As we all know, President Obama won reelection only because he promised Hispanics unspecified “gifts,” and we responded by casting more than 70% of our votes for him.
Yet I have not received even a thank-you note. Hmm…
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I recently announced that I would not be updating this site as often, due to the impending arrival of a certain infant Latina.
But don’t worry. I’m still doing the movie contests.
In fact, the last giveaway for 2012 is a big one. I’m offering you the chance to win passes to Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit, which will be screened in the following cities:
Chicago, IL
Dallas, TX
El Paso, TX
Houston, TX
Los Angeles, CA
Miami, FL
Yes, The Hobbit is Jackson’s return to Middle Earth, with dragons and sorcerers and goblins and… well, come on, you don’t need me to tell you how fantastically awesome The Lord of the Rings was.
All you have to do is comment on one of my posts (including this one) about anything you please. Just make sure to tell me what city you plan to see the movie in, so I can allocate the passes.
If you win, I’ll email you the tickets. By the way, I won’t make your contact info public, so don’t worry about that.
I’ll announce the contest winners in the next week or so.
In the meantime, I’ll be here, sharpening my orc-killing blade.
With the impending arrival of my first child, I have to face an unpleasant truth: I may no longer have the time and energy to update this website as frequently as I have in the past.
I’ve been writing the Hispanic Fanatic for over four years now, and I still have no shortage of subjects that I’d like to address. That’s not because I’m so brilliant. It’s a consequence of living in a time and place where Latino culture has become both red-hot trend and the object of hatred. It’s a never-ending source of material.
But while I still intend to write as much as I can, I have to be at least somewhat realistic. I know I won’t be hyped up to analyze the latest trending topic regarding Hispanics when I’m on three hours sleep and wondering if we’re low on diapers.
Still, my promise is to update the site as often as I can, so I am positively not quitting. My posts may become more sporadic, and at times I may just link to interesting stories without comment (which I don’t like doing), and of course you may have to put up with multiple references to my presumably perfect offspring, but I’m going to keep going.
Now if you’ll excuse me, my wife and I are late for Lamaze class.
As everybody knows by now, uber-nerd Nate Silver called the presidential election weeks ago. Lots of progressives, like me, watched the returns with a certain sense of calm, well aware that Obama was going to win.
But for some Republicans, it wasn’t just a disappointing loss. It was also a stomach-churning shocker. Many conservatives are so self-deluded that they believe reality and facts and hard data are secondary to their own hopes and opinions.
For them, Romney’s loss created more than just standard depression. It unleashed an overwrought wailing that, to the rest of us, resembled high comedy.
Honestly, how could they be surprised? For months, people like me have been saying that Latino voters would punish the Republican Party, and that this could be the difference in the swing states.
Indeed, Obama won a startling 71 percent of the Hispanic vote.
Still, some conservatives, even the Latino ones, were predicting a Romney landslide. After the fact, however, even Hispanic members of the GOP had to admit that “Latinos were disillusioned with President Obama, but they were terrified of Mitt Romney.”
Now that the accuracy of that quote has been verified, some of the most xenophobic elements of the conservative movement are saying, “Gee, maybe we should rethink our hatred of immigrants.”
And all it took was getting their asses kicked.
Of course, delusion is still a powerful force within the Republican Party. Many higher-ups in the GOP still insist that Latinos only voted for the president because we’re going to get free stuff.
Well, if that’s their explanation for Romney’s loss, and their plan for the future, I look forward to reading history books about the Republican Party. They will be there, in the section that talks about the Bull Moose Party and the Whigs. And they will be just as relevant.
As we careen, cartwheel, and plummet into the finale of this interminable election season, one refrain we hear many times is that Republicans and Democrats are one and the same.
Indeed, there is ample evidence that both parties are indebted to big business and the status quo. And as Latinos know, Obama’s original immigration policies weren’t much of an improvement over Bush’s approach.
Still, there are differences between the two men running for president— besides the fact that one is a communist Kenyan and the other is a money-grubbing fascist (hey, that’s what the internet told me).
For those who have inexplicably not paid attention, Obama is pro-choice, while Romney is pro-life. Obama is against the death penalty, while Romney is fine with it. The president has come out in support of gay marriage, while Romney believes marriage is a straights-only deal. And Obama doesn’t share Romney’s opinion that the US government is inherently inept, corrupt, and/or evil.
I have to admit, those seem to be fairly large differences to me.
Even progressive icon Daniel Ellsberg, no fan of Obama, thinks the president is substantially different from Romney.
So who are the people yelling that Obama and Romney are clones? I mean, besides Lupe Fiasco?
Well, there are true believers who think a leftist or libertarian chief exec is a possibility (it’s not). Then there are self-proclaimed radicals who dismiss the entire American system as corrupt or bourgeois or just plain icky. And finally, there are voters who simply say, “It don’t matter none.”
But of course it does matter. And for Latino voters, it’s crucial.
Hispanics are the least likely ethnic group to have health insurance, a situation that the infamous Obamacare may alleviate.
On immigration, Obama has endorsed the Dream Act (belatedly, of course), while Romney is still trying to explain how self-deportation would work.
And when it comes to economic policy, Romney’s tax cuts would benefit the upper classes, which are not exactly awash in Latinos. Keep in mind that according to some experts, Romney “cannot deliver all the tax cuts he promised to the wealthy without raising taxes on the middle class.” One can presume that Hispanics will not be among the direct beneficiaries of his tax plan.
However, perhaps some Latinos still believe that it doesn’t matter who wins. Well, think back to those distant days of 2000, when Bush was elected. At the time, many Americans voted for Nader because Gore and Bush were apparently too similar. Therefore, we have to assume that under President Gore, the September 11 attacks, the Great Recession, and FEMA’s horrific response to Hurricane Katrina would have all occurred. Those are rather huge assumptions, to say the least.
But the Iraq War, an obsession unique to neo-cons, certainly would not have happened. So for the families of 4,500 dead US soldiers, there was at least one fundamental, very real difference between the candidates.
By the way, approximately 500 of those soldiers were Latino.
My wife is pregnant.
Yes, it’s pretty great news.
Our daughter is due in January. We’ve never been parents, so by next summer, I’ll be one of those annoying first-time fathers who believes the most important thing in the world is his baby’s capacity for drool. Just wait, I’ll be blogging about it day and night. This may cut into the readership of the 19.3 million mommy bloggers out there, so I apologize in advance for usurping their authority.
But with all the hectic preparation for the child’s arrival, and careful time set aside for crippling self-doubt and solipsistic panic attacks, I’ve barely had time to ponder the political ramifications of this kid. That has to change.
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My mother never hit me.
In Latino culture, of course, mi madre was a bizarre anomaly. We can all conjure up the image of a furious Hispanic mother, beating her kids with chancletas for some minor infraction.
In fact, say the word, “chancleta” or “chancla” to a Latino, and he or she will probably think of the weapon, not the footwear. Their original purpose appears to be secondary.
Yes, it’s all very humorous, all those little ninos and ninas cowering as they get whapped repeatedly. Except that it’s really not funny at all.
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I’m happy to announce that Lucy in Dallas has won the contest for passes to see the upcoming Ben Affleck movie Argo.
With hope, Lucy in Dallas will report back to us and let us know if Affleck is indeed playing a Latino in this movie (his character’s name is Mendez). If so, we’ll have a debate on what that’s all about.
I mean, he doesn’t look like a Mendez to me…
Changes are coming to the way we do business here at Hispanic Fanatic world headquarters. Before I get into all that, however, let’s squeeze in another movie contest.
All you have to do is comment on one of my posts (including this one) and you’ll be entered for the chance to win passes to the upcoming Ben Affleck movie Argo, which will be screened in the following cities:
Dallas, TX
El Paso, TX
Houston, TX
Los Angeles, CA
McAllen, TX
Miami, FL
Phoenix, AZ
San Antonio, TX
San Jose, CA
Based on true events, Argo is about a life-or-death covert operation to rescue six Americans during the Iran hostage crisis in 1979. And best of all, the lead character has a Latino name (Mendez)!
If you win, I’ll email you the passes. By the way, I won’t make your contact info public, so don’t worry about that.
I’ll announce the contest winners in the next week or so. In the meantime, let’s get those comments flying.
We all know the grim statistics. Hispanics are less likely to graduate high school than other ethnic groups, and Latinas, in particular, still have higher rates of teen pregnancy and fewer college degrees than other young girls do.
So what can be done about this appalling situation? Well, perhaps something as simple as giving Hispanic girls a camera is a start.
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