Sunday, July 8th, 2007...10:39 pm
A Why-a-What?
Ernesto Portillo Jr. started off his column this morning in this stunning manner:
State Rep. Tom Prezelski is my model.
Later, he says this:
He’s my model for cool clothes…
Uh, okay.
The article is really on the guayabera, which has been a choice of southern Arizona politicians for years. The shirt is casual, but acceptable in some formal settings. It also makes a heck of a lot more sense to wear in Tucson’s triple digit summers than three piece suits.
Portillo tells a bit of the hard to pin down history of the shirt, are they Cuban? South American? Philipino?
He repeats, but doesn’t seem to buy, the explanation that the shirt originated so that guava pickers could easilly climb trees and return with four of the fruits. Other than providing the explanation for the name of the shirt, it seems that there would be more efficient ways of accomplishing this task.
Of course, being the Star, the normal crew of bigoted pinheads took the chance to take an innocuous article touching on cross-border culture that was pretty non-partisan (the only other politicians mentioned besides Tom were Republicans) and reacted with their normal knee jerk narrowmindedness. One frequent poster, unable to directly respond to Portillo’s piece, posted his reaction elsewhere:
So Portillo thinks he’s the fashion king of Tucson eh?
Tucson’s unofficial, sensible men’s shirt.
No, Portillo, it’s South Tucson’s men’s shirt.
So what if a Democrat “Polak”*
wears it Portillo?You think it’s great only because it’s worn in Mexico, Everything in the US that’s not Mexican is uncool.
Perhaps you would be much happier living in Mexico Portillo?
*In Polish, the word Polak
simply means a Polish man (Polka for Polish women)
Harry D. (Dog Dude (Blue Heeler)) (yep, that’s the name he signs all of his posts with) performs the rhetorical gymnastics of insulting both sides of me and my brother’s ethnic heritage. I would say that it would make Don Rickles proud, but Rickles would be funnier.
Word to Harry D…or whatever of your three nicknames you settle on: yep, polak is an actual Polish word and you have the meaning right. And yes, generally, the insulting version is spelled “Polack.” It would be easy to buy this explanation if you are actually Polish; I have my doubts about that one. Generally, if you have to explain to your audience that what you are saying is actually not an ethnic slur, it probably would be a good idea to stay away from saying it. Because the rest of us will just assume you are a dureń who deserves pokazać komuś gdzie raki zimują.
Geez, four decades since the ‘64 Civil Rights act…five since Brown v Board of Education, but folks are still throwing the word “Polack” around?
5 Comments
July 9th, 2007 at 12:00 am
Guess that means ol’ Lew Murphy was in with the illegal immigrants, if you go by Harry D’s trian of thought. that guy is an automatic thumbs down for me on the Star/Citizen boards.
July 9th, 2007 at 7:44 am
Aren’t you aware Brown v. Board of Education has been recently nerfed?
July 9th, 2007 at 11:23 am
“Geez, four decades since the ‘64 Civil Rights act…five since Brown v Board of Education, but folks are still throwing the word “Polack” around?”
Simply shows the futility of trying to “legislate” people’s personal views. A losing proposition from the start.
July 9th, 2007 at 2:19 pm
Yeah, not allowing states to force kids of a different skin color to go to atrociously bad schools (not to mention dividing these supposedly indivisble United States) is totally legislating people’s personal views, while screaming at the top of our lungs that gay marriage needs to be banned in the Constitution because everyone knows gays are evil and out to destroy marriage, families, and America.
July 10th, 2007 at 10:25 am
EP jr was just sucking up to your brother to get more coverage on your blog! (J/K)
It did make me want to run out and get a guayabera.
I remember many a Tucson leader, Republican, democrat, Old, Young, regardless of race wearing one during the summer.
Has the immigration issue so divided this country that anything remotely associated with Hispanic or Hispanic culture automatically tied to the immigration issue?
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