Will there be another Latin American pelotero to honor by mid-December?

Come mid-December, the Baseball Hall of Fame plans to play tribute to four of its members who emanate from Latin America. Those ballplayers will have their plaques removed from the museum in Cooperstown, N.Y., and will be shipped to Puerto Rico as part of a four-day, touring display of the Caribbean island.

Which is nice for fans of Roberto Alomar, Orlando Cepeda, Roberto Clemente and Tony Perez (who’s actually Cuban, not Puerto Rican). Not everybody can get to upstate New York to see the baseball collection assembled there.

BUT I CAN’T help but wonder if the idea of noting the significance of Latin Americans with that action will seem a little obsolete by the time the tour is conducted.

For there is a chance that come Monday, there will be a new Latin American member of the baseball Hall. For among the 10 people up for consideration by the Hall’s veterans committee are three Cubaños who were among the last wave of ballplayers from the island nation before the rise of Fidel Castro managed to complicate so many things in our society.

There are those who think the presence of the three – Minnie Miñoso, Tony Oliva and Luis Tiant – could complicate the situation so that none of them are able to reach the “75 percent” standard required for membership in the Hall of Fame.

They may well be correct. For that matter, none of the 10 may make it because of the differing factions each in support of a different ballplayer.

RON SANTO IN before Gil Hodges? What about Ken Boyer or Jim Kaat? And some Yankees-backers will think it absurd that anyone gets in ahead of pitcher Allie Reynolds.

All of which is a shame.

Because there are some worthy candidates who could easily get dumped on yet again come Monday – the day that the results will be announced.

As for the three Cubans, I’ll be the first to admit I can’t pick from among them. A part of me thinks that legitimate arguments can be made for all three – them, and one-time Oakland A’s owner Charles O. Finley.

WHICH PROBABLY MEANS that none of them will get in.

But in the cases of Tiant and Miñoso, both didn’t make it to the major leagues until the “relatively” advanced ages in their late 20s. In part because while there were some Cuban ballplayers in the U.S. major leagues, nobody was looking to build rosters around them like today.

These Latin Americans were supposed to fill a roster spot or two. Which all three of these guys managed to do, with Oliva being a significant part of those strong Minnesota Twins teams of the 1960s, Miñoso a part of the Chicago White Sox and Cleveland Indians teams that were perennial contenders of the 1950s, and Tiant being the best pitcher the Boston Red Sox had in the mid-1970s – particularly that one year they went to the World Series.

It’s easy to try to reduce the ballplayers to mere numbers (although those statistics can be read in ways that make all three look extremely worthy). Although all have their own stories that add to the culture that is beisbol.

WITH MIÑOSO, HE was the first dark-skinned Latin American ballplayer in the U.S. major leagues (prior to him, Latins had to pass a sensibility where they could – from a distance, at least – appear to be white), while Oliva nearly got released while in the minor leagues except that the Minnesota Twins weren’t anxious to have him sent back to a Cuba that had just been taken over by Castro.

And as for Tiant, he could literally join Hall of Fame member Orlando Cepeda in terms of being the sons of ballplayers who starred in the Latin American leagues AS WELL AS the Negro leagues of old in this country.

So yes, I’m looking forward to Monday to see if any of the Cuban Trio manages to get into the Hall of Fame. It would be a much more interesting moment than knowing the bronze plaques honoring four Puerto Rico natives are touring the island this month.

Now if only we can get these people to realize the baseball worthiness of yet another pelotero, Fernando Valenzuela. Yet that argument will have to be the subject of another day’s commentary.

  -30-

Latino-oriented business continues growth while others struggle

We’ve all heard of more than our share of businesses that are struggling to survive, or are flat-out busted and going out of business.

So it ought to be a pleasant story to learn of a business that this year opened its 100^th location (spread across seven Southwestern U.S. states) and has plans to open 85 more locations in the next few years.

THE BUSINESS I refer to is Pizza Patron – a 25-year-old company founded in Dallas that gives us mass-produced pizzas delivered quickly. But their niche is that they cater to the growing Latino market, and are big on locating in neighborhoods where Spanish is spoken heavily – and primarily.

The company got its national attention four years ago when they said they would start accepting payment for pizzas in Mexican pesos – figuring that some people might have small amounts of both Mexico and U.S. currency on hand.

Going through the hassle of converting the Mexican cash to its U.S. value was worth it if it meant building up business amongst Latinos – who as they shift more and more to Yankee greenbacks will want to spend them more and more with the businesses that were sympathetic towards them all along.

The company issued a statement Monday talking of its latest expansion 20 new locations in the area in and around Fresno, Calif. The company just seems determined to grow, which makes it so unlike many other businesses in existence these days.

IT OUGHT TO be regarded as a U.S. economic success story. Although I’m sure there are more than their share of individuals who will want to denigrate it for being willing to cater to the portion of the population that they don’t want to regard as a legitimate part of our society.

Well, that’s just tough!

If anything, economics and business ought to be the most un-ideological and non-partisan of elements of our society. Let them reach out to those who are willing to work hard and take advantage of opportunities – even one such as mass-producing pizzas for those moments when Latinos who don’t live within the delivery radius of a Domino’s or Little Caesar franchise feel the need for some pepperoni and mushroom.

Personally, I have never had a Pizza Patron pizza. They haven’t ventured in Chicago. I’d like to think it is because the metropolitan area already is saturated with enough pizzerias of quality that we realize just how unappetizing a Domino’s pizza truly is.

MAYBE WE DON’T need another chain. Or maybe the day will come when they see the roughly 2 million Latinos (out of 12 million people overall) who live in Illinois, and will decide that there is some place for their product amongst us too.

Which may be the ultimate victory that my ethnic brethren achieves over the conservative ideologues who would want to demonize us.

Our economic power ultimately will crush their rancid rhetoric. And as for the fact that these ideologues seem like they’d put their nonsense ahead of business?

To me, that sounds downright un-American.

  -30-

Those offended by the images all-too-often are the problem

I couldn’t help but be reminded of an Absolut vodka advertisement from a couple of years ago when I learned of the cover of the latest issue of The New Yorker magazine.

That ad was one that was used to sell the product in Mexico – and it was one that depicted the “fantasy” of a Mexico that still included as a northernmost region the area that has since become the southwestern states of the United States.

IT TICKED OFF the ideologues that anyone would want to even remember the fact that the southwestern region of our nation was once a part of Mexico – and that there are parts of our nation to whom the Spanish were the original European settlers (and NOT the English).

My guess is that those same ideologues are the ones most offended by the latest New Yorker magazine cover. It depicts people dressed in “Puritan” garb slipping through a hole in a wire fence erected in the southwestern desert.

Those pilgrims can be seen dodging cactus just before, and immediately after, slipping through the “border” fence. And one Pilgrim woman appears to be caught in that fence.

Which plays into the line of logic used by some more stringent Latino activists who will joke that the Pilgrims were the original “illegal aliens.”

PERSONALLY, I THINK the magazine cover is kind of corny. On the potentially tacky and offensive level, it doesn’t really compare to the cover The New Yorker published several years ago when Easter Sunday and the IRS tax filing deadline technically both came on the same day.

The Easter Bunny being crucified on an IRS 1040 tax form is just garish on so many levels.

Also, I’m not one of those who thinks there is a perfect parallel between pilgrims and those people now trying to come to this country from Latin American nations – even though the bureaucratic mess that is our federal immigration policy currently tries to prevent (unsuccessfully) many of them from even thinking of coming here.

That is because the people who already were on this continent that we now think of as North America weren’t about to impose “laws” meant to make people “illegal” just because they wanted to come here.

IF ANYTHING, ONE can argue that the reason these ideologues are so fearful of newcomers is because they remember how badly they behaved when their ancestors were the “newcomers,” and they fear everybody else will behave as badly as they would.

Perhaps those tribes native to the Americas would have been justified in adopting such an attitude about “legal” and “illegal” people. They could have said that no one else should think of coming to “their” country unless they were exactly like them.

Because the whole concept of “legal” and “illegal” is such an artificial distinction. “Legal” is whomever we say it is. Those of us with any sense realize how ridiculous the ideological rhetoric has become.

Which is the point all too often missed by those people who argue they’re not bigots because they support “legal” immigration, then start spouting tacky theories about who should be “legal.”

THOSE PEOPLE ARE the ones who are going to be offended by this latest bit of artwork – while the rest of us will either chuckle or shrug our shoulders.

Because we’ll realize that by next week, most of these covers will be sitting in recycling bins for so many of the magazine’s readers. New covers come and go each and every week – just like advertisements.

But some of the nonsense attitudes that those images stir up manage to linger around for far too long.

  -30-

The times, they are a changin’, towards Cuba

We really are in the 21^st Century and moving forward towards the day when Cuba rejoins the civilized world – instead of the sense of isolation that U.S. policy has tried to keep it in for the past five decades.

Chicagoans will soon be able to see the real thing

I couldn’t help but notice a pair of reports about events that even a couple of years ago would have been considered downright radical; if not outright impossible to ever achieve.

THOSE INCLUDE THE fact that it will now be possible for people to catch a flight to Havana directly from the major airport in my own home city.

O’Hare International Airport, which remains one of the world’s busiest, will start offering non-stop flights between the two cities. C&T Charters will be the service that offers them.

We’re not talking about some sort of luxury flights with schedules meant to make it at one’s convenience to travel to Jose Marti International Airport.

It will literally be one flight a week every Friday from Chicago to Havana, with one return flight per week offered as well, according to the Associated Press. Miss that one flight, and you have to wait a week for the next one.

BUT THAT CERTAINTY is a step up from people having to plan special trips to Mexico or Canada in order to find an airline that offered regular service between those countries and the Cuban capital.

Trying to maintain that level of isolation does nothing but ensure that business interests will be stunted. Which is ironic since the people who usually complain about government interfering with business are also the ones who most eagerly want to maintain a status quo that just isn’t realistic any longer.

Even Mayor Rahm Emanuel is supportive of such a move – even though as White House chief of staff he was the one who often kept President Barack Obama from taking actions that would upset the conservative ideologues to the point where they would refuse to work with the president even less than they currently do.

This is a big move. Although I got my bigger kick from a New York Times report about a Massachusetts-based softball team that traveled to Cuba (no word on how exactly they got there) to play Cuban teams.

THE EASTERN MASSACHUSETTS Senior Softball League sent teams of people bordering on geriatric to play equally-old squads of Cubanos – who according to The Times cleaned the U.S.’s clock big-time (ie., they won).

It’s not “big-time” sports. It certainly wasn’t anything the equivalent of those days in 1999 when the Baltimore Orioles dignified the Cuban National Team in baseball and played them at the Estadio Latinoamericano in Havana.

In fact, The Times pointed out that the playing fields were little better than what one might find in any schoolyard – which gave this whole affair something of the feel of a neighborhood pickup game between a batch of old guys who can’t accept the fact that they’re never going to be the next Mickey Mantle (which also implies that they’re  old enough to have seen him when he truly was MICKEY MANTLE!!!!

But that, if anything, may be what makes this all the more special. It creates the sense of ordinary people, rather than the U.S. major leaguers versus privileged athletes of the Cuban system, getting to confront each other.

THAT GOES A long way toward tearing down the barricades that have been built up between Miami and Havana. It is progress.

Except for one factor.

The Times indicated that this was slow-pitch softball being played – not the fast-pitch game that is played competitively around the world. It also was played with fielder’s gloves.

Any serious fan of the slow-pitch game will tell you that it is a “sport” played barehanded. Which makes me think that if the United States truly wanted representation against the Cubans, it should have sent one of the slow-pitch teams out of Chicago – which is where that game was developed.

AT THE VERY least, the aging beer-gut guys smacking around Clinchers on any given weekend couldn’t have done any worse than the ballplayers from Massachusettts.

And hey, now it’s possible for such a team to catch a direct flight from their home city – O’Hare to Marti, in just a couple of hours.

  -30-

Newt on 'la familia' – he gets it, maybe

The sad thing about the Republican brawl taking place this week concerning presidential aspirant Newt Gingrich is that it all is so predictable.

GINGRICH: His motivations?

Gingrich used a Tuesday debate not just to imply, but to come out and say that there is a certain callous touch to the rhetoric that so many GOP candidates are using these days whenever the issue of immigration (or anything involving ethnicity) comes up.

WHICH MEANS HE’S NOW being bashed about by the people who should be his political allies. They don’t want to hear talk about how anyone who isn’t exactly like themselves is just as much a human being as they are – and quite possibly much more worthy.

They’re going to continue to smack him about until they can take down his standing (which in recent weeks had shown Gingrich developing as the potential frontrunner in this campaign to be the person who gets to take on Barack Obama for president in 2012).

For the record, I have to write that in any sensible way of perceiving the issue, there is nothing controversial about what Gingrich had to say. Except to people whose perception of our society is so skewed that they can’t acknowledge reality.

“I don’t see how the party that says it’s the party of the family is going to adopt an immigration policy which destroys families which have been here a quarter-century. I’m prepared to take the heat for saying ‘let’s be humane’ in enforcing the law.”

NOW, GINGRICH IS persona non-grata among the ideologues. They don’t want to hear it. They just want to hear the rants about how these not-really people are nothing more than criminal for being in the United States.

That is all their stance has ever been about. And there’s a good chance that people like Mitt Romney, should he prevail in getting the GOP nomination, is making statements this week against Gingrich that will come back to haunt him in the general election.

They will be THE REASON that Obama takes 67 percent of the Latino vote come Nov. 6, 2012.

“We make a mistake as a Republican Party in trying to describe which people who’ve come here illegally should be given amnesty,” was just one of Romney’s comments this week.

ACTUALLY, MITT, YOU make a mistake as a Republican Party by trying to perceive the issue so narrowly. And your insistence on continually using the “A” word makes you sound like a buffoon who is determined to live in the 19^th Century, rather than the 21^st.

Now having written all that, I’m not about to apply for membership in the Newt Gingrich fan club any time soon.

For I also notice in his rhetoric in recent days that he’s not supporting any specific plan. He’s trying to commit himself to nothing, which will make it easier for him to back away and take some stance more in line with the conservative ideologues on whom he has always relied for support.

Gingrich’s debate rhetoric is nothing more than an acknowledgement that the idea of deporting 11 million Latinos (and maybe a few more who probably should be illegal, as far as the ideologues are concerned) is nothing more than a fantasy.

IT’S NEVER GOING to happen. Republican hard-headedness is just getting in the way of a real resolution being found to the bureaucratic mess of an immigration policy we now have. I doubt Newt has THAT much sympathies for the growing Latino population.

Besides, a good part of the reason we have these hostile factions in our government these days is BECAUSE OF people like Newt Gingrich, who did more than their share to drive out the more moderate factions from the Republican Party.

The ‘children of Newt’ are the ones who are now kicking him in the behind.

Which means that one-time Nation of Islam leader Malcolm X may have had the right idea some 48 years ago when talking about payback. For Newt’s “chickens” truly seem to have “come home to roost.”

  -30-

Being thankful for a meal and a family to spend it with

I’m giving it a rest on Thursday – preferring to spend my day engaging in Thanksgiving-type activities rather than pontificating in print after having all kinds of deep thoughts about the great issues of our day.



President Barack Obama pardons Peace and Liberty (the turkeys, that is) for Thanksgiving. Will anyone be desperate enough to find a way to turn this into a partisan slam? Photograph provided by the White House 



And for those people who will ask, I must admit the answer is, “No.” There won’t be anything specially “Latino” about my holiday fest (although I’m not sure what would constitute “Latino” in this particular case).

IN MY FAMILY, it always seemed that Christmas was the holiday that we tried to celebrate with some form of ethnic-inspired feast. A part of me is already counting down the days until I can get some sort of tamales to consume for Christmas.

Thursday is going to involve my brother and I spending time with our father and step-mother, along with extended family, and probably watching as my oldest nephew has some sort of fit because he doesn’t like ANY of the food that will be served up.

Fresh commentary on the issues will return on Friday.

But for those of you who feel the need to read something, check out this piece claiming that the first real Thanksgiving was a Spanish affair in what is now Florida.  Or this one where the people who bring us Fox News Channel contend that Thanksgiving somehow makes us ALL feel more “American.”

  -30-

Is Dateline “Selma, Ala.” about to make a comeback?

I feel like I’m stepping into Mr. Peabody’s “Wayback Machine” and that all we’re missing is a boy named Sherman.

Back to the '60s. Really?

That is the sense I picked up upon learning that political people are now starting to think of the various states that are enacting laws meant to get local officials involved in enforcement of federal immigration policy in terms of being civil rights violations.

WE HAVE FORTY members of Congress, led by Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill., signing an amicus brief in support of the fact that the Justice Department is challenging the legitimacy of Alabama’s attempt at imposing an immigration-related law.

We have the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights saying it will look into these new laws to see if they are having an impact on civil rights policies – AND that they’re going to pay special attention to the laws in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina.

I suppose that makes the Arizona crowd happy that they aren’t going to be the focus. Although it really means that one state will impact all.

Because there really isn’t a way for one state to do this without making a mess of immigration policy for everyone. If anything, that is the reason WHY immigration is a federal issue that the states have no business getting involved in – just as there are issues that are best dealt with locally and that the federal government should butt out.

THIS ONE ISN’T one of them. It is one of those issues where we need to have a consistent policy nationwide.

GUTIERREZ: A future "hero?"



“I believe that the enactment of these state immigration enforcement laws presents a pressing national civil rights issue that affects immigrants and U.S. citizens alike,” said commission Chairman Martin Castro, who said that one of the factors that would be taken into account is whether such laws wind up provoking incidents of discrimination that result in hate crimes being committed.

Then again, whether they cause someone to be viewed suspiciously because they don’t fit some government official’s mental definition of who should be allowed to think of themselves as being part of this country also is a factor that will be considered.

Which means this case may be an open-and-shut one on those grounds. Because these laws are meant to give the credibility of the rule of law to people whose own justifications are suspect.

AND THEY’RE DONE by political people who, even if they don’t share these same ethnic hang-ups personally, are more than willing to say and do such things in order to get votes come Election Day.

Which in my own mind has always been the most offensive part of these measures. Political people who ought to know better vote for them merely to get themselves re-elected.

It brings to my mind the old quote from George Wallace, who is remembered as a hard-line segregationist on racial issues from some five decades ago, and who once said he used such harsh rhetoric because of how he lost his first election because he wasn’t harsh enough to appease voters.

Or, as Wallace so bluntly put it: “I was out-niggered, and I will never be out-niggered again.”

IT MAKES ME wonder if the Wallace clone of the 21^st Century is going around privately telling people he won’t be “out-wetbacked” on this issue.

All of which has the effect of dragging people down to a certain crass level, while also setting a legacy that becomes difficult to shake.

Places like Selma and Birmingham carry a morbid mental picture to a certain generation because of the way those people behaved. Are we ensuring that their grandchildren will get hit with a similar rap?

And that people like Gutierrez wind up being more fondly remembered by future generations than we ever would think it possible now?

  -30-

Who’s to say what GOP presidential hopefuls will get?

I’ve written it before, and I’ll write it again.

Barack Obama is going to take about two-thirds of the votes cast in the 2012 election cycle by Latinos. That is comparable to the number of Latinos who picked Obama over John McCain in the 2008 elections for president.

THE TRICK TO determining the effect of the Latino vote on the Obama re-election dreams is whether significant numbers of Latinos become so disgusted with the president that they choose to vote for nobody.

Because two-thirds of a smaller base means less in terms of votes of support. Having a significant number of Latinos who think to themselves “forget it” when it comes to deciding whether to vote at all is what would hurt him.

Because the GOP opposition is just getting too hostile for there to be any chance for them to tap into the Latinos who do decide to vote.

That was the thought that kept running through my head when I learned of the Latino Decisions poll commissioned by the Univision television network. They questioned would-be Latino voters and put Obama in fictional head-to-head campaigns against GOP presidential hopefuls.

OBAMA TAKES 67 percent of the Latino vote running against Mitt Romney (the candidate whom certain other polls show running most closely to Obama – even though many of the conservative ideologues detest him for his religious views).

Against Rick Perry, Obama takes 68 percent of the vote, while Herman Cain may well be the candidate who keeps Obama the lowest amongst Latinos – which is a joke of a statement to make.

For Obama, in that poll, only got 65 percent of the Latino vote – with Cain only getting 22 percent. As for the remaining 13 percent, who knows? Maybe my ethnic brethren are waiting to see if a third-party dreamer can jump into the mix.

Maybe they’re counting on the Tequila Party (a.k.a., the National Tequila Party Movement, a group that is trying to get Latinos interested in the election cycle, without actually endorsing a candidate) to run George Lopez for presidente.

HE’S MADE JOKES about that, although I suspect the only thing that would come of such a prank political campaign would be the revival of comedian Carlos Mencia to tell us just how full of it George can be – and how the only reason Lopez would run for president is that since the demise of his late-night television talk show he needs a job, particularly one that comes with a house to live in for four years.

I veer off into jokes because I feel like this particular portion of the election cycle is complete before it even begins.

It already is shaping up into a campaign where Obama takes a significant share of the Latino vote. The only real trick will be to see if the GOP segment comes up with a way to marginalize the Latino electorate.

Just as their ideologues would like to make our growing numbers less and less relevant in many segments of our society, here is another place where they would like to think they can win despite our numbers.

OF COURSE, IF they would show some sense of respect and understanding, they likely could get our votes and really make a dent in the two-thirds support that Obama will likely get from us come Nov. 6, 2012.

But gaining real support takes work, which they don’t seem to want to do.

Hence, 67 percent for Obama. I predict it now. Check back here on Nov. 7 to see how close I truly come.

  -30-

X-rays of Z’s head show nothing

You just know somebody wanted to use that headline in recent days, after the Venezuelan League ballgame on Friday where pitcher Carlos Zambrano of the Caribes de Anzoategui got hit in the face by a line drive that deflected off his gloved hand.

Zambrano, of course, is the loud-spoken, temperamental pelotero whose baseball future in the United States is uncertain – on account of the fact that the Chicago Cubs have gotten tired of how outrageous his on-field behavior can be.

IF IT WEREN’T for the fact that Zambrano has been the Cubs’ best pitcher during the past decade, they would have ditched him years ago.

They may still wind up doing so in coming months, although the new management that thinks they can convert the Cubs into a winning ballclub has said Zambrano will be given a chance to earn a sot on the ballclub come 2012; as though he were some rookie rather than an established ballplayer.

Whatever “given a chance” means. It’s hard to say. It probably means he’ll be invited to spring training camp and will be counted on to do something stupid that can be used against him to justify letting him go.

Which is why Zambrano went back to Venezuela for the winter months and is pitching for a ballclub in that winter league. He wants to keep himself in shape and make it as difficult as possible for the Cubs to let him go.

NOT THAT ZAMBRANO will lose financially. The reality is that he has a contract to play baseball in the United States that runs through the 2012 season. He is to get a (pre-tax) salary of $18 million for the season. The money is guaranteed.

Also, any attempt by the Cubs to try to include Zambrano in a trade means nothing unless Zambrano gives his consent.

Which is why the Cubs are in a bind. They likely want him to go away, but aren’t going to be able to get him to do so unless they accept the fact that they’re going to have to pay him a large sum of money NOT to play baseball.

While ball clubs do, from time to time, eat the cost of player contracts, this one would provide a serious hurt to Cubs efforts to rebuild for ’12 and future seasons.

SO WHAT SHOULD we think of Zambrano getting hit in the face by a batted ball? And requiring either 10 or 16 stitches – depending on whose report one trusts.

I have to admire Zambrano’s spunk, where he immediately said he plans to pitch his next scheduled ballgame – which is Wednesday. Although officials say he will be examined again by a doctor on Monday to determine if he’s being realistic – or just goofy like Dizzy Dean.

I bring up the Hall of Fame pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals who inspired the original jokes about “X-rays of Dean’s head reveal nothing” after he suffered a similar head injury during a ball game in the 1934 World Series and had to be carried off the field on a stretcher.

For Dean himself didn’t let that injury stop him from pitching again (it was future injuries to his foot that ruined his pitching motion and took away his top-notch talent). As Dean said back then, “you can’t hurt no Dean by hittin’ him on the head.”

YOU CAN SENSE the same sentiment coming from Zambrano these days, particularly since he’s counting on a strong season in the Venezuelan League to keep him in shape and make it all the more difficult for the Cubs to get rid of him.

Or perhaps he’s just trying to convince some other U.S. major league ball club that he is worth having around to pitch come the 2012 season – particularly since the Cubs will be so eager to dump him that they’ll get stuck paying at least part of the bill.

  -30-

Considering how many Cubanos think they’re unique, it wasn’t absurd to think they have their own language

I feel like I’m Mel Brooks in “History of the World, Part 1” in that scene where he’s King Louis XVI of France and is playing chess with life-sized pieces.

Suddenly, he dictates special rules that give his royalness multiple moves – and suddenly, everybody jumps the opposition queen in a gaudy gang-bang.

“GIVE THE QUEEN some air, she’s been good to us,” Brooks’ Louis says as the tacky orgy ends.

That’s what it seems like these days with Herman Cain. He’s the opposition queen, and he’s getting piled on these days for some stupid moves that are more just dumb – instead of anything truly corrupt. Which is why I'm thinking, "Give Cain some air." He said sillier things this week.

Take his gaffe that is being interpreted as Cain being too stupid to know that Cuban people speak Spanish, and not some language of their own called Cuban.

That’s what he gets from his appearance this week in Miami when he stopped off at the Versailles Café and ordered a Cubano café y croqueta. “How do you say ‘delicious’ in Cuban?,” was what he said while mugging for the cameras that were supposed to give him favorable publicity.

FOR THE RECORD, delicious in Spanish would be “delicioso.” Although I’m sure there are those people who would say a better word would be “sabroso,” which is Spanish for “tasty” or “flavorful.”

But there are those who merely want to ding Cain for being a mental midget. Which to me feels like piling on – and perhaps I’m just as guilty for writing this commentary instead of finding a substantial issue to write about for Saturday.

Perhaps I can laugh about this a bit because I have encountered too many nitwits with whom I have quarreled about this very point.

Although it usually comes down to people who want to think that those with ethnic origins from Mexico speak a language called “Mexican.” I literally once had an individual stubbornly persist in believing that Mexican people do not speak Spanish.

OF COURSE, HE also wanted to embellish his rant by denouncing this non-existent “Mexican” language as being some sort of “gutter talk” spoken by “mongrels.”

In short, he was just an idiot, and was very easy to dismiss as such.

I don’t dismiss Cain as being as blunt an idiot as that guy. Although if anything, it was the rest of his Miami appearance that has me more concerned.

He slipped up on questions concerning the federal policies by which Cuban exiles are allowed to enter the United States. You’d think his aides would have given him the basic briefing so he could give a non-answer answer to such questions.

THEY DIDN’T (GIVE him a briefing), so he didn’t (have a clue).

That alone ought to be evidence as to why the Cain campaign is dipping in various polls, and may well be losing its momentum (although I’d argue its symbolic “15 minutes” already had lasted more than a half hour and was overdue to die).

Although personally, I think the most offensive thing Cain said this week was when he tried to make his “9-9-9” rhetorical flourish of an anti-tax plan appeal to Latinos by saying he has a “nueve, nueve, nueve” plan.

Ugh.

TO ME, THAT sounds way too much like Cain’s comprehension of Latinos doesn’t go any farther than being able to count; and not even all that high. I know little kids who watch “Sesame Street” who can make it higher than that.

Which is why I am still bewildered by the person I encountered Friday who told me that a part of himself fantasizes that Cain will somehow get the GOP presidential nomination for 2012.

He thinks it would be hysterical to watch the conservative ideologues get all bewildered in trying to decide which black man to vote for, and wondering if “their” guy is going to make them look even more stupid.

It already happened once, in 2004, when pundit Alan Keyes managed to briefly make himself into a suburban Calumet City resident so he could challenge Obama for the U.S. Senate seat from Illinois.

Will the significance of the upcoming election cycle be that the whole nation gets to enjoy a similar farce?

  -30-

If GOP seriously wants Latino backing, it’s about showing some respect. It's that simple

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush is planning on hosting a conference in Miami at the beginning of next year – one that is meant to bolster the number of Latinos who can look at themselves in the mirror after casting a ballot for Republican party candidates.

He’s doing so with former Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez (who served under Bush’s brother, George W.), and much is being made by political observers about how this event will take place just days before the Florida primary elections and will focus on practical issues such as voter outreach and mobilization.

BUSH: Now a party elder

ALL OF WHICH sounds nice and sweet.

But if the Republican Party is serious about wanting to gain the political support of a sizable chunk of the Latino population in coming decades, it really is more basic than that.

It really comes down to expressing some sort of respect for the Latino population – instead of reacting as though some major catastrophe that will decimate our society as we know it is on the verge of occurring.

Which is why I was enthused to read a recent commentary on the website of the Campaigns & Elections magazine – a publication dedicated to the kind of people who actually work on political campaigns and get those knuckleheads elected to government office.

THEY PICKED UP on a piece published by the Smart Media Group of suburban Washington, D.C., that tries to explain why immigration issues need to be acknowledged – even though many polls show that it is NOT the top concern of Latino voters.

GUTIERREZ: Working with a Bush again



That makes too many Anglo candidates think they can get away with pot shots, since the segment of voters that fears immigration gets appeased by trash talk and we supposedly don’t care about it.

That is bunk. (I could think of many worse words to use to describe it, but my mother’s soul would be offended to hear me use such vulgar Spanish).

It’s about respect, according to the commentary.

THE PEOPLE WHO make their immigration or ethnic potshots, then allow others to veer off into diatribes about who should even have a right to be a U.S. citizen, are showing a disrespect.

Which makes Democratic officials look good even when their actions are apathetic. Because they at least acknowledge us and don’t try to see a problem (and in fact in some cases realize the significant benefits my ethnic brethren bring to our society).

When you think about it, it is the difference most bluntly expressed by talk of erecting walls along the U.S./Mexico border with moats and possibly even alligators.

President Barack Obama made a trip to the border earlier this year and mocked Republican hostility by suggesting they’d probably like this idea.

THEN, SOMEONE LIKE Republican presidential dreamer Herman Cain shows up and not only endorses the idea, but also talks about adding electric wire fences.

No matter how much he now claims he was just joking, the idea that he considers that a joke is a gross lack of disrespect. And I’m sure his followers in the GOP segment of society like him for it.

So if Bush and Gutierrez truly want to do something to try to educate their political brethren about how to get with the program in the 21^st Century (Latinos aren’t going anywhere, no matter how much some dream of the day of mass deportations), a part of me wonders if they ought to print up a few thousand copies of this particular commentary and try to drum it into the brains of their colleagues.

Showing some “respect” would go a long way. And if it means you have to put a gag in the mouths of some of the GOPers who are determined “not to get it,” then you’d also be doing our society a favor by sparing us oh, so much noise pollution.

  -30-

Notre Dame says Latinos contribute to our society

I’m wondering if the conservative ideologues who like to demonize the growing Latino population are going to start despising the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame.

For that Indiana-based university gave us a study this week that goes counter to so much of the cheap rhetoric those people like to spout whenever issues related to ethnicity come up in discussion.

THE UNIVERSITY DID a study of the Chicago-area Latino population that officially was released Wednesday – although certain details were leaked out in advance to draw more attention to its official unveiling.

That study says the 2 million Latinos living in the Chicago area (actually in all of Illinois, the Chicago city Latino population is about 900,000 people) are working, and that by the year 2015, my ethnic brethren will account for 25 percent of the city’s population.

Considering that the city’s Latino population already is at 29 percent, it would mean that the overwhelming bulk of us are working and contributing to society – a fact bolstered by an angle to this study as it was written by some news organizations.

For every $1 that Latinos paid in taxes from those jobs they are working, they only received benefits from government valued at $0.77.

CHICAGO LATINOS PAY more in taxes than they get from government, study finds, was the headline from Crain’s Chicago Business, while the Huffington Post headed the story Chicago Latinos pay more in taxes to government than they receive in return.

Those headlines certainly go against the grain of all that talk that the ideologues like to spew about how the growing Latino population is “leeching” off our society with all its hard-working folks supporting us through welfare.

Although I think it says something about how difficult it is to write this story in a way hostile to Latinos by the fact that even Fox News couldn’t come up with something truly hostile.

Study: Latinos a growing economic force in Chicago was the worst they could do, and only if you want to believe that the combination of “Latinos” and “growing” to be an ominous one.

FOR AS THE study found, Latinos in the Chicago-area account for about $1.2 billion more than the money they cost to provide public services. “The widespread perception that Latinos represent a net drain on the system is unfounded,” said Juan Carlos Guzman, a Notre Dame professor who wrote the study.

Now I realize that this particular study applies solely to Chicago. I’m sure the ideologues will try to argue that it shows how President Barack Obama’s hometown is an aberration that is out-of-touch with the rest of the country.

Yet with a population that the last Census Bureau count showed to be 29 percent Latino (compared to 33 percent African-American and 32 percent white), I’d argue it means Chicago is ahead of the groove – particularly in that Latinos are a force equal to that of any other segment of our society.

So if the Chicago-area Latino population is turning out to be a worthwhile contributor to our society, it can only mean that the rest of the country will have this same fate to look forward to – a hard-working group of people who will benefit us as a whole.

THIS NEW STUDY is yet another piece of evidence to be used by people when they argue against the cheap rhetoric from the ideologues who want to ignore the truth because it doesn’t fit the image they want us all to accept of this country.

So will an irrational rooting against Notre Dame’s football team be one of the ways they show their opposition, on account of what the South Bend, Ind.-based academics had to say?

It wouldn’t be any more nonsensical than the trash talk other people use against the Fighting Irish!

  -30-