My fellow Boricuas, our long national nightmare is over. No longer do we have to be inundated by daily tidal waves of tales of Chickengate, Low to Moderate Income Townhouse-gate, Casabe Houses-gate, even Jewish Nursing Home on the Upper West Side Rezoning-gate. No longer do we have to live without ever having seen a Latin@ in citywide office, or never having seen a person of color as Speaker of the City Council. No longer do we have to wonder why some of us have never stood for the Pledge of Alliegiance at City Council meetings, or exactly what it was that got Taller Boricua thrown out of the community space at Julia de Burgos.

It’s over! And everyone wins, it seems. Even Dan Garodnick, who most of us have never even seen speaking before, looks good, great, an incredibly gracious man who didn’t want to see the chamber sullied with the long knives wielded by borough Democratic machine hackery! The City Council is united, and it’s time to move forward with the Progressive Agenda we’ve been hoping for all this time, and right on, Ydanis Rodríguez, que viva el Occupy para siempre! Just two days after reyes, llegó la banda/tocando salsa (para que entren en la bachata)! Bloombito twitter is now obsolete–we got some real Spanish speakers in the council chambers.

Which brings up the question, why exactly were all three of our daily newspapers so obsessed with bringing this candidacy down? It’s kind of hard for me to believe that it was because she was a Latina and an independent sistah at that. While many focused on the ludicrous Murdoch Scandal Sheet Story with the severed cabeza de gallina, and its attendant anti-women and Caribbean implication of brujería on its front page, there wasn’t a lot said about the Daily News’s “Hypocrite for Speaker” editorial, which didn’t mention its own story about Glen Goodwin’s frivolous suit, and even the New York Times, which ignored the Chickengate story and offered a muted, yet very specific endorsement of Garodnick.

Most likely the bottom line for the News and Times in this instance is various corporate agendas, the ones that would really not prefer Bill de Blasio’s apparently progressive plans for the city to be made smoother by a speaker who agrees with most if not all of them. The only question here is whether these newspaper editorial boards are just paranoid–overly concerned with politicians who may be a) compromised by the “hard realities of doing politics in this city,” or b) motivated by unacknowledged debts to large campaign contributors–or jealous that MMV figured out de Blasio would win long before they did.

Of course there’s probably a reason that we’re not privy to or just too naive to figure out at this point. Maybe having to do with Roger Stone and his lackey, Ken Langone (did I get their relationship right?). Still it’s actually a relief that it’s now (largely) irrelevant now to have to analyze, disprove, or be concerned by articles like this. As Greg Tate used to say, we all have our contradictions–time will tell how unwieldy they may become.

Today, we were all witnesses to history, and soon we’ll see where that leads us, because history doesn’t just stand still, like some would have us believe. For now it’s back to what we do best–salsa, bachata, and saying stuff in Spanish without caring if anyone understands what we’re saying.