I could post this on On the Media’s message board, but that last time I did that with a public radio program they quoted me, using my Real Name, on the air. :eek: We can’t have that.
For week’s program Brooke spent some time in Mexico. One segment was about Mexico’s longtime image problems, from drug cartels back to the Frito Bandito. As an example of Cliches That Will Not Die she played a bit from Car Talk in which Hammond, with minimal help from Clarkson, explained why there are no Mexican sports cars because Mexicans are lazy and always napping, their serapes over their shoulders, their sombreros tipped forward, as they sit leaning on a cactus. Yeah, it was pretty offensive for 2012(?), especially since it’s a cliche that was stupid, inaccurate, and offensive 75 years ago, but Hammond and May only seem intelligent and nice because they have Clarkson there. Otherwise, they are just pig-ignorant Englishmen who should be ignored like all pig-ignorant people who miss being part of an empire that died before they were born.
The American example she used was the aforementioned Frito Bandito, whose ads have not been shown for 40 years. Not exactly current affairs and a bad example because American media have, for the most part, cleaned up their act (though I’m looking at you, Most Interesting Man in the World). She then told of walking around Mexico City until she stopped, aghast, to hear a band playing what she only knows as the “Frito Bandito Song.” The poor Mexicans were FORCED by their need for American tourists’ dollars to play THAT, a racist and offensive commercial jingle!
:smack:
The guy she was with explained that the song is really “Cielito Lindo” and has been on the Mexican Top Forty since the 1880s.
Most folks would have swept the event under the rug, only revealing it in a drunken game of Truth or Dare. I don’t know what her point was in bringing it up now; maybe it was to show that the song has been poisoned for all middle-aged Americans who cannot hear it without wanting a bag of Fritos (those Scoops are awesome with dip or salsa or both). Whatever the reason, with it she told the fifteen people who listen to On the Media (three if Bob Garfield is off) that she is an idiot who cannot separate a commercial from her childhood from modern reality. That more than half of her potential audience has never heard of the Frito Bandito just makes it more pathetic.
And yeah, they say inappropriate things pretty much constantly, with Clarkson the worst.
Beyond that, I am not really sure where your outrage is going…On the Media is a minor weekend NPR show that occasionally covers interesting media-related stories, but is no Daily Show in terms of showing up news channels…
I listened to that episode, and that segment was about American cultural perceptions of Mexico. The frito bandito thing might be from 40 years ago, but it’s still present in our culture. I was born well after it came out, but that song is familiar to me, just like Speedy Gonzales is.
Did she suggest that the person playing it in Mexico was doing so for American tourists? I thought she heard someone playing it earnestly and realized it was actually a treasured folk song, not just a commercial jingle.
I see no problem with the anecdote. Her point is that things are more complicated in our southern neighbor than Americans know.
I really don’t understand the source of your ire here.
By the way, I love On the Media and listen to it every week, as do many of my friends, so the total number of listeners is probably at least a little above 15.
No, she said she needed to be told that by the guy she was with. But I can no longer call her names because I demonstrated my own idiocy in the OP. A law is a law, and violating it has consequences.
Generally, she’s okay but I prefer Bob, who never seems to be on when I listen. He makes her do all the work.
Thing is, for the newer generations of Americans that tune no longer would have the Frito Bandito association, would it?
In any case – OK, so an anecdotal report of an incident in which she momentarily succumbed to a bit of kneejerk White Liberal Guilt because she never before had a reason to think that tune was anything but a jingle from an insensitive commercial. Her point apparently being that the distorted images have been left imprinted very firmly on Anglos(*). So she’s saying “I first got upset, then asked questions”. Had I been in a similar situation, my reaction would have been “Oh? Does this mean the ad people stole an actual Mexican song for that?” and anyway asked my guide to tell me whether that was or was not so.
(*Though why she’d choose the Top Gear gang as examples is beyond me since that bunch would go out of their way to do actual research on how to offend if they ever came across a place or people they had never heard about.)
Well, you’re undoubtedly right and I should know, being as ready to show my ignorance to make a point as I am. (It is NOT trolling! I actually respect some’a youse bums and am happy to have you lead me to enlightenment.) As for Top Gear, it was jaw-droppingly, tongue-swallowingly offensive and I hear similar shit on QI and other shows. I’m beginning to think the English (I don’t hear it from natives of the other parts of the UK, possibly because they have spent so long being treated like the Mexicans of the UK) can be more than a bit unapologetically racist.
I don’t know, but since people make a stink about any actor playing outside his clan, I figure some would object to a New York Jew :eek: doing a fake Hispanic accent. Even if the character is awesome, Goldsmith was once (it’s always once ) a Red Shirt on TOS, and the guy he’s “doing” is Fernando “It’s better to look good than to feel good” Lamas, who was his sailing partner for years. I’d say my White Guilt is showing, except Lamas was no less a Honkie than I am.
People are bothered by this?
) a Red Shirt on TOS, and the guy he’s “doing” is Fernando “It’s better to look good than to feel good” Lamas, who was his sailing partner for years. I’d say my White Guilt is showing, except Lamas was no less a Honkie than I am.