Spies, Tacos and Me

I came back from vacation just in time to be praised by George Bush as a decent, family loving American and to be condemned by Sick & Tired as a filthy, overbreeding beaner. Something’s wrong here.

As you know, President Bush has been in town spreading kindness. On Tuesday, warmed by refried beans and chicken enchiladas, he said that Latinos were just about the best thing to happen to L.A. since the kosher burrito.

He was, of course, talking about Republican Latinos. How he feels about Democratic Latinos is another story.

At any rate, it was in a spirit of good will that the President took all of us little brown ones to his bosom and blew kisses to the Aztecs as a mariachi band played “La Cucaracha” and pinatas swayed gratefully in the breeze.

I was naturally pleased with all of this, being a person of umber hues, and whistled an ethnic tune as I sat at a desk in the city room opening my mail.

It is considered unwise and possibly bad luck to whistle in a news room, but no one in his right mind is going to tell a by God Mexican to shut up when he is ethnically amusing himself. We are a volatile people.

Most of the mail was friendly and chatty and therefore dumped in a waste basket, though some, I am pleased to say, came from withered, miserable old men who challenged my grammar, my syntax and my right to earn more than the minimum wage.

And then there was Sick & Tired.

Sick & Tired writes racist letters and one of them arrived Tuesday, which I felt appropriate in view of President Bush’s flan-sweetened celebration of la raza.

The letter, alluding to a recent column on a woman who kept 20 cats in a less than tidy condition, said:

”. . . The ‘pollution’ this nation, state, county needs to ‘get rid of’ is ‘Mexican’ spies with their ‘cold eyes,’ filth, laziness, gangs, ‘overbreeding’ & on & on & on.”

The letter was unsigned but I recognized the handwriting and the excessive use of quotation marks from previous notes signed Sick & Tired. A friend who purports to analyze handwriting has decided that the writer is an unmarried woman in her late 40s with a psychotic hatred of tostadas.

When I showed my wife the note from S&T;, she said, “You’re reasonably clean, I doubt you’re a spy and you’re certainly not an overbreeder, but that lazy part might fit.”

She was talking about garden work.

We have an argument every spring about pulling weeds. She wants me to get out there and muck around in God’s good earth but I am emotionally incapable of mucking.

“That’s what I mean about lazy,” she says. “I work, take care of the house and pull weeds too.”

“Hire a Mexican,” I say.

“I’ve got a Mexican,” she says, “so do something.”

“OK,” I say, “I’ll write you a sonnet.”

“Twenty-six million Latinos in America,” she says, “and I’ve got to marry one who won’t do physical work.”

I’m glad she doesn’t call me Hispanic. The term annoys me. Hispanics dance on their toes and tuck lace hankies up their satin sleeves. I make it known wherever I go that I am not Hispanic.

“Then what shall I call you?” a woman demanded in frustration once at a dinner party. She was stumbling between Hispanic, Latino and Mexican-American.

“Call me Al,” I said.

Until a few years ago I got racist letters from a man who signed himself Pancho. His notes contained abundant references to chili peppers and greasy fingers.

I could tolerate that OK, but then he began telling bullfight jokes. I place animal jokes in the same category as puns and scatalogical humor. I tracked him down and staked out his house. He was a frightened little guy who got his kicks out of taunting others.

I gave him back his letters and suggested he was temperamentally unfit to write. I never heard from him again.

Back to Sick & Tired. Satirist Samuel Butler said it doesn’t matter what we hate as long as we hate something.

A Mexican worker I finally hired to pull weeds said it better. Before he took the job, he wanted to know if any blacks lived next door. When I said no, he sighed with relief.

“No like,” he said.

One more chorus of “La Bamba,” George, and we’ll all go home.