persistence of racism in our country.

Barack Obama’s election goes a long way to address this issue.

He seems uniquely qualified to speak from the perspective of a black American, while at the same time he has a direct connection to the white majority. And while it may not happen during his lifetime, he can play the most important role in helping this country deal with the transition to a multicultural, multiracial society.

In a significant way, Obama’s unorthodox background as a biracial man from Hawaii is a refutation of the conventional wisdom that has dominated America’s historical narrative. When someone who is not “apparently” American becomes this country’s most powerful leader, the entire idea of America changes, and in a way, we begin a new American era with a clean slate.

As Obama prepares to take office, many progressives will wonder whether the candidate who won in part due to massive corporate campaign contributions will stay true to his lofty idealism and be a true president for the people. But for this moment, we can afford to keep our hopes high that a real change has finally come.

No Bama Becomes Yes It's in the Can

noreply@blogger.com (Spanglishkid) — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 14:27:00 +0000

"If he were white, this would be a blowout," says former Jesse Jackson presidential campaign adviser Harold Ickes in today's Times. The story rightly points out that race remains an ostensible elephant in the room, with neither McCain nor Obama bringing it up overtly. Still, many of McCain's recent smears of Obama have racial elements embedded in them. From the fear-mongering "Obama-is-both-a-black-and-Arab-with-ties-to-terrorism" drivel pushed by various websites and Fox News-legitimized extremists to the above-ground association-game tying Obama to Bill Ayres, the subprime mortgage crisis and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the more recent phony Acorn voter fraud charges, the American voter is being bombarded with a chronic "othering" of the Democratic presidential nominee.

But the strange thing is, the race is becoming a blowout. If so, then a variety of factors is helping to nullify the perception of Obama as black. The economic collapse, while ineluctably tarring McCain with a conservative Republican free market brush, is apparently the biggest reason for Obama's ascension. Obama appears to be the calmer, more intelligent mind in the face of crisis, with more articulately crafted solutions. While this may seem like a simple case of one candidate rising to the occasion and outclassing another, it may be an indication of the moment that Obama has passed into the realm of the "accepted" black man.

In his Huffpost column, Eric Deggans interestingly cites a line of dialog from Spike Lee's classic film Do the Right Thing. When Lee's character asks John Torturro's Pino Frangione why he hates his Brooklyn neighborhood's black people while at the same time accept celebrities like Eddie Murphy and Magic Johnson, Pino responds:

"Magic, Eddie, Prince are not niggers...They're not really black. They're more than black. To me it's different."

Could it be that Obama's explicitly stated colorblind strategy has worked? Or does all of this prove that race prejudice is intrinsically tied to class prejudice, and once you transcend class, race doesn't matter? Can Obama get a taxi to stop for him in Manhattan?

No matter what outrage you may have over his campaign workers combing states like Montana and highlighting the fact that he is half-white, the Senator from Illinois now seems, barring a national-security-level October surprise, a lock to become the first black President. Ever. Probably because he's "more than black."

Or maybe, as Chocolate News insists, something else entirely.

Latino Auto-critique department:

I got an e-mail from NALIP today about WETA, the Washington-area PBS Channel, failing to air a documentary "Latinos '08" last week. While I'm willing to express my outrage that this station is turning its back on a program that offers a Latino perspective on national politics, of which there are precious few, I can't say I'm impressed by this particular one. Distorted to the point of absurdity with an overload of Republican-friendly talking heads, this doc reduces the "Latino" perspective to the Mexican-American one in a way that is almost insulting to the rest of us Latinos. Not to mention that the lavishing of praise on McCain (followed by faint cries of disappointment over his recent reversals) and barrage of attacks on Obama were right out of Karl Rove's playbook.

From the beginning, the talking heads talk about "Latinos" when they should really be talking about "Mexican-Americans." A detailed history of the UFW and Chicano movement segued into the Reagan Hispanic era and beyond, and you would never know that Puerto Rico is a colony of the U.S. and that there was a Cuban Revolution, or that these Caribbean folks are represented by several elected officials (in the U.S. House of Representatives). As the "favorable" New York Times review suggests: "Even after suggesting that Latino voters are a varied lot, some of these experts go right on referring to 'the Latino community' as if it were a monolithic entity." Any serious documentary on Latino politics must begin and end with an analysis that identifies three major constituencies: Mexican Americans in the West, Puerto Ricans in the Northeast, and Cubans in Florida, then touch on the mixed communities of Chicago and the Midwest and the new immigrant areas in the South.

Now the Wall Street Crisis Is Our Fault

noreply@blogger.com (Spanglishkid) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 18:49:00 +0000

I'm not even going to go into the slime attack from the McCain/Palin team over the last few days. Palin in front of a beerhall putsch crowd screaming "terrorist!" "treason! and "kill him!" in reference to the Democratic presidential nominee. Nor will I spend any time on the infamous "that one" remark from last night's debate, which seemed like a "meds running low" moment from McCain. We should all be inured to this by now. If the Republican Party can't bring about a Permanent Republican government, they're going to brand everyone not on their side as Permanent Others.

But this "hate piece" from Ann Coulter really breaks some new ground. It inspired the following op ed piece, which was somewhat edited by the Progressive Media Project and hopefully will appear in a newspaper near you in the next few days:

Bailout Blame Game Unfairly Targets Minorities

Leave it to conservatives to inject a racial component into the current economic crisis. Over the last week, leading conservative commentators like Charles Krauthammer, Ann Coulter, Lou Dobbs, and the Wall Street Journal editorial page have been trying to blame the crisis on minorities getting subprime mortgages.

The conservatives blame the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, which was enacted to address a practiced called “redlining,” in which banks deliberately withheld credit from minority communities in the ‘60s and ‘70s. The act was intended “to encourage depository institutions to help meet the credit needs…in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.”

Conservative commentator Ann Coulter has written that the CRA has fostered granting loans based on “nontraditional measures of creditworthiness, such as having a good jump shot or having a missing child named ‘Caylee.’”

While Coulter’s words can be dismissed as crudely racist, they echo a line of thought that asserts that since many of the subprime mortgages were given to minority borrowers, this “affirmative action” measure is at the root of the current crisis. But this attack on victims of predatory lending is as flawed as calling Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama a terrorist.

First, if the CRA was crafted over 30 years ago, why is it that only now subprime mortgages have created a crisis? Secondly, most of the disastrous subprime loans were made by mortgage brokers and disreputable lenders unregulated by the CRA. Third, according to data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, white and affluent borrowers took out 58 per cent of higher-cost loans, with blacks and Latinos accounting for 18 per cent each.

Just last week The New York Times reported that the Nehemiah housing program, which provides housing for minorities in that city’s outer boroughs has reported 10 defaults on 3900 households in the last 27 years. Hardly what you’d call an irresponsible group.

The true culprit in our current financial crisis is the policy of the Bush administration that rewrote rules for our lending and banking institutions that have enriched high-rolling financiers and bankrupted powerless average Americans. Current regulations allow institutions to charge higher fees to sell debt if loans fail, giving them an impetus to create the conditions for default in the first place.

These facts have implications for the recently signed bailout package, in which the government has agreed to purchase blocs of toxic subprime mortgages whose values are decreasing as a result of the crisis. The bailout also includes little aid to homeowners still trying to pay the predatory loans.

Now more than ever, it is clear that this country needs to reassess its domestic economic policy in a way that serves the majority of its hard-working citizens, rather than blame them for the excesses of a privileged few.

Link to the Right Wing From NY Times

noreply@blogger.com (Spanglishkid) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 14:47:00 +0000

I understand that The New York Times opinion pages give plenty of space to right-moderate voices, but their currently featured post on "The Bilingual Debate" is pretty noxious. A thinly disguised Latino- and immigrant-baiter, Lance T. Izumi attacks Obama for saying that instead of worrying about English-only legislation, Americans should make sure their children can speak Spanish.

Let's let alone the fact that this reference has nothing to do with the touted success of Izumi's prized charter school, Sixth Street Prep in Los Angeles, where "full immersion" has a shockingly swift payoff. Izumi quotes the school's principal as saying "We've had tremendous success with having a student who is brand new from Mexico and would walk into a classroom 12 months later and you wouldn't be able to pick out which one he was." It's the old Invisible Mexican Trick.

Izumi's post is another example of how right-wing crankery gets legitimized by seemingly academically responsible think tanks, in this case the Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy. A casual perusal of that website puts you in contact with names like George Will, Michael Medved, Sally Pipes, and even our old friend Margaret Thatcher. And check this hyperlink that Izumi's post gives to source Obama's aforementioned traitorous quote. It points to a blogger who refers to herself as Sister Toldjah. From there, you can move on to this hilarious video of Upper West Side New Yorkers, some who must be New York Times staffers, giving the finger to a small group of pro-McCain-Palin marchers. Talk about coming full circle.

Fear of a Black President

noreply@blogger.com (Spanglishkid) — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 14:35:00 +0000

Last week's AP/Yahoo Stanford University poll's revelations about race in the upcoming elections was bad enough. Surprise: 40 per cent of all white Americans hold at least a partly negative view toward blacks. The adjectives used to describe blacks agreed to by many respondents included "boastful," "lazy," "irresponsible," and of course, good old "violent." These widespread attitudes among Democrats and Independents had the potential to cost Obama 6 percentage points. What about the Bradley effect? Apparently, according to analysis of the poll, this was suppressed by virtue of the fact that the poll was conducted via computer, where whites were less inhibited about expressing their true views. Any casual reading of the posts below newspaper stories in many of our great tabloids, including New York's own Daily News and Newsday, reveals a thriving subculture of racist braying.

Then there was yesterday's report about the town of Roxbury, New Jersey being blanketed with racist fliers asking the question "Are you ready for a Black President?" Perhaps your initial reaction was something along the lines of, oh well, we've known for quite some time that fringe white supremacist groups have been penetrating eastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey, and even the Klan has been known to march in Philadelphia.

But if you look closely at this story, you'll find that the fliers were distributed by a group called The League of American Patriots, a group that seems to be part of a new brand of post-racial racists that have been trying to mainstream themselves in the manner of so-called racialist expert Jared Taylor. Taylor, who runs an utterly racist site called American Renaissance (check out the ads for books like "The Jena 6 Fraud" and "On Genetic Interests"), is taken so seriously by the mainstream media that he has appeared on CNN and Fox as a legitimate commentator. Even Daily KOS gave him space.

The League of American Patriots, whose flier asserts that "black ruled nations are the most unstable and violent in the world," and asks why Americans should "allow a black ruler to destroy us," are apparently fans of Taylor, having attended the American Renaissance Conference in February of this year. In a report that appears on their website, American Patriots commented that one of the speakers, Michael Walker "effectively discussed ways in which we can make the nationalist movement more palatable to the masses as opposed to 'appearing like a bunch of angry white men.'"

So far, the strategy doesn't seem to be working. But is this the tip of the proverbial iceberg?

McCain on Spain Is Mainly Insane

noreply@blogger.com (Spanglishkid) — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 00:09:00 +0000

For those of you worried about McCain's recent surge in the polls, worry no longer. Remember when he had to be corrected by loyal Democrat Joe Lieberman about the difference between the Sunnis and the Shia in Iraq? Well, as you've no doubt heard by now, the Arizona Senator (you know, the one who wouldn't support making Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday a holiday in his home state) apparently doesn't know that Spain is in Europe, not Latin America. The Spanish press, I guess tongue in cachete interpreted his remarks as an unexplained elusiveness about his desire to meet with the Spanish prime minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. My gut feeling is that, upon hearing the name Zapatero, his 72-year-old brain accessed the neurons that stored his memories of the Zapatistas, which led him to Latin America, and that set up the typically Republican bifurcation between "pro-neoliberal" "friends" and "Marxist" enemies.

Here's what Obama should do in the debates: Ask McCain if he would meet with Cristian Castro to acknowledge a new movement toward religious freedom in Cuba. That would get him a little perplexed.

When in Doubt, Racialize

noreply@blogger.com (Spanglishkid) — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 14:39:00 +0000

Wasn't it only yesterday that the conservative media echo-chamber was pondering whether Obama was black enough? Those days seem long gone. Manning Marable writes eloquently about the shift from this strategy to the more blatant racializing that is slowly creeping to the surface. From the Clintons' 3 a.m. phone call ad, which Orlando Patterson stridently compares to Birth of a Nation, to the recent McCain-backed sex education ads, which even Karl Rove thinks was going too far, the endgame is clear: Obama is the not-to-be-trusted other. Not only is he African American, but he is a Muslim, a liberal elitist, and a pervert whose policies will get your daughters knocked up by the time they're 11 (for a more reasonable timetable on teen pregnancy, see Sarah Palin).

Interesting how yesterday Frank Rich proclaims that race is not as big an issue in the campaign as the fact that John McCain is far from a solid candidate, then winds up talking about race for several paragraphs. It seems you can't utter two consecutive sentences in print or anywhere in the blogosphere without race coming up. Check out this incredible report from the floor of the Value Voters Summit held by the Family Research Council in Washington last week. [Here's a partial speakers list for that event: Bill Bennett, Tom DeLay, Lou Dobbs, Newt Gingrich, Sean Hannity, Phyllis Schlafly, Mitt Romney.] It's amazing how these supposedly pro-life, pro-Christian "activists" can allow these two Neanderthals sell this racist cereal box at their "summit" and let them get away with saying it's satire.

I guess you could say it's like putting lipstick on a pig.

Paterson Breaks the Code

noreply@blogger.com (Spanglishkid) — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:32:00 +0000

Not sure if the (New York) Daily News is trying to push the "race card" thing back into the forefront, but their current prominently placed blurb on Governor David Paterson's musings on the Republicans adds to yesterday's Living in Spanglish post nicely. "The Republican party is too smart to call Obama 'black,'" says the gov, who goes on to refer to Giuliani and Palin's continual trashing of Barack's stint as a "community organizer" as a subtle reference to not only people of color, but those who work in communities of color. For a more analytical take on this issue, Peter Drier and John Atlas's recent piece in The Nation is strongly insightful. But it's interesting that Paterson was willing to come out so stridently about the racial implications of the twin pit-bull attacks (Giuliani's of course, sans lipstick).

Black Flight

noreply@blogger.com (Spanglishkid) — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 15:09:00 +0000

While watching the Republican National Convention from St. Paul, Minnesota last week, I couldn't help but notice that almost everyone there seemed to be white. Wasn't it just a few years ago that Colin Powell and Condi Rice and J.C. Watts where all prominently associated with the Republican Party, and it was only a matter of time before the Party of Abraham Lincoln would become the real liberator of people of color from Boston to San Diego?

It turns out it wasn't my imagination. This excellent piece in the Washington Post contains several stunning revelations on the racial makeup of this year's RNC delegate pool. Among them: only 36 of the 2380 delegates seated on the convention floor are black, the lowest number in 40 years. That number is down from 167 in 2004, and 24 states had delegations with no (zero) black members. Only one African-American speaker, former Maryland lieutenant governor Michael Steele, was scheduled to speak during prime time at the convention.

[For Latinophiles, a CBS--New York TImes poll released last week estimated that only 5 per cent of the RNC delegates were Latino, the lowest percentage at the RNC since 1996. Please send this information on to Michael L. Barrera, President National Hispanic Business Information Clearinghouse, 1225 17th St, Suite 1500, Denver CO 80202, who, in response to my recent op ed about the presence of Latinos at the Democratic Convention sent the following e-mail: "Just a thought after reading your story about the Latino agenda at the DNC. Just wanted to strongly remind you that all Latinos are not Democrats."]

Apparently the Republicans have read the handwriting on the wall. After Katrina and Obama, why would they waste their time courting black votes. [For that matter, Latinophiles, have we noticed how McCain and his Annie Oakley running mate have not exactly claimed the immigration issue as one of their maverick concerns?] I guess it's no surprise that the Alaska governor was involved in a failed marketing business to be called Rouge Cou, French for je ne sais quoi.

Temple of Spectacle

noreply@blogger.com (Spanglishkid) — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 15:15:00 +0000

Make no mistake, this year's most-crucial-ever presidential election is rapidly being exploded from within by media madness. Of course the mainstream media has been sticking its not-so-invisible-hand into the picture as far back as the 1960 Nixon-Kennedy debate, when it was widely speculated that voters who saw the debate on television thought Kennedy won, whereas those who heard it on the radio felt that Nixon won. But just as the news cycle was settling in to analyze the meaning of the Obama spectacle concluding the DNC in Denver, Hurricane Gustav collided with ex-beauty queen and teenage pregnancy advocate Sarah Palin to create the mother of all spectacles. I mean, how could Fox News Channel and CNN (=Politics) have it any better? Men in red, white, and blue windbreakers with special flap-enhanced sleeves spattering on at the edge of the levies, trying to break through as star reporters and meanwhile, at the northern end of the Mississippi, echoes of Jamie Lynn Spears and tabloid dysfunction drowning out the essential warmongering and police-state repression that is the Republican Party as effectively as an air raid siren. Take shelter in front of your TV sets! The big show is about to begin! The Republicans, now under the stewardship of the Christian Right and Rove protege Steve Schmidt (and perhaps even Rove himself, despite Rupert Murdoch's pathological slobbering) have opened a Pandora's box of media echo-chamber that may well drown out their own message.

Meanwhile, we're left to consider the aftermath of the Obama-as-spectacle message? Is he just using the Super Bowl halftime show as a vehicle to end the cycle of media echo-chamber, the repetition of conventional wisdom that has strangled the individual and critical thinking, or is he part of it? Could it be that the spectacle of a black man as president changes everything, even the spectacle itself? Stay tuned.

Pee Wee Moment Mitigates Militant Anger

noreply@blogger.com (Spanglishkid) — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:16:00 +0000

The mainstream media seem to be obsessed with re-creating this archetypal moment in the late '40s when Jackie Robinson integrated baseball as a way of making palatable the still-dicey Democratic nomination of Barack Obama for president. Witness this high-up quote from "post-racial" Representative Jesse L. Jackson, Jr. that Obama needed a "Pee Wee Reese moment." While it is true that sometimes contemporary America seems like a howling mob of racist baseball fans, Pee Wee had less baggage than the Clintons in terms of sharing power.

Last night Chris Matthews and his liberal sidekick Keith Olbermann offered lavish praise to Michelle's somewhat halting, if generally pleasing speech. Despite being an ex-ESPN talking head, Olberman carefully avoided the Jackie Robinson trope, while Matthews gushed that this was a "Bill Cosby family." They did everything America asked them to do, work hard, study, teach their kids right from wrong. Would have lived in a Brooklyn brownstone (constructed on a set at Kaufman-Astoria Studios in Queens) and daughter would have gone out with Lenny Kravitz. "These people" had what it took to convince the most skeptical non-racist Middle Americans (people that say "why do they need affirmative action?" "why do they have welfare?"). "They have done everything that every conservative white guy has ever said everybody should do in this country."

Of course Juan Williams, uncowed by white guilt, felt it necessary to inform Fox News viewers that Michelle was prone to using a "kind of militant anger" to express her views. Well, I don't know about you, but her brother's admission that she'd memorized every episode of The Brady Bunch had a kind of brutal feel to it. It's as if she were saying, "take that, whitey."

Daddy Yankee Go Home

noreply@blogger.com (Spanglishkid) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 21:30:00 +0000

It's all over the news cycle right now, but this is disappointing news. DY was a gracious interview subject and he at least has ideas about what could happen with reggaeton, but this endorsing McCain move, done at an Arizona high school today, is embarrassing. Speculation about how this was orchestrated is already raging. I guess my favorite conspiracy theory would some how tie the late "Coquito," the late Puerto Rican drug dealer who was also a reggaeton impresario and apparently friends with two PNP (statehood party) politicians to both McCain and Yankee.

It's not a stretch to link alleged Coquito associate Héctor Martínez Maldonando, the senator from the Puerto Rican town of Carolina to the McCain effort, since much of his party is behind the Arizona senator. But DY rival Don Omar has been more strongly associated with Coquito. Still it seems like strange bedfellows.

I could spout outrage about DY, and how this sort of stuff is proof of his weasely PNP sellout loyalty, or that the whole Torres de Sabana thing should have been ample warning about his lack of authenticity and culture-stealing ways. But seriously, it's so unusual for a music or film megastar to have coherent politics that I'm not shocked. Tego knew this from the beginning and that's why he's scaled back his expectations since the first major label deal soured on him. Interesting to see how Calle 13's political stridency holds up in their new album expected in October.

Did I talk about race yet? Well that's probably the most troubling aspect of all of this. DY is simultaneously the biggest and "lightest" reggaeton star, something many observers don't think is a coincidence. Is this just another example of Latinos (Hispanics?) failing to warm up to Obama over race? If it is, frankly it's nauseating.

The Way of the White Hispanic

noreply@blogger.com (Spanglishkid) — Wed, 20 Aug 2008 14:54:00 +0000

The National Latino Institute for Policy is all over the latest neocon attempt to reassure America that predictions that a majority minority nation are overblown. First, they e-mailed me this anxious piece by long-time white-identified Hispanic (and former Reagan administration employee) Linda Chávez (bet she doesn't know her name takes an accent). The basis of her argument is that intermarriage will assure that Hispanics take their rightful place alongside Germans, Italians, Poles, etc. in the Great American Melting Pot and be erased from the rolls of the encroaching minority hordes.

Chávez, who proudly claims English and Irish ancestry, as well as being one of those "special" New Mexicans with an uninterrupted Spanish lineage, is the forerunner of neoliberal attempts to fetishize intermarriage as the solution to the Hispanic Problem championed by New America Foundation fellow Gregory Rodríguez (again, accent added).

Today, Jeff Jacoby, who was suspended in 2000 by his newspaper, The Boston Globe, for "journalistic misconduct," has a whole new rationale. The census bureau's calculations are based on stats that don't count Hispanic whites as white! So take heart, white supremacists...oops, I mean, those who prefer an objective assessment of the total white population (by extrapolating from an unrelated observation by Harvard sociologist Orlando Patterson), "of the 46.6 million Hispanics in the United States today, at least some 22 million are white."

This of course, begs the question. If you think you're white, are you white? Or, if you think you're not a racist, are you not a racist?

Obviously these are questions for minds far more powerful and exacting than mine. Perhaps I should take the advice, given by both Chávez and Jacoby, which I'll quote here.

First, Linda:

Isn't it time we quit obsessing about race and ethnicity? America has successfully integrated millions of people from every region of the world.

Then, Jeff:

With a little luck, common sense, and goodwill, it will seem as odd in 2050 to focus on "non-Hispanic whites" as it would today to insist only "non-German whites" are really white. Better still, perhaps by then we will have really progressed, and abandoned the pernicious notion of racial categories altogether.

I'm not even going to bring up the fact that neither commentator mentioned African Americans vis a vis assimilation, rates of intermarriage, or the Melting Pot.

What will Obama do with this talking point? Ignore at his own peril?

Obama Americana

noreply@blogger.com (Spanglishkid) — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:22:00 +0000

Frank Rich's most recent column pointed out that "Americans" are tired of hearing about Obama, which is actually the McCain attack/deflect attention machine's fault. Possible subtext: Americans aren't just tired of hearing about Obama, but about "others" in general. After all, as leaked by Obama insiders, the plan seems to be to use the Democratic Convention to create an "all-American image" for Barack, to "tackle what members of both parties see as his greatest vulnerability with undecided voters: his 'otherness.'"

Speculation about his vice-presidential pick at the moment, center around two "normal" guys, Evan Bayh, Tom Kaine, and the slightly less normal Joe Biden, furthering the sense that otherness is next to un-electability-ness. Wonder about last week's reportage about "growing diversity in swing counties" could make a lot of this de-othering process not as necessary as his handlers think.

Minority Majority

noreply@blogger.com (Spanglishkid) — Thu, 14 Aug 2008 16:50:00 +0000

So it turns out that the minority will be the majority in the US of A even faster than previously thought. Now, if we can only make it to 2042, which could be right on schedule for the summer release of Tropic Thunder 10. Speaking of that devil, isn't it extraordinary how there is absolutely no serious discussion of Robert Downey's blackface role? Talk about the end of history. You have Manohla talking Jewface here, a guide to appreciating the "genuine humor and satiric intent underneath the unerring waves of bad taste and political incorrectness" there. How about the immortal David Edelstein in New York Ragazine proclaiming that Robert Downey, Jr. "makes a damn fine Negro." If he do say so himself.

The only reason I even looked at New York was its cover subject, and about the only thing worth looking at there was this brilliant essay by Patricia Williams. And maybe the amazing photo of Obama's mama at his wedding to the fabulous Michelle.

This is the picture that tells us more about the future of America than people like Jerome R. Corsi can bear to imagine. Corsi's new book represents yet another wave of paranoid ravings designed to keep the McCain-Obama race inexplicably close. Which it continues to be, for obvious reasons. Yep, it seems, "Obama has some problems, particularly with white voters." At the top of this Politico pundit's "seven worrisome signs for Obama" is, of course, race.

Not surprising, you think? It's not only a Republican problem. Those recently revealed internal memos from the Hillary campaign yielded this quote from Clinton strategist Mark Penn about Obama's race vulnerability:

All of these articles about his boyhood in Indonesia and his life in Hawaii are geared towards showing his background is diverse, multicultural and putting that in a new light. Save it for 2050.

Or, at least, 2042.

The End of Black Politics? Ludacris!

noreply@blogger.com (Spanglishkid) — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 16:20:00 +0000

Barack Obama has made it clear that he is not down with Ludacris's Clinton- and Bush-baiting pop-rap single, "Politics: Obama Is Here,"--an understandable political decision. As an ambivalent consumer of hiphop, Obama, like many other responsible African-American commentators and public figures, is loathe to endorse gangsta's crude excess.

Luda does use the "b-word" to describe Hillary, but given recent revelations that the Clinton campaign pushed to attack Obama's "alien" roots it would seem that he was accurate in assessing the hate emanating from her aides. And calling George W. the "worst of 43 presidents" is hardly "outrageously offensive." But is Obama's distancing from harsh rhetoric a harbinger of a new era of "post-racial" politics?

New York Times writer Matt Bai spent quite a few pages wondering if this were true. By assembling a series of interviews with prominent African-American politicians who presumably represent a "new generation" of lawmakers not "defined" by their blackness, Bai tries to make the case that Obama is not tied to an era of "divisive" politics, when leaders were more likely "community activists" rather than Ivy League educated lawyers "comfortable inside the establishment."

The idea that Obama is "not black enough," or speculation about just how black Obama is, has been with us since the early stages of the campaign. While many have suggested that such questions are insulting, and that the Illinois senator should be judged on the basis of his positions on and agendas for the pressing issues of the day, it is a delusional to think that race is not at the center of his candidacy.

Obama has been careful not to associate himself with the progressive edge of black politics, as evidenced by his recent encounter with hecklers confronting him in St. Petersburg about sub-prime mortgage crisis, the Sean Bell and Jena 6 incidents, or his lack of commitment to reparations for slavery. This shouldn't be a surprise, since he has fallen short of progressive positions regarding issues like the Iraq war (he favors shifting the theater of the "war on terror" to Afghanistan) and energy (he favors increasing reliance on nuclear energy and is leaning toward allowing off-shore drilling).

This strategy is of course in line with corporate interests, and in the game of big-time electoral politics, would seem a winning one. But suggesting that the country is entering a "post-racial" era by comparing different generations of African-American politicians, as Bai does, is rather Ludacris.

The post-racial black politician, rather than being a sign of progressive change, is clearly a product of the relentless neo-con stranglehold on ideas that has afflicted the US since the age of Reagan. It is a form of discourse parallel to Fukuyama's famous "end of history" obfuscation, used to declare an end to grievances that galvanized the Civil Rights Era and a political constituency.

Bai takes the "high" liberal road, suggesting that black politicians are tired of being "pigeonholed" as spokesmen for their race. After letting (white?) readers in on his embarrassment of recognizing the racist attitude of his hometown peers, he throws Newark mayor Cory Booker a bone. A Rhodes scholar who knows were the Middle East is on the map, Booker pleads that "I don't want to be the person that's turned to when CNN wants to talk about black leaders."

The fuel for this new black secularism is the notion that, finally, like so many immigrant groups who have long passed by African Americans on the affluence totem poll, blacks are showing statistical evidence that they are getting a grip on the American dream. "According to an analysis by Pew’s Economic Mobility Project, almost 37 percent of black families fell into one of the three top income quintiles in 2005, compared with 23 percent in 1973," says Bai.

"At the same time," Bai continues, "these black leaders are constantly confronted in their own cities and districts by blighted neighborhoods that are predominately black, places where poverty collects like standing water, breeding a host of social contagions." Disease, contagion, stagnation. We've heard these metaphors before, haven't we?

So, the essential post-racial dynamic is one of a burgeoning core of talented tenths grappling with their newfound freedom to be themselves and those--despite the efforts of a now-obsolete generation of activists--who are left behind. "For a lot of younger African-Americans," writes Bai, "the resistance of the civil rights generation to Obama’s candidacy signified the failure of their parents to come to terms, at the dusk of their lives, with the success of their own struggle." Then again, maybe their resistance was more symbolic of the national political pecking order and debts due to the Democratic political machine.

Finally, it doesn't take much digging to reveal that the measure of "the success of their own struggle" is in question. If there was ever any momentum to the notion that we are at the "end of black politics," this recent study about the increasing instability of the black and Latino middle class, should put that to rest. Without strong footing in class-based educational opportunities, it would seem almost impossible for this generation of "post-racial" politicians to reproduce itself.

From the Bottom of the Deck

noreply@blogger.com (Spanglishkid) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 15:51:00 +0000

From the back of the bus, to dealing the race card "from the bottom of the deck." Our national pastime, awkwardly dancing around the specter of how we came to be America, shows no signs of abating as we approach the dog days of the campaign for President 2008. A recent House-issued apology for the "fundamental injustice, cruelty, brutality and inhumanity of slavery and Jim Crow segregation," was all but obscured by another sordid race card flap.
Of course the use of "race card"as a catchphrase to deflect mostly legitimate grievances about racial inequality is one of contemporary America's most efficient forms of doublespeak. It's on a par with "I want a yes or no answer" in the way that it attempts to silence discussion about our society's definitive elephant in the room. Its invocation is an abuse of language, a flattening of the intellect that purports to reduce the struggle to overcome deep and difficult divisions into a card game.

This last exchange between McCain and Obama over the Paris Hilton/Brittney Spears attack ad (we're living in a more subtle world than the Swiftboat days) begs the rhetorical question: Was flashing images of Obama in synchronous crossfades with dysfunctional tabloid bad girlz the original sin here, or is McCain justified in divulging how hurt he is that anyone could think he was insinuating anything "colorful" about Barack?

This new "go-negative" strategy seems to be the brainchild of Steve Schmidt, a Rove protege otherwise known as "The Bullet." It also includes a bizarre new ad that uses Charlton Heston as Moses in an attempt to mock Obama's (media-designated) status as "messiah." The Rove imprint, i.e., nerd revenge par excellence is clearly visible here: Obama as the most popular guy in high school, likely to steal your prom date.

It seems both Obama and McCain were eager to engage in this sort of back-and-forth, each candidate believing that they could turn race-card fallout to their advantage. Obama no doubt thinks that painting McCain as a petty negative campaigner proves his point that he is part of the "past," while McCain hopes that Bradley-effect voters everywhere now feel even more justified to stand against Obama not because he is black, but because he is paranoid and vindictive.

The first, crude attacks, the smear campaign about Obama's secret "Muslim" identity, have been streamlined into insinuations that he is "touchy" about race, a "creation of celebrity journalism" and suffering from "delusions of grandeur." By lumping in Obama with Hilton and Spears, the McCain Team is at once seeking to feminize Obama as well as reinforcing the idea that he belongs to a flaccid Hollywood-based liberal elite. If you think Al Gore is bad because he invented the Internet, here comes this black man who thinks he is a prophet.

But the new Bullet strategies, designed to eliminate "unforced errors" also symbolizes the Arizona senator's handlers' desperate fear that Obama's candidacy is most threatening because Barack is cool, attractive, perhaps the ultimate mass media candidate for the new millennium.

McCain and his people must realize that he will have difficulty winning a poll that asks who you'd rather have a beer with. The early Rovian attacks have been quick, stinging jabs, unlikely portents for the haymakers to come.

YES (Change) WE CAN (Believe In)

noreply@blogger.com (Spanglishkid) — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 22:27:00 +0000

Speaking on the night of his unexpected defeat, Barack Obama coined a new slogan, "Yes We Can." An Alternet piece by Stephen Rosenfeld cites psychologists and pundits who say Obama's use of "we" is an important derivation from Clinton and Edwards's use of "I" as in "I will work for you." Rosenfeld calls this magic, although if you read my previous post, the magic is embedded in the notion of "change." Still that term has been so overused that the magic is almost completely dissipated. All the more reason Obama, with his clearly best-of-the-field oratory style , went to the new slogan, which coincidentally has the same syllable count as "Let's Go Mets." (Sorry, I mean "Four More Years.") Anyway it was a nice, smooth delivery, and the speech (like a good screenplay) had a beginning, middle, and an end. "Something is going on in America," he intoned. But you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Media?

There is a certain MLK + JFK formula at work here, and I like the linking of civil rights, the labor movement, and women's and immigrants rights movements under an umbrella that even non-minorities can huddle. But I couldn't help but remember that the three-word mantra was achieved by substituting "we" for the "I" in the title of Sammy Davis, Jr.'s 1965 autobiography, "Yes I Can." Hopefully, Barack can avoid someday posing for a picture like this:

But I guess it's also true that "Yes We Can" is English for "Si Se Puede," (syllable count = "Let's Go Yankees") and this was used quite extensively during the anti-anti-immigration marches of 2006 and I guess the labor movement in general. I'm not sure how Cesar Chavez and crew would have cottoned to Obama's intoning about "Yes We Can" being whispered by "pioneers forging across an unforgiving wilderness" (populated by unforgiving Native Americans including various tribes claimed by Luis Valdez and greater Californiaztlan), but maybe Chavez had read that Sammy Davis, Jr.'s mother was either Puerto Rican or Cuban, and decided that si se pudo.

Plus ça change

noreply@blogger.com (Spanglishkid) — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 21:43:00 +0000

I'm a big fan of etymology, so when the week's political rhetoric was dominated by the word change, I decided to check things out. etymonline.com, what seems to be a useful online etymological dictionary, gives this background check on "change":

c.1225, from O.Fr. changier, from L.L. cambiare, from L. cambire "to exchange, barter," of Celtic origin, from kamb- "to bend, crook." The financial sense of "balance returned when something is paid for" is first recorded 1622.

I was intrigued when it became obvious that "change," the word we use to describe an action that brings about something different, has its roots in an economic transaction. "Change" is what you get when the value of one part of the exchange is subtracted from the larger value. But this happens only when transactions moved beyond mere barter into the widespread use of monetary currency. Still, the Latin cambire literally meant "barter," so, because all transactions, even bartered ones, can't be considered absolutely equal, then some value was always yielded over and above the value of the the two objects exchanged. So "kamb" symbolized how people "bended" or "crooked" the meaning of a transaction to make all things equal.

A Spanish etymological dictionary we have lying around here (Breve diccionario etimologico de la lengua castilla, ed. by Joan Corominas) takes this one step further. "Cambiar," it verifies, comes from the late Latin cambiare, whose synonym is listed as "trocar." "Trocar" is present in much of old Iberian languages, as well as Gascon, one of those French/Spanish fusions, and the dictionary speculates its more primitive meaning stems from "strike" or "clash" from the crash or squeezing of hands that is "symbolic of the moment of the sealing of a deal." I also see and hear in "trocar" a parallel to "trick" (the end result of a round of playing cards, and the economic transaction between a john and prostitute), and in trick I hear magic.

So change, then, is something of unknown, and sometimes magically determined value that is created during a clash of interests, a smoothing over of the violence that sometimes occurs in our political economy. For people like Obama, who suddenly finds himself perhaps the most viable candidate of all, and Hillary, the woman who would be king, the trick is to avoid the familiar French tautology:

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose: "the more things change, the more they stay the same."

Crisis = Change?

noreply@blogger.com (Spanglishkid) — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 17:07:00 +0000

Just the other day I was discussing with L. the idea of when we might see change in our society, or at least a critique of what's going on in the global economy that has widespread support. The last time that happened, I'd say forlornly, as many others have, was the Great Depression, which set off a re-evaluation of industrial capitalism and created the opportunity for things like Social Security, stronger labor unions, and an acceptance of government regulation of runaway corporations and profiteers. Now, as Petraeus drones on in the left corner of my desktop via APTN (and CodePink again disrupts and are dragged out by Capital Police), I get this e-mail about a new Naomi Klein book called The Shock Doctrine, in which she hypothesizes that many of global capital's greatest leaps forward in recent years have resulted in "shocks" to our collective systems in the form of wars, terrorist attacks, and natural disasters.

The book is being supported by a film Klein made with Mexican director Alfronso Cuarón, one that suggests a coincidental synergy with his 2006 feature Children of Men. After a cursory look at the film and Klein's own nutshelling of the ideas in the book, it does seem like another interesting critical view of what's happening to us, although the natural disaster part seems like a little bit of a stretch, unless you're subscribing to the view that rather than directly causing them (I guess it is clear that rich countries are at blame for global warming), big capitalists lie in wait for them to effect big change on the societies or localities that are victims of them. There is also a connective thread to the use of torture by the U.S. in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Guantánamo, although these seem more like manifestations of these old techniques that have been lying around since the Cold War and revived by the unilateral attack-presidency of the Bush administration.

Klein's grounding of all of this in the work and views expressed by the infamous U of C economist Milton Friedman is probably the scariest aspect of the book, and the grounding of her argument. Apparently Friedman viewed the post-New Deal capitalist world as one needing shock treatment to wipe clean ideas of a regulatory state that protecting citizens from capitalist excesses, and using the new blank slate to impose ideas like the unquestioned necessity of allowing "free-market" capitalism to be the only possible template for a "free" society. The only problem I have with focusing so much on this line of analysis is that there have been so many conservative and neoconservative thinkers that have paved away for and made possible for this kind of behavior that it seems a little reductionist. Also, there have been so many instances in the past of states and private interests subjugating people through means of terror and "shock" that it hardly seems we can find the root of this in the '50s mania for electro-shock therapy. But I guess I should read the book first. Meanwhile, Friedman is quoted in materials for the book in a way that I found uncomfortably close to the sentiments expressed at the beginning of the entry.

September Surprise

noreply@blogger.com (Spanglishkid) — Wed, 05 Sep 2007 14:46:00 +0000

Back with the new and improved Living in Spanglish blog. This version will be more free-flowing to allow for more references to the mad stuff going on all around us. Such as the event being given by the American Enterprise Institute on 9-11 Eve. Do they really think they're going to get away with attacking Iran in this climate? I guess there's no need to worry about massive anti-war protests. I'm not sure how to interpret this possible push for the invasion of Iran. Stubborn carrying out of a long-term plan, or the act of a wounded animal (the Bush braintrust) after this summer's departure of Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales. Who knows if my mid-August op ed about Alberto, for those who missed it, may have hastened his departure? Wasn't Dubya already down in the Texas compound by then?

Gonzales's departure, a tawdry affair that was covered up by claims that he was from Humble, Texas (at least Wikipedia confirmed it) and the well-timed Michael Vick scandal, is already being discarded in the dustbin of history. Schumer and other Democrats may have vowed to continue investigation, but Alberto's role in the rewriting of what defines torture, the wireless wiretapping scheme, and the firing of the U.S. attorneys stands a good chance of diminishing in importance as the fight over winding down the Iraq war gains prominence.

Of course these little missteps are not as horrifying as dogfighting, or even Stephon Marbury's appearance on Mike'd Up. Many of you have been spending your free time listening to Larry Craig defending his wide-legged stance in a Minneapolis airport bathroom. The chatter of infinite information is doing a terrific job of obscuring truth, so much so that even that is in question.

Resident Alien

noreply@blogger.com (Spanglishkid) — Tue, 24 Apr 2007 04:45:00 +0000

I recently interviewed Calle 13, whose new album drops today, April 24. This time we had a pretty good conversation; they seem like they're in a groove about their sudden rise to fame. They're representing Boricua but they're finding a way to be transnational.

Here are some of the words we exchanged:

Spanglishkid: It seems that you’re trying to make a statement about the ugliness of the industry by taking on the role of the devil.

Residente: I wrote that chorus of “Tango del Pecado” thinking about some criticism that was made when I started going out with my girlfriend [former Miss Universe Denise Quiñonez]. People said I would be going to hell with her, and they started quoting verses from the Bible, so I said damn if my music is Satanic, then turn up the volume. El Residente is the maximum exponent of sin, and I assumed the role that they were pinning on me. The lyrics are about a love that is not accepted, that isn’t looked well on by many people. So we mixed that with tango, which has a lot of torch songs, theatrical songs.

Spanglishkid: Do you finally have a good relationship with your girlfriend’s parents?

Residente: No, I still haven’t met them.

Spanglishkid: Then there’s “La Fucking Moda” which is saying, step off, I am the fucking style.

Residente: Yeah, it’s an ego trip, but I’m making fun of that. Maybe the whole world can have that feeling of that they are the fucking style. I think everybody has that inside of them.

Spanglishkid: But it doesn’t weigh on you to be the fucking style?

Residente: [Laughs] I know I’m not the style, there are a lot of fads, they pass with time. I wouldn’t want to be a fad. Every song on this album is like a screenplay and it obviously can’t be taken literally. If you take my songs literally you’ll go crazy, it’s like taking Quentin Tarantino’s films seriously, you’re going to go crazy with all those heads being chopped off. It’s a screenplay, a movie. This is fiction.

Spanglishkid: But on the album even your mom calls and leaves a message on your answering machine saying the record is too violent.

Residente: She does think it’s violent, but she understands the violence on the album.

Spanglishkid: This record is kind of like the Latin Americanization of Calle 13…

Visitante: We were touring all the time and every weekend we went to a different country. I think that was captured on the record. Every time we brought back an instrument, and we brought back a record. And we experimented with folkloric rhythms, sometimes they’re more evident than others—on the song “El Norte,” the folkloric isn’t that evident, but there’s a Venezuelan cuatro.

Spanglishkid: I read somewhere that you want to make a documentary about your travels to Latin America.

Residente: We have been traveling through different countries with indigenous people, and the documentary will reflect their story. We’ve been with the Yanomamis from Brazil, with the Amantaní in Peru, who live on an island in Lake Titicaca, which is the highest elevation of any lake in the world. The Buyús we got to know a little bit, they’re in Maicau, on the border with Venezuela and Colombia. And also the Aruacos of Colombia, who are in there between the guerrillas, paramilitaries, and the government. They’re taking away their land.

Spanglishkid: This is reflected in the song “Llégale a mi Guarida,” right?

Residente: It could be a guerrilla, it could be a paramilitary, it could be an indigenous person, who’s singing that chorus. “Llégale a mi guarida/Jurado todo el mundo es pura vida/Pero si atentan contra mi vida/Quizas una bomba suicida haga el trabajo” The song is pretty violent. I took some personal stuff that I’ve felt and I say, man I shouldn’t be saying this, but I’m saying it. So I mixed it with this sort of Latin American vibe, and Vicentico of Los Fabulosos Cadillacs does the chorus.

Spanglishkid: Did Gustavo Santaolalla introduce him to you?

Visitante: Santaolalla got wind of the project because Gustavo Cordera of Bersuit mentioned it to him. And he was going to bring him a CD so he could listen to it. But Gustavo lost the CD and what happened was I met him at a TV show, and right when we were going to do “El Tango,” it occurred to me to work with him. From the beginning Gustavo was super cool, really great with us.

Spanglishkid: Did you go to that Cadillacs show around ’98 in San Juan?

Visitante: I would go to all the Cadillacs shows. The people of Puerto Rico really love them a lot. What’s cool about the Cadillacs, is that they start with one vibe and then they reinvent themselves with another style. A lot of people I know think that their last CD “La Marcha del Golazo Solitario” is their best.

Spanglishkid: Vicentico has a very unique voice. He sounds like a fútbol player who is wandering out of a bar singing….I was wondering, is “El Avión Se Cae” a figure of speech in Puerto Rico? Meaning, “the whole thing is falling apart”?

Residente: I didn’t say it as a figure of speech. I said it literally. It’s a pretty trivial song, it says the plane is falling, and I took some pills, and I saw the flight attendant naked, and animals having sex on the plane.

Visitante: There’s not much hidden meaning there.

Spanglishkid: It sounds like early Pink Floyd to me.

Residente: Yeah, it’s a trip.

Visitante: We put a lot of reverb and delay on the song. It has a little of that atmosphere.

Spanglishkid: On the album there’s a lot of interplay between the sacred and profane. I liked the song with La Mala Rodríguez a lot because it’s kind of sweet even though you talk about dirty sex.

Residente: It was really cool working with her. I wanted to do something less intense sexually and she wanted to do something stronger and she wanted me to be stronger too. So I mixed it up a little, because the character I play is pretty strong sexually but he has a small [penis] and he comes rapidly, so that joke is there. Then the music that Visitante made, it was all done there at home…with shoes.

Visitante: Yeah it was done with props in my room…

Residente: It’s like if I were going to tape over your mouth or tie you up or do something sexual, instead of a snare drum, we used the sound of ripping masking tape. You hear the heels of the sneakers, squeak, squeak, squeak and the heels of a woman’s shoes.

Spanglishkid: It was like you want to be listening to this with a bottle of wine.

Visitante: Exactly, it can be a soundtrack for an erotic scene in a movie.

Spanglishkid: Did you make a video of it?

Residente: No, we haven’t done that but it would be cool. I’d like to because La Mala knows Julio Medem who is one of my favorite directors. Man, if we could do something with him it would be bad.

Spanglishkid: What did he direct?

Residente: He did “Lovers of the Arctic Circle,” and “Sex and Lucía.”

Spanglishkid: With Paz Vega.

Visitante: Damn, Paz Vega. That’s intense.

Spanglishkid: What was it like to work with Tego Calderón?

Residente: I’m one of his followers—in fact he’s the only one, besides Voltio that I have worked with from that genre. It’s not that I want to close myself off from the genre but I have to like them for me to work with a person. Tego is someone who created a change in the genre. Working with him for me was a source of pride.

Spanglishkid: What about this controversy about when you were criticized when you won at the Grammys. Is there still a problem?

Residente: Most people don’t consider us part of the genre. But they still see us as like a menace so that’s why when we won they dissed us. I don’t have any problems with any of them, but I’m also not friends with any of them. I have some friends from the genre with whom I can sometimes have a beer, but maybe they’re not my closest friends. Voltio is my man for a long time, he’s the only one I’m good friends with.

Spanglishkid: What do you think about the possibility of unity between the different Latin American countries?

Residente: That’s what we’re doing with the documentary and with traveling and trying to connect. It’s a really difficult task. We’re doing it through the medium of music and now when we started to release those images people are going to feel a kind of pride in seeing their country projected on television in North America and understand the necessities of each country and understand the virtues and good things they have.

Spanglishkid: When you finish this investigation of Latin America, do you think it would be a good idea to take a look at the Latino diaspora in the U.S.?

Residente: I have a song that I started but it’s not there yet. Maybe it’ll come out on the next album. It had to do with when I came here to New York, and I was checking out all the Latinos. The ones who recognized me were working class. If I went to a restaurant it was the cooks in the restaurant. And if we went to a hotel it was the ones who cleaned the hotel. So that tripped me out, then all of a sudden it was like seeing all those people here working in the cold, you know they come from other climates, and suddenly they’re here. So I started to write a song about that, and I say, “Hace frio afuera/Ponte una capucha.” “It’s cold outside/Put on your hood.”