Making Friends: Tony Gray And The Temple Of Doom...Singing For The Plump Partridge...

By PATRICK ALCATRAZ
Special to The Tribune

BROWNSVILLE, Texas - They meet every now and then in an unmarked building downtown, a loose affiliation of journalists and gadflies with only one thing in mind: clean up this drowsy bordertown. And even rarer are the gains they make in advancing progress here. Topics come up and beer is bucketed on the battered tabletops, remnants of another era in local furniture.

The South Texas Independent Journalists Association (STIJA) does not suffer fools. Harlingen bloggers, for example could never be members. As founder Dr. G.F. McHale put it the other day, "You need to have worked for a newspaper or been jailed or been divorced. Not everybody gets admission."

One of those chartered fellows was almost bumped-out last week, when McHale hinted that Tony Gray, who once wrote for The Brownsville Herald and now serves as loyal aide to State Rep. Rene "The Plump Partridge" Oliveira, might be kicked out of the organization. The reason? Oliveira's decision to side by the president of the local university in a lingering fight that centers on the junior college splitting from the four-year school.

STIJA saw that as betrayal. Oliveira, it seems, has been one of those darlings protected by the association in recent years. The usually unflappable Gray has said nothing about the school controversy or his tenuous membership in the respected association. Will he? Not likely.

Will McHale continue to torch him via his Blog, Brownsville Literary Review? No question.

Friends are the easiest of chumps to beat up on the Internet. One knows more about friends than strangers, so material looms as if an endless supply of arrows for the bow. The well-fed Gray has a long tapeworm of a story trailing him related to boozing and debauchery in general when in the company of STIJA members. He has, as they say in good westerns, taken the stagecoach's reins a time or two as it barreled toward the cliffs of errant romance and wanton adultery. Life in this town is funny that way. One day you're King of the anthill, the next you're the anthill itself. Sing a song for Tony Gray. Something by Petula Clark or Rigo Tovar.

We're sort of indifferent to most of it. Gray's membership in STIJA was sealed a long time ago in that midnight This-is-where-we-slice-your-wrist ritual the organization requires. So, he's going nowhere.

But I will take this opportunity to say The Plumpster needs to go. He has served his pals and himself for too long. STIJA needs to come out against this lifetime abuser of the public trough...

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