Posted 5:32 PM by Floyd

Bill Quick likes to make fun of people who write letters to the San Francisco Chronicle. I aim to do the same for the San Jose Mercury News, a newspaper more or less at the same drivel level.

While trawling through the editorial pages I found this editorial (Lack of Latino judges is a political time bomb), by a Juan Figueroa of the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund. He starts off with an eye-opener:

WHEN IT comes to sorting out facts or interpreting the law, a judge's
race or ethnicity is as critical as her legal experience. Having DeJesus
as a last name and knowing the difference between a taco and an alcapurria
(a green banana croquette stuffed with beef) is as relevant as graduating
from the City University of New York, the University of Connecticut or
Santa Clara University and practicing family law for 15 years.

Well now this should be real interesting! I certainly am eager to see how the difference between a taco and an alcapurria will be relevant in a court of law. Perhaps the mise en scene will be a Perry Mason murder mystery:

"If the victim had been eating a taco I would agree that the case against my client would appear grim. But the presence of the alcapurria proves his innocence, as Mr. Smurkfeld has a violent allergy to bananas and faints at the smell of beef."

Unfortunately no such explanation was forthcoming from Senor Figueroa. He related a little tale of the makes-baby-Jesus cry variety, and quoted various statistics. The taco and the alcapurria were left on the side of the real to rot.

Now that I think back on the days when I read Erle Stanly Gardner, I remember how Mason would cry "Incompetent, immaterial, and irrelevant." These words are fitting to describe the opening paragraph of Figueroa's editorial.

As for the rest of his work, I hate to see the R word overused. Nonetheless it is racist ipso facto. Also it is possible to turn Figueroa's words against him; if you can use racism to advocate an ethnic group you can use racism to denigrate them just as easily. <Figueroa-mode>For instance, given that attitudes towards homosexuals are less favorable in the Latino community than in America at large, would it not be possible to argue that it is important not to select Latino judges, so as to preserve the rights of gays?</Figueroa-mode>