On Writing: Morning Coffee...A Bad Cold...New Ideas And The Needed Fresh Scenery...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

AUSTIN, Texas - Back when this Blog pulled out of the barn, when I was living in the Rio Grande Valley down south, I used a variety of pseudonyms in bringing readers stories from that same variety of angles, perspectives and character-within-the-character.

I'm sure some of them are still sort of remembered: Junior Bonner, Ricardo Klement, Ron Mexico, etc., etc. Well, I also recall that while some readers liked these guys, there were others who questioned why we had created "fake" writers. In the 9-to-5 world of the working legions, the latter was to be expected. Some people know writing only as what they see in the newspaper, or what they read when the kid brings home the homework.

For me, writing this blog always has been a laboratory of sorts, a place to try things and a place for fleshing-out characters. Bonner was the stiff, high-throated, aging cowboy who loved his battered El Camino and just had to have his shirts starched just right by the dry cleaners he frequented in his hometown of Combes, Texas. Klement was the introverted descendant of a Nazi officer who'd fallen for the lovely women of the Texas-Mexico border and insisted he'd die there. Mexico was the "Keith Richards" of the staff, a man who lived life to the fullest, had to make love like a panther and was, not surprisingly, murdered in Amsterdam after being fired by The Tribune for drinking on the job.

These creations were not exactly pseudonyms; they were characters and nothing more. Still, they delivered the real news in their own way, each of them working-up a style by way of vocabulary and sentence structure. We came to know them in photographs that made for images fitting their writing and life styles.

There's nothing wrong with using a pseudonym in writing. It's been part of both fiction and non-fiction since the advent of the modern printing press. Mark Twain's real name was Samuel Clemens, and there are those who say his invented happy-go-lucky Twain persona was not anything like Clemens, a not as happy man. Who knows? It just worked out nicely for Mark.

I firmly believe that using a pseudonym, as I do with my Patrick Alcatraz novels, unlocks a certain new vein of creativity. Paz-Martinez writes about the Texas-Mexican border as if he's lived that experience, which he has; Alcatraz writes about the American West as if some bon vivant out for nothing but sex and laughs. Are they "romance novels," as has been posed by some? Yes, and no. Romance between a guy and a gal, yes. There is quite a bit of that in my books. Someone famous once said that there is no literature without sex. Well, absolutely. Sex is a huge part of the human existence, both with a loyal mate and, often, with a disloyal one. Plus, pseudonyms, also known as pen names, often take on a life of their own. The highly-regarded Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa had more than 70 literary identities.

The American horror writer Stephen King has written "literary fiction" under the name of Richard Bachman. Lewis Carroll was really Charles Dodgson. George Orwell was really Eric Blair. The list goes on. My point here is that writing will always define itself on its own terms. And writers will mine the hinterlands for anything that will spark creativity. Where cops have the fear of killing an innocent bystander, writers fear writer's block, that drag-me-down time when nothing spurts from the brain, when looking out the window yields nothing but the high sky.

I was running all of this across my brain yesterday, the second day of a bad summer cold that has me in the coughing and watery eyes dumps. Messing with this laptop did nothing for me. The best I could do was advance my place in the book I am currently reading. In bed. Most of the day. My book, magazines, the day's newspapers. Outside, the big, bright sunball scorched the land one more time.

But I was wondering whether to offer my next book as Paz-Martinez, the guy who writes as if a wandering journalist, or Alcatraz, the bastard who sees beauty in every woman, has them and moves on down the road. It's my alter ego, of course. All of us have them, but not all of us are willing to put them on display.

In writing, they are not "fake names" as much as they are, say, that second car in the driveway...

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The Brownsvillization of Harlingen, Texas...Along The Harsh Mexican Border...No Grace In Town...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

HARLINGEN, Texas - That day, Robert Leftwich was perhaps being too kind, too political. The question from us had been clear: Was he endorsing the actions of a juvenile-bent blogger he'd befriended and whose support he'd garnered without even asking?

"I have repeatedly asked him to tone it down," was Leftwich's diplomatic reply .

He's a city commissioner here, an elected official with ideas about how to move the struggling city forward, past the resident rancor that plays across the news media here as if some El Salvadoran incubator for rebels actually fighting in the streets. That's Mr. Leftwich and his family in the photo atop this story.

We come here uninvited but interested in defining all that silly noise moving across town. To a somewhat minor extent, the local newspaper - The Valley Morning Star - plays into the equation, largely by way of hilariously naive letters-to-the-editor in which the writers often chose the words of damnation against this or that elected official or burning issue in town. The local blogosphere is the problem these days, however.

Civility holds no ground there.

And it manifests itself clearly in that while the blogs raise hell against things coming and not coming from City Hall, and against elected officials such as Mr. Leftwich, and, worse yet, against each other, little room is left for civilized discourse. You won't see any elected official making comments to these low-rent bloggers. Why should they? Why leap headfirst into the garbage heap, seems to be the unspoken answer.

Times are tough here. Unemployment is sky-high, jobs are nowhere to be found, businesses are shutting their doors and a general malaise has now covered the community of some 70,000 resident as if a used Army blanket. It is a sad time for little Harlingen, and the blogs are not helping things.

In an ideal news media setting, the Blogs would fill-in where the newspaper fails the citizenry. They would go after hard news stories exposing both good and bad. They would be seen as positive, useful venues of information. Too bad that's not what Harlingen residents get.

What breaks with every new day is yet another string of accusations and posturings that go to informing Harlingen of whose blog is king of the soiled chicken coop. Lost in the primping are solutions to things that actually affect the community. It would be something if elected officials and city bureaucrats would pick up the phone and call a local blogger; that, or email a comment or reply to news that would go somewhere. That isn't - and hasn't - happened, except for a very rare occasion.

No, these are days for pulling inward here.

Elected officials know they hold higher ground by simply staying away, by ignoring these guys.

Still, it is about evolving, and perhaps the silly noise now playing here as news blogging will move into something better one of these days. They all have nowhere to go but up.

The strange part of this is that, as a Journalist, it always struck me that a good, timely, meaningful story brought way-more satisfaction to me as a reporter than those times when I only wanted to see and know that I'd beaten the competition.

Journalism is not anywhere near the taqueria business.

Yet, here, blog news comes with all the bells and whistles and alarms of a new taco concoction. And that's the bad side of all this. There is a difference between a professional service and that offerred by an amateur. There is.

Dumping on someone just to make you believe you're the best only reinforces your own weaknesses. In the fast-paced world of news, there is no Number One; there is only the dependable, the reliable, and those that are trying their damndest to get there. And so, we understand why this city's leaders shun these bloggers. What have they got to gain by playing their selfish game?

We won't say that we know Commissioner Leftwich well, but we've always found him forthcoming when we have asked him questions. His desire to speak is not the problem; he likely just knows that there is no point in talking with partisan fools. Sadly, that is a good move.

We say sadly because it is the city that is paying the price that comes with not having an honest news media...

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The Press In The Valley: Tough Economic Times Take A Heavy Toll...Newspapers Don't Always Win...Readers Do Lose...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

McALLEN, Texas - That newspaper you get daily in McAllen? Yes, the one that looks as busy with excitable stories and color design as a Guatemalan skirt? That one. Well, the messy look was designed by a Cuban guy out of Miami, hired by Freedom Communications, Inc. a few years ago, when the company that owns The McAllen Monitor was horribly mired in bankruptcy court, seeking to unload its monstrous $750 million debt. It was reduced by almost half, as things turned out.

But this is about how the company - owner of The Monitor, the Valley Morning Star in Harlingen and The Brownsville Herald downriver - never did get the pulse of its geography or of its readers, primarily insular Hispanics uninterested in its less-government-is-best-government Libertarian politics. It is particularly timely as the business is still bleeding professionals and editions. The consensus is that newspapers across the country lost their way, that failure to re-invest profits in their operations, their desire to cut reporting staff and later cut out entire daily issues has led to their stunning demise. Somewhere in there, the Internet surfaced as a reason to fear the future and to cede position as the Fourth Estate in American life.

A few days back, it was reported that Freedom Communications, Inc. was once again interested in selling some of its newspapers. There were rumors that it would unload the struggling Valley Morning Star at a discount rate. If true, it wasn't the first time the Santa Ana, California-based company sought to sell its RGV properties. Way before the latest rumors surfaced, there was word that the three Valley newspapers were being shopped around, and that the company had gotten a sniff from the Wall Street Journal folks. Nothing came of it, and then the bad economy hit advertising, and then the slump came home to stay.

So, what does it all mean to the Rio Grande Valley?

First and foremost, it means less news coverage. The staff at The McAllen Monitor might be enough for that western Valley city, but staffs at the other two newspapers are bare-bone operations. No reporters equals no coverage, or less, if any. Editors have been shown the door, some transferred to RGV cities they don't exactly know or like. Paul Binz, editor of the Morning Star is gone, as is former Monitor Managing Editor Henry Miller. Marcia Caltabiano-Ponce, once a senior editor at The Monitor, is now editor of The Brownsville Herald. It wasn't that long ago that I ran into Henry Miller at a Starbucks in McAllen and he relayed info that Caltabiano-Ponce had continued to reside in McAllen even as she tried to edit the newspaper in Brownsville 60-some miles to the east. An out-of-town editor for The Herald? Sacrilege.

It's a bear to stomach when you know that a myriad of stories do not see light in the pages of these newspapers. That drug war going on barely miles across the Rio Grande has largely been relegated to coverage via social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, Monitor reporters rightly granting credit to that venue as their source of info related to murders, hangings, bombings and street firefights that ought to be witnessed and written about by these reporters. Indeed, it is also said that many, many residents of the RGV get their news about the drug war from Spanish-language television stations, something that a pair of decades ago wasn't even part of the local lifestyle. Today, even the newsrooms of the Valley's TV stations count their Mexican counterparts as sources of information. Gone are the days when these same Valley reporters damned Mexican reporters as being wildly unreliable and forever open to bribery.

It is, to be fair, a tough time for news media outlets from coast-to-coast.

Also to be noted is the fact that Freedom Communications has no monopoly on trimming the corporate fat. Major newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times and the Dallas Morning News have seen the need to cut back. But Freedom's losing battle in the revenue fight has forced it to sell some once-lucrative properties, and then it faced the reality of losing some top executives, one of whom left the company to work for Playboy magazine.

In the Valley, the company's chief of operations is M. Olaf Frandsen, publisher of the local flagship McAllen Monitor and the man who oversees the other two newspapers, as well. He is shown in photo atop this story. Frandsen is a genial man. A transplant who studied in Arizona and a loyal employee who's made the circuit as editor of a number of company newspapers, he is also known as a headstrong administrator. His battles with McAllen Mayor Richard Cortez are legendary, especially the one involving Cortez's decision to fend off bad coverage by funneling his city's lucrative "Legal Notice" advertising to a small weekly in neighboring Pharr. The decision spurred Frandsen into rifling a terse letter to the mayor and the city commissioners, noting that The Advance newspaper in Pharr was not exactly a newspaper of record, of general interest, or even one based in McAllen, the very population that needed to see those legal notices.

Valley cities and towns may show the Year 2011 on their calendars, but life in any of them can also be questioned as being something of a throwback in culture and the ways of social progress. They are all still small enough to exert muscle against any outfit wishing to bring Big City ways. For residents of the Valley, Cortez going to a tiny newspaper to teach The Monitor a lesson is well within the creative scope of the local brain. Indeed, it likely would have gained a wildly positive vote of support, had The Monitor polled residents on the matter.

News here isn't what reporters in the Big City would wish to cover on a day-to-day basis. There's plenty of crime, theft, asaults, rapes, child and spousal abuse and murders, for the young cub reporter, but none of the three dailies do much investigative reporting - not lately, anyway.

Reporters generally are of the young variety; that is, they are journalists fresh out of college. They are not well-paid in the Valley, which means that they stay only as long as they have to, and only until they get an offer from a larger newspaper upstate. The company knows that these are jumping-point jobs for these reporters. They hire them for two-three years, lose them, and hire a new batch. Lost in all that is the value of experience and local knowledge.

It's hard to tell what will become of Freedom in the long run. Its dependable moneymaker in the region is The Monitor and sources tell us it won't sell any of the three dailies on a solo basis. Apparently, you can buy all three, but not simply one. In the current market for newspapers, well, let's just say you'll find more interest in a lackluster minor league baseball team than you will in a good newspaper.

But who knows?

Already, in Harlingen, word in the streets is that a new print newspaper effort may soon be launched, one owned by a local citizen, perhaps a local group. The Morning Star, they say, is simply not doing the job and is largely giving-off the impression that it has given up the fight. In Brownsville, some 25 miles to the east, The Herald is hearing the same complaint. Bloggers there have begun to leap headfirst onto its stage, all of them taking the critical tack, often damning the newspaper for its failures to cover stories they feel ought to be covered, while at the same time ballyhooing their efforts as newfangled news sources.

It is a hostile takeover of sorts.

Freedom's newspapers may be the ones in the news racks at the streetcorner and in the cafes, but they are no longer the only game in town. It's not necessarily their fault, but they are feeling the pinch from all sides.

For readers, it's never an emotional issue of being loyal or provincial. Those days are gone, too.

But, then, news never has known fencing or geography. And in the day of the Internet and the harried, 24-hour cable news cycle, stopping to wait on a laggard is not part of the deal. Americans have not shed many tears for dying newspapers. The Valley likely won't, either...

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The Carpetbagger: Former Donna Mayor Rick Morales...Mayor Of Harlingen?...Get Real...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor-In-Chief

HARLINGEN, Texas - It isn't part of the local history or flavor of the Rio Grande Vallley, but maybe it is nothing more than a silly aberration, a quirk in local politics, the idle thinking of a former mayor looking for new ground to shovel.

Perhaps that's why former Donna Mayor Ricardo "Rick" Morales wants to be mayor of Harlingen. In a part of the state where even the most-stable things often tend to go sideways, it is an intriguing stab by Morales. The 41-year-old self-described commercial lender doesn't really have a record of outstanding leadership, mainly because the city he once helped governed is no great shakes.

Morales hasn't come out and said he's interested in the local office, but word in the streets and blogosphere has him in robes and ambling toward the ring. Should he do it and somehow win, Morales will become the Valley's first carpetbagging public servant. The idea has a history of sorts in national politics. Robert F. Kennedy left his native Massachusetts to run for - and win - a U.S. Senate seat in New York. George W. Bush left his birthplace in Connecticut to run for - and win - the governorship of Texas.

So, who knows about a Morales-for-mayor-Harlingen campaign?

There are some bad signs, however, for those residents who would back him while seeking to overturn the so-called Old Guard dominance in city politics. The Old Guard is described as a collection of ultra-conservative old codgers interested in maintaining the status quo, defined here as being the Anglos interested in ruling over the city's Hispanic population with all the propriety of a coonhound. Many in the Old Guard membership support the harsh Republican politics of Texas Governor Rick Perry and its two Republican senators, John Cornyn and Kay Bailey Hutchinson - none a friend of Hispanics.

Oddly enough, so apparently does Morales.

In May 2008, Morales said this about Republican Cornyn: "The people of Donna have been extremely well served by Senator Cornyn. He shares the same values with South Texans and I am honored to endorse his re-election."

Really? But, then, Morales also endorsed Republican Texas Gov. Perry in 2006 and 2010.

Interestingly, Cornyn that year was also endorsed by former Harlingen Mayor Connie De La Garza and current Mayor Chris Boswell. Boswell is listed as being on the side of the Old Guard here. He does not quarrel with that assignation.

Morales may not exactly be the right-skin conservative sought by the extremist fringe of the Tea Party, but his endorsements do mean something. Is he the "change" politician for Harlingen? Doesn't look like it. He is more like a used tire being bolted onto a, yes, tired vehicle, but one needing perhaps "new" wheels.

That same summer of 2008, when touting Donna's growth in population from a dusty 6,000 during the 1970s to the 18,000 he governed, Morales said: "We believe that Donna, in the next 10 years, will double and maybe triple in size. The future is extremely bright."

So, what happened? What drove Morales out and into the mood of looking at Harlingen?

In June of that same year, incumbent Morales was swamped by David Simmons,a  first-time candidate for elected office who worked as tax assessor-collector for the Donna school district. Simmons grabbed 57 percent of the vote, ending Morales's six year-run as mayor and two as city commissioner.

What he's been doing since then is anybody's guess. Nothing written or posted about him to date indicates any sort of worthwhile endeavor or contribution, whether financial, supportive or voluntary in nature. If he now resides in Harlingen, what is he doing in town? Is he merely herding support for that eventual contest? If so, who is he meeting with, and where exacly is his expected suport coming from? Certainly, it cannot simply be the shrilly voice of an obscure blogger spurring him into thinking he is needed or can win.

Harlingen is in trouble. Of that, there is no question. All economic and social indicators point to a steady decline when compared to its neighboring communities. The joke here is that San Benito, once the punching bag of Harlingen, is considering a proposal to annex Harlingen.

Rick Morales invested almost a decade in public service to presumably help the residents of little Donna. Unless he explodes with some hellacious novel ideas that would quickly aid Harlingen, well, Harlingen needs to look elsewhere for its city hall leader. What's his educational background, and how does he explain his crushing defeat to a political novice?

Rick Morales is not the answer, because, alas, he doesn't even know the question...

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[EDITOR'S NOTE:...This article was originally published here last month. Our feelings related to this gentleman's bid for mayor of Harlingen remain as they were when we wrote this story...]

A Conversation With Robert Leftwich: The Harlingen City Commissioner Opens Up...May Run For Mayor...Says Politics Can Be Brutal...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

HARLINGEN, Texas - In some circles here, Robert Leftwich's work as a city commissioner is seen as enough of a public service foundation to ready a run for mayor, something Leftwich says is on his mind, although not to the point of deciding on it. Times are tough in the mid-valley community of almost 70,000, and there are those ceaseless waves of ragged rumblings within the city - noise that cannot be seen as anything other than political angst and unrest.

Earlier this week, we forwarded a list of questions to the 46-year-old commissioner. Here is what he had to say in reply:

My position on running for Mayor is that all options are on the table at this point. But given that the mayoral race isn’t until 2013, with family and work commitments, it’s still too far out to be more than just a consideration at this point. 

As far as what would make me decide more so or not about running would have to start with what the demands were of my family. The other thing that would be a major consideration to running would be who else might throw their hat in. If I didn’t feel that a qualified individual with community-first intentions was stepping up to vie for the position, then that would strengthen my consideration towards running. 

I can see how some would seek the prestige of being Mayor, but I’m not really interested in that. I feel that I can pursue things more freely as a commissioner, and thus be more effective in that position by not having the distractions of the job as Mayor.

As far as the current state of political affairs in Harlingen, beginning with the transformational move in citizen representation by going to a district format, I feel that many more people who once felt disenfranchised under the citywide election process now feel that they can make a difference in city on-goings.

For many decades in Harlingen large portions of the city were fed crumbs from the table, so to speak, in terms of being provided adequate city services. Undeniably, as evidenced by the decay in too many of our neighborhoods, and the escalation of criminal activity throughout the city, the citizens have suffered needlessly from the narrow-mindedness of some in leadership positions in Harlingen.

Today, as a result of a broader demographic diversity of citizen involvement in the direction of the city, I feel that Harlingen, as a community, has shifted gears for the better as we enter into the 21st century.

The critics of change are mostly those who have enjoyed having their fingers in the coffers of City Hall in some form or fashion, selling their cause as being righteous and noble, but in reality, and as history has proven out, pursuing only self-enrichment.

As with any change in political advantage, it is those that have lost the most that become the biggest critics of those who have taken the helm. Politics can be brutal at times, actually, most always, and those willing to make the case for change can expect to receive no thanks when things turn out right, but only condemnation for any little thing that can by exploited and blown out of proportion by their critics.

Personal Factoids:

Graduated in 1982 from Harlingen High. From 1983-85 attended TSTI in Waco, studying computer science. Holds an active State of Texas real estate Brokers license.

Has been employed for the last 22.5 years with United Launch Alliance (ULA). ULA is a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The Harlingen ULA facility produces structural components for the Atlas rocket.

His favorite book is a book in a book, the book of Psalm in the Bible.

The Leftwich family consists of his wife, Michelle, and daughters Cassy 7, Shelby 11, Kayla, 16, plus stepdaughter Brittany, 12.

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[Editor's Note: This report was published here earlier this year. Again, there are rumblings that Mr. Leftwich may seek the thankless job of mayor in Harlingen. We wish him well...] 

For Austin's Juan Meza, It's All Good At His "Juan-In-A-Million" Taco Mecca...Austin Loves This Juan...We Did, Too...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

AUSTIN, Texas - It's over on the Mexican side of town, the East Side, on Cesar Chavez Street, a drag lined with a string of Tex-Mex enterprises that range from homeless shelters, to busy auto repair shops, to a generous number of cafes, to colorful curio stores, to renovated offices of lawyers with Hispanic surnames. The place we write about here is aptly named - Juan In A Million.

It is not only the talk of the town in Austin on things related to breakfast tacos, but it approaches legendary status as the best place to not only eat that great, tasty taco, but the place to be seen eating a few.

Or, as one reviewer put it: "This was one of our Man vs Food stops and man o man did it live up to the hype. We get to the area where this awesome joint is located and I felt just at home. No posh hip businesses or restaurants around to make this place a pain to get to. It is a typical Mexican family joint located in residential area. I can swear this place may have just been a home and the owners decided to open up a restaurant to the people.

We ordered the breakfast tacos and these things were just like the ones my mom makes to this very day. Maybe my mom is related to the owners. Hahahaha. Anyway, their tacos there are awesome. Eggs are fluffy, bacon is crisp, the potatoes are soft and the cheese is not heavy. Perfect breakfast for the day and we were filled up all the way to dinner I kid you not after spending the rest of the day in downtown Austin and seeing the sights. Juan In A Million is the best breakfast in Austin."

You could drive around Austin and find several hundred Tex-Mex joints and other taquerias and almost believe you're in East L.A. with crowds of Mexicans and Mexican-Americans who all look like the comedian Paul Rodriguez. There is even a little resemblance in Rodriguez for Juan's owner, Juan Meza - a genial host who will not only greet you at the door, but is also known to greet customers in the parking lot behind his place.

The menu is not unlike one you'd see at any other Tex-Mex eatery. Beef chalupas were my treat on the day Margaret and I were there one day last week. She had a bowl of Caldo de Rez. All this out in the patio alongside the main dining area, there under the watchful eyes of flying grackles that seem to think they own the open-air section of the place.

That was an okay meal. What brings all of Austin to this joint is the wildly-famous Don Juan Taco, a monster of a meal if there ever was one. The waitress will bring you one of these (at $3.99) and then come back around minutes later to ask if you need additional tortillas. Of course, you always do; the Don Juan is more a folded pillow than a traditionally-sized taco. Picture a T-shirt in a fold and you have the Don Tuan Taco. Eat it and be done for two days.

Its hours are solely for breakfast and lunch. It closes at three in the afternoon. Mornings are for college students on a budget; lunch is for the office stiffs and construction workers. The artmosphere is chirpy, conversations stringing table to table, the rat-tat-tat of news and gossip moving across the plates, in between bites, drinks.

We've dined pretty much everywhere in the Lone Star State, from the Toddle Inn in Brownsville, to Las Cazuelas in Harlingen, to Don Pepe's in McAllen, to Mi Tierra in San Antonio, to La Familia in Fort Worth, to Cuquita's in Big D. Juan-In-A-Million seems to be in another taco world, one not familiar to most Texans who are used to the same old-same old.

Perhaps it's Juan (shown in black shirt at right). The happy-go-lucky guy originally from Laredo is fronting his business like George Steinbrenner used to front the New York Yankees, always there with a ready smile and bone-rattling handshake.

"Te gusto, amigo?" he says to me as we leave, patting me on the left shoulder as I move to the cash register. I did enjoy it. The food is tasty and the service is exceptional, but, for me, maybe the neat thing about our visit was Juan's genuine joy, one I do not believe had anything to do with the incessant ringing of the cash register.

His desire to be a great host seemed too real...

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[2300 E. Cesar Chavez Street, Austin 78702; 512-472-3872; Hours: Daily, 7am-3pm; Credit cards okay; Dress: casual, whatever; Parking: adequate; Price Range: Affordable...]

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(Editor's Note: This article was originally published in January. It's Friday, so we think it fits in with the weekend mood. The review still applies.) 

In Brownsville, A Search For The Town's Top Gay Man...Clue: Everybody's A Suspect...

 

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

Editor of The Tribune

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - We were done talking about bad minor league baseball in the Rio Grande Valey when Jerry McHale lifted his emptied beer mug and fired the damned thing into the nearby resaca as if to show how a fastball ought to be thrown. "I hate those lousy Rio Grande Valley WhiteWings," he roared after craning his head back like a javeline thrower. "If you've seen one pendejo strike out around here, you've seen them all. My maid can run the bases better than those stiffs!"

He's not interested in discussing the low-level of play in the Valley's contributions to the North American Baseball League; McHale, once a promising third baseman in his hometown of Modesto, California, said he went to a WhiteWings game in Harlingen up the road last year and was so disgusted with the awful level of play that he went to the men's room, did his business by way of a creative squat and flushed the commode 20 times just to tax the city sewer system enough to cover the game's price of admission.

McHale's out to offer a new kind of Journalism in his goofy, gossip-fueled community of some 140,000 legals and illegals who will sing a corrido to some brazen drug dealer for you inside a cheap cantina at the drop if a few pesos on the aging bar. He thinks the time has come to take the pulse of the town as it has never been taken before.

"I'm going to work-up lists that will put our luckless denizens in some sort of fuckin' category, so that we're not all lumped as bordertown idiots unable to dream a damned thing," he said as a fattened waitress walked by and he lifted his hand to show her two fingers.

"Peace to you, brother," she said, and he began screaming, "Two goddamned beers!"

The waitress loped off toward the bar, swatting at something or another on her butt as she walked. New Journalism has no time for the stupid, McHale went on, lipping a Bugler he'd rolled minutes earlier when the jukebox had exploded with a song by Jose Alfredo Jimenez and two skinny, high-throated guys had bopped-up from a nearby table to dance together as if popsicle-addicted pachucos.

The scene was telling, because McHale, in his new & improved blog BrownsvilleLiteraryReview.blogspot.com, plans to draft a list of the Top Gay Men in Brownsville. He's of the opinion that such a compilation will not only allow Gays and Lesbians a new status in the Extreme-Macho town, but also allow non-Gays to know where things stand sexually in Brownsville. "You could say it's about damned time, but, then, how long has that sentence been in play?" he asks as a seagull swoops in a steals the last of his tasty basket snack.

"Mas chips!" he hollers at the hefty waitress, whose name is Isidra and who earlier had said she understands Gay, but still needs her "number one Juan."

So, where will he begin, we ask.

"City Hall, where else?"

"Peedee?"

"Oh, hell yes! I know we have Gay cops. All you have to do is look at how they walk!"

"Politicians?"

"They love each other, so there's no mystery there. Is Mayor Tony Martinez Gay? I don't know yet, but I plan to find out. Is Sheriff Omar Lucio gay? Quien sabe, vato. Pero veremos, no? Is new commissioner Estela Chavez-Vasquez Gay? If she is, it's a waste."

He won't say anything about the local press, bloggers included, although he has in the past often criticized one blogger who is admittedly Gay. We ask: Is he on your list?

"Absolutely! Him and a few others who think they're in the closet. The closet in Brownsville is a huge sonofabitch, but Gays will talk. They're as shifty and gossipy as women. My advice to non-Gays is that you never piss-off a Gay. They're vicious as all Hell. Worse than Al-Qaeda!"

It's an interesting time along the lawless Texas-Mexico border. Crime is rampant. Jobs are few and unemployment is okay with the region's ever-slouching masses. Dreams travel here and, as with minor league baseball, die a warning-track death.

"Is State Rep. Rene Oliveira gay?" we ask as the sun begins to set and an outbound freight train blows its goodbye horn. McHale makes a clownish face, clears his sun-baked throat and says, without laughing,"The Plump Partridge? Maybe. He has the Gay walk, that's for sure."

It's a hot, humid day. We leave it at that after telling McHale we'll look for his story in the coming days. The revelations likely will not shock a town already used to being shocked. But it's a story, and stories are pretty much free around here. Comedy, on the other hand, and that is how the many Machos here chose to see the Gay lifestyle, comes along only every now and then...

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For GOP, Few Words Of Wisdom...Circus Shows From Coast To Coast...Word Up!...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

AUSTIN, Texas - The East Coast has been a mangrove swamp for Republican hopefuls Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann. But does it really matter? Do these two political sideshows mean anything? Do we care that Bachmann confuses sites of the Battle of Lexington and the one in Concord? She flubbed that test in New Hampshire in the days ahead of last week's Republican Party debate.

And do we care when Palin, the quitting governor of Alaska, tells a reporter Paul Revere rode that fateful night to alert the British that the British were coming? Is she still relevant outside the soiled acreage owned by Far Rightwing extremists? Does the average American, not the Republican who has $1.5 million in revolving accounts with the country's top jewelry store, still care a whit about the cheap clown act that is Palin?

It's a strange time in Republican Party politics. Its men are an air-conditioned collection of bad scrummers and its women are, well, singlehandedly bringing back that 1980s word - Ditz.

Ms. Palin took the long way toward her education, attending five colleges before getting her degree. Ms. Bachmann trumped her with a law degree, but also attended Oral Roberts University in Oklahoma, where she did some work for a professor rather interested in the progress being made by White Supremacy groups in this country. That Bachman is a card. Her sister is a Lesbian and Bachmann insist that the lifestyle is an abomination to Humanity.

We ask: Is this what's next for America?

Republicans hold hard to their issues, taking unbending stands on immigration and employee unions and health care that, dang it, goes against their own interests. Bachmann will rail against federal entitlement programs, like funding Headstart, which educates and feeds kids, but accepts $250,000 in farm subsidies for her family. She and Palin are two puppies lost in the woods without the crumbs.

Republicans harp loudly about President Barack Obama's insistence that the nation's wealthy pay a fairer share of their taxes. That's government meddling with the people, they crow.

But statistics don't lie. The wealth trend has it that the richest 2 percent of Americans are getting 20 percent of the wealth. While the Middle Class citizen has struggled to maintain wages during the last 20 years, the wealthy have seen their riches increase dramatically. American productivity is said to be on the rise, yet wages flatline. The difference is glaring and alarming, yet Republicans fully believe that the nation can recover on the backs of the poor and the Middle Class. Don't tax us, say the rich. Tax the idiot, Joe Sixpack.

The thing is not all Republicans are wealthy. Some fall-in with the dogma out of some sense of fear that Democrats are after an all-out socialist nation. They are ignorant about health care, or they somehow believe that it is a welfare program. The aging of the so-called Baby Boomers is also at play. Many of these Republicans, and we include the ridiculously naive Tea Party folks, need these healthcare programs. Old is not owned by the Democratric Party. Sick is sick, and the cost of avoiding sickness is steep. And just as the nation takes care of security by way of its military, it too has the reponsibility to care for its own. You don't leave your citizens behind.

Problems abound for this country. And all of those problems, from the social to the economic, affect everybody. Why is healthcare socialism and farm subsides not? It's a wonderment.

Democrats ought to be criticized for not doing enough, for not taking the fight to Republicans more aggressively. Republicans have voted "No" on every action sought by the Obama Adminstration. That's been going on for almost three years now. It'll likely go on through the remaining years the president holds that office. That is not government; that is giving up, or it is being insular and self-serving.

So, we have Palin and Bachmann. Not much there. One should be running for mayor of her hometown of Wasilla, Alaska, where she Peter Principled, and the other should remember that Republican values throw her loving Lesbian stepsister under the bus. Only, that's not the GOP playbook.

No, the Republicans are okay with their leaders never having served in the military or educated themselves in the best universities of the land. They will cheer for a woman who quit her elected office to rake in the cash from public appearances. And they will grant the separatist Bachmann standing she does not deserve.

It is a joke, of course.

But after George W. Bush, every Republican moron likely got the idea that, well, if he did it, I can do it, too. Palin hasn't announced plans to run for the presidency. Bachmann is set to do it next Monday. So far, there are six men in the same contest, with a few others considering the plunge.

It's time this country had a female president. We'll say that openly.

But not Palin and not Bachmann.

The country does not need to lower its standard. A debate between the president and either of these two women would quickly be labeled abuse. You'd think the Republican braintrust would know it...

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In Brownsville, A Glut Of News And No Newspaper...The Mexican Border As Motherlode Of Stories...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - It's been said by out-of-town reporters many times: If ever there was a place for mind-boggling news stories, that place would be the lawless Texas-Mexico border. But, as with fairy tales that become too-familiar, the tales of woe, of corruption, of malcontents, of under-achievers, of the excitable, of the criminals have innured the population and the region's press to the point of indifference. How many times can you read that the Three Mexican Bears were busted for dealing drugs?

Now, again, comes the renegade Blogger Jerry McHale, shown in photo above, to drag his dictionary across the harsh, dusty local geography in search of those very stories. It is the latest promise by the California transplant who's made a long-running, curbside career out of shaming this town's mediocre politicians and the local culture. McHale, a schoolteacher by day, has declared he will aim his blog - BrownsvilleLiteraryReview.blogspot.com - to higher ground. Gone, he promises, will be the pornography and alley lingo he has used for years. It's a wait-and-see moment for his targets and neighbors.

We have long contended that the existing mainstream press in the Rio Grande Valley has never been up to the job. Freedom Newspapers, Inc., which owns the Valley's three dailies, has turned its back on stories that should have made their newspaper here the national "go to" daily on all things to do with the region. Is there a Pulitzer Prize in coverage of the ongoing miserable drug war across the Rio Grande? One would think so. Merely taking second-hand info from the news outlets across the river has not worked for The Brownsville Herald, The McAllen Monitor and the ever-hapless Valley Morning Star in Harlingen. What stories they'd have told had reporters for those three dailies been sicced on the drug war; that is, had they been dispatched across the river to report firsthand.

McHale's declaration comes with a clear angst. He has the talent to undress any politician or city bureaucrat doing wrong, a species of which there are many in town. He has the contacts, having traded in comfort easily found elsewhere for a life of cheap laughs and booze in this hardscrabble town of a quarter-million residents unable to bridge into anything that could be labeled as being nice. Stray dogs and wild, booze-fueled driving got the attention of the town's previous mayor. The current one has so far ignored animals...and humans. It's a good time for crusading, for muckraking, for exposing all that is wrong with this depressing community, one more attuned to Mexico's ways than it is to anything American. McHale has mined that environment in the past for excellent reporting, although it's been awhile.

He should start with a lengthy essay on the State of Brownsville, noting its deficiencies, its horribleness and its recent failings, followed by some insightful profiles of the miscreants who continue to soil his homeown, and, then, perhaps he should simply hound those he knows are not serving the community. In all this, he should forget about those locals he has protected for so long. We suspect that McHale himself is aware of the criticism he has received for bailing on people who should have been exposed. And, of course, it goes without saying that he should not trade his objectivity and credibility for free food and booze, as is the practice of the town's other bloggers.

This is a great time to re-shape news in Brownsville. The local newspaper has ceded its claim to being the newspaper of record, ignoring a mountain of stories and covering others so topically as to be useless.

We encourage McHale to give this one his best shot.

As Elvis might say about here, it's now or never...

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News From The Front: Of Ron Paul, RGV Politics And Awful Minor League Baseball...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

AUSTIN, Texas - There are those who say history repeats itself, in politics, sports, culture and everything else Man has his hands on. That is true. You can leave the comfort of your living room couch, take in dinner and a movie and come back to find little has changed. We are on the lip of something we've had or tasted before, already fully digested. Life is daily, the sun followed by the moon.

1.) National Politics - We like him cause he dissed Hollywood Republican Ronald Reagan enough to make us believe him on that front, but U.S. Rep. Ron Paul is simply not presidential material. The Texas Libertarian-Republican won the Republican Leadership Conference's straw poll over the weekend in New Orleans. It is, to be sure, only the latest poll, but the 75-year-old Paul keeps shaking the GOP's branches. We laud his presidential-aspiration efforts, which began as far back as 1988, but something about the lanky, high-throated Paul bothers us. He publishes a variety of political newsletters in which he damns much of what serves as our federal government. In one of those controversial newsletters, he wrote this: "Boy, it sure burns me to have a national holiday for Martin Luther King. I voted against this outrage time and time again as a Congressman. What an infamy that Ronald Reagan approved it! We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day." That's bush league politics, and something we cannot overcome when thinking about his chances. Ron Paul speaks a lot of common sense. It just strikes us as being nothing more than self-serving noise. His true beliefs, whatever they are, are something to really worry about.

2.) Local Politics - In Brownsville, it is The Day of The Woman. And we don't mean in the sack, which is where they've been Queens for eons. No, this time, women now own the majority of the seats on the Brownsville City Commission following Saturday's run-off elections. Their names are not yet important; it is their deeds to come that will serve as gender grade. For too long, however, the poverty-stricken city at the end of the Rio Grande has lived a Stoned Macho existence, fending off an endless shower of political corruption, lack of brains and an environment that said chasing booze and broads was the order of the day at City Hall. This election's results are a major leap forward, perhaps allowing some residents to think the town has plunged into the 1980s.

3.) RGV Politics - Nothing entertains like a smalltown mayoral election. In tiny, dusty Donna along the Mexican border, it is as if a new shipment of khaki pants has hit town. Saturday's battle for the mayorship here had the incumbent, an Hispanic by the name of David Simmons, shown in photo above, treating his opponent, former Mayor Hector Casiano, as if a fly circling his beloved Guacamole. Casiano was said to be "Old School" in a part of the Rio Grande Valley where few go to school. He got off to a bad start, okaying a campaign poster with a misspelled word. Not that it was the reason he lost, because he lost handily. It was, says this observer, a good result if doing away with the past is a sign of progress. Too often, in the luckless Valley, residents are buffaloed by "names" of families who do little for the community, but act as if the Cartwrights on the Ponderosa. Casiano needed to be whipped, and, well, he was. Hopefully, it turns the page on poor Donna's patron past. Oddly, another former Mayor of Donna, one Rick Morales, is being ballyhooed as a potential candidate for mayor of Harlingen in that town's next election. Morales has had his shot. In western movies, he's the guy who should ride out of town at sunset, leaving the stage gracefully and not hanging on as if some punch-drunk boxer unable to reach for his laxative.

4.) Minor League Baseball - So, whatever became of the delinquent $40,000 utility bill owed to the City of Harlingen by the Rio Grande Valley WhiteWings baseball team? The new season is underway and, already, the taco-fat players are getting fatter with every pitch in the dirt, fans are staying away in droves and nothing out of the ordinary has exhibited itself on the ballfield. If this is baseball, well, bring on softball. Minor league baseball always has been a crapshoot. The major leagues are underway and fights for the pennant are again exciting the nation. Minor league ball is the equivalent of, say, nine guys buying a big tent and then believing they can bring a circus to town. Things have been so mediocre for the North American Baseball League fronting this charade that, in Yuma, the team celebrated Memorial Day by hosting a Lady Gaga Night. In the Valley, teams from Edinburg, McAllen and Harlingen take turns beating the brains out of each other so often that it's easy to say all of these players are simply not very good players. Scoring 12, 14, 15 runs a game tells you the pitching is not up to par. Perhaps the concessions - soda, beer, hot dogs - are better this season. Let's hope the mustard and relish are free.

Paz out...

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On Father's Day, A Hope That The Lump In Your Throat Is About Love, Not About Regret...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

McALLEN, Texas - Somewhere out there, in expensive and humble homes from one end of the Rio Grande Valley to the other, is a dad extending his hand to receive a card or gift from his son or daughter. Let us hope that that father has no moment flashing across his brain of a time when he abused his kids, when he failed to provide, when he disrespected their mother in their presence, when he let the family down.

It's Father's Day across the nation.

This is the day to stare at the bottom of the family ledger and take a full accounting of a man's behavior toward his children. Pity the man whose actions have not been noble, whose words have hurt, whose role is a mess of infidelity, regret and personal pain. Today is the day all the chits come knocking on the soul's door for collection. This is the day a child's innocent eyes open wide to convey love. This is the day a son or daughter will offer his or her finest loving hug, his or her sugared words full of genuine pride. This is the day the wife, that sweetheart you chose to marry, takes a deep breadth and hopes that this day, this day, will bring out the best in her husband.

And that father, if he's been a father for any length of time, whether a day or decades, will inhale a world of oxygen and try his damndest to erase the little things he wishes he'd never done, the hard words he wishes he'd never aimed in the direction of his children, the failings he exhibited so openly to the woman who married him, him out of a billion men on the planet - him.

I wish my two daughters could be five years old again. They are seven years apart, one is married with a family, the other one interested in shining the entire sky in the biggest city in America. Both do their Old Man proud in their respective ways, in the heart-tugging things they say, the laughter we share when remembering a trip to Disneyworld, building a snowman in the front yard, travelling as a family. You can't bring back those ages. Children grow and they go...and the weeks turn to months and then to years and the next thing you know, well, too many memories will have faded.

I agonize when I see a parent being cruel to a child, the fathers especially. I have been known to approach a kid whose Dad has said no to candy at a convenience store and offered to buy it. It's not a smart thing to do, but my feelings for kids are singular - the children must be allowed to be children. It is the best age, and I am not the first to say that.

So, today, when you are honored as a father, think a bit about the family and ask yourself whether you have tried to be the best of fathers - not just today, or in the weeks leading up to Father's Day, but every day.

I miss my children more than I'll admit. They know it. I say it to them every chance I get, in writing and during telephone chats, most of those too short, but they're busy. I know they love me. They say it to me. I know they think of me often. I know they would like me to be with them more. I know that their mother tells them to stay in touch with me.

I know it, yes... 'cause I never did anything bad or said anything stupid to them or to their mother when they were children. I'm kinda proud of that. 

Happy Father's Day...

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[EDITOR'S NOTE:...This story was written and posted last Father's Day, 2010. I still feel the same way about my two daughters. I know all of you do, as well, about your own kids...]

In Ditzy Michele Bachmann, The Republican Party Has Its Latest Clown...This One Is A Nut Case...

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
Editor of The Tribune

AUSTIN, Texas - Politics allows for the best and the brightest, the stupid and the dullest. That is so once more as the country dives into its season of presidential politics. Take a seat. It's all coming to you for the next year and a half. As a citizen, you've bought the ticket, now take the ride, as someone famous once wrote about life in these United States. Even God is coming.

We bring you daffy Michele Bachmann in this episode of Republicans Gone Nuts.

Yeah, that's Michele in the anachronistic Annette Funicello hairdo. Some throwback. Bachman and her politics go back to the Crusades, to a time on the planet when religion was the opium of the masses, to a time when being an atheist brought quick beheading, when being Gay brought even worse.

Bachmann is one of the GOP's brighter stars as the party of racism gets ready to pick its nominee for the 2012 presidential race against President Barack Obama. Think Sarah Palin is the dumbest on the block? Well, she is dumb. But Bachmann, a congresswoman from Minnesota, is dumb and on crack, if her fiery, Jesus-Is-Everything politics are any indication of drug abuse. She started out as a young woman working on Democrat Jimmy Carter's 1976 campaign, found religion and sailed on to become what she is today - the daughter of a broken marriage who has a Lesbian stepsister, but can't stand the thought her father left her mother and later married a man who brought the Lesbian into her life.

Of such life experiences are priests and white supremacists made. In fact, one of her professors at Oral Roberts University often speaks to supremacists groups. Bachmann says all she did was help him with preparation of one of his Born-Again books. Who knows, but it's ditzy.

In any case, her sudden rise has come thanks to the faddish Tea Party and its incessant rants against the federal government, and namely President Obama. Bachmann chimes-in with her soundbites against everything Obama proposes. Her doings in Congress are largely non-existent, although perhaps she was swayed by Palin's rise after the quitting-Alaskan governor's failed 2008 race alongside the erstwhile GOP foil John McCain.

Bachmann's chief anger is aimed at homosexuals.

This she said while a member of the Minnesota State Senate a few years back: "Any of you who have members of your family in the lifestyle, we have a member of our family that is. This is not funny. It's a very sad life. It's part of Satan, I think, to say that this is gay."

Interestingly, her stepsister, Helen Lafave, was in the audience, trying, it seems, to somehow get Bachmann to see the other side of the issue, the one that allows for Americans to decide what they'll be even in the world of sexuality.

That blew a family relationship that had LaFave once playing a mentoring role for the younger sibling.

"Helen always liked Michele, always," says Linda Cielinski, one of Bachmann's other stepsisters. "They lived together as teenage girls. They were very close at that time." Bachmann's anti-gay activism, Cielinski says, "was a hit to the gut."

So far, Bachmann has played her acquired conservative role to the hilt. Indeed, she got high marks after her appearance at her party's first candidate's debate last Monday night, edging the shit-for-brains Newt Gingrich and her fellow Minnesotan, former Gov. Tim Pawlenty. But will it last? No.

Former Utah Gov. Jon Hunstman is saying he will enter the race early next week. Former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani is said to be pondering a similar decision. There is the front-runner Mitt Romney, who served as governor of Massachusetts. In the men-only scrum that is nominee-selection, Bachmann will fade.

The mountain is a high mountain to climb.

But, then again, perhaps the religious zealot Bachmann is well aware of the Biblical events surrounding Mt. Ararat. Somebody famous beached his Ark there, and the question that still haunts scholars is whether it was a seminal moment in Man's ascent, or whether it was something that never happened at all.

Bachmann, it says here, will become the proverbial blip on the radar screen, forgotten in the long run, seen down the road as something that may have happened, only finding anyone who remembers may be hard. Religious fanatics have a tendency of dropping-in on Americans. More recently, televangelist Pat Robertson tried his hand at national politics and got zip. So did Mike Huckabee, the Born-Again former governor of backward Arkansas. And these heaven aficionados have their place, just not as leader of the entire damned experiment that is the U.S. of A.

The name of that Ark dude is still a name to be reckoned with, although perhaps not as much as it was, say, 50 years ago. Bachmann will come to find that many, many Americans hate having someone else shove religion down their throats. It seems to work for the God-abandoned Tea Party faithful she fronts, but the country also has a habit of pooh-poohing fairy tales, even those offerred on Sunday mornings...

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