free speech, no me gusta

Perhaps I’m the only one who finds these sweltering summer months less than endearing, perhaps not. Wherefore, please-to-you-explain, does this city behave so badly beginning about now, forgetting completely its manners? Here we are, it’s hot as hell, and as New York is wont to be in such weather, things are starting to get crazy. Strap in -- it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Here’s the first of our summer news updates.

Did you miss the California Diaries? Here.

From the “It’s a White White World” files: If the editor of the Daily News (whomever he might be these days, one never knows) had a radio show besides, and spent a great deal of time on said show trashing his local representatives, would anyone care? No. It’s a free speech world -- politicians are supposed to simply live in it.

So why then, does Gerson Borrero, editor of El Diario (quiz: what’s El Diario? Answer: New York’s own Spanish-language paper, read by hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who don’t speak English) find himself fired unceremoniously the other day?

Removed, from his perch behind the microphone at WADO, airing at 1280 on your AM dial here in New York, where he hosted his show called “Bajo Fuego.”

Apparently, our good representatives in Washington D.C., Jose E. Serrano, Robert Menendez and Madame Nydia Velasquez, didn’t like being called names. They didn’t care so much to be trashed on one of the most popular Spanish-language radio programs in the city.

So they exerted undue influence over the station’s parent company, Hispanic Broadcasting, and warned that if Senor Borrero didn’t tone it down, they’d seek to revoke licenses and involve the FCC, nasty business along those lines, etcetera.

Borrero basically gave the old F.U. to management when issued a warning in May, which Hispanic Broadcasting and the good Representatives did not take kindly to. He was permanently removed from the air last week.

A statement issued by the prickly politicos said that they “support journalism that is free but responsible, meeting the highest journalistic standards. It should inform and educate our community, not divide it.”

Pardon? Since when do these people have a right to infringe on free speech, to decide what’s responsible and what journalistic standards are, what informs, what educates, what divides?

It’s Hispanic Broadcasting’s right to fire Borrero, but the only reason he was fired was because the Three Amigos started crawling up their asses and making threats that they had no business making. Are we outraged yet?

Borrero made a statement that he felt it was wrong to curtail free speech in favor of brownnosing inside the Beltway. He’s damn right, but I might add that if this had happened to Howard Stern, Imus the horse’s ass, any of those hate-mongers (now there’s a crowd of dividers) on the English AM stations, any of the liberal-haters on Fox News –do I need to keep going? – there would be the biggest media imbroglio you ever imagined. The unlucky congressman or woman who meddled would have a lot of ‘splaining to do.

So here we have a many splendored problem: Free speech has just been trampled on A, and B, most New Yorkers will never know, because we don’t care. Anything not having to do with us white people could really matter that much – when a Spanish-speaking American journalist has his free speech rights trampled, it’s not our problem.

We’re white people. Why should we care? The biggest problem facing the ever-growing Latino community is, as far as the majority seems to be concerned, why do these people refuse to learn English?

Yeah – maybe then, when we all speak the same language, everyone’s problems will be solved, magically.

We’ll all return to old-fashioned-family-values, back when things were segregated, when people not-colored-white had to put their lives in their hands for the right to ride at the front of a bus. Oh sure, that’d be swell.

God bless America.