Guest Column

Allá Milwaukee "Taking Sides"

May 30, 2005

 

Allá Milwaukee

"Taking Sides"

By Robert Miranda

Milwaukee Spanish Journal

May 26, 2005

Latte Latinos and Highspanics are the featured personalities of the new corporate magazine “Aquí Milwaukee”.  Actually, some in the Latino community are calling the magazine “Allá  Milwaukee” because it fails to live up to its statement that it will be a magazine for Milwaukee Hispanics by Milwaukee Hispanics. In fact, the magazine is run by Highspanics outside of Milwaukee and controlled by Journal Communications, the corporation that owns the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

I’m not sure what causes me more nausea.  The fact that Journal Communications has entered into the Latino media market under the wing of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce—an organization with less than 40% Latino business representation—or the fact that the “new ‘Hispanic’ magazine” has taken out advertisement with Clear Channel Communications—the corporation that employs Mark Belling.

You remember Belling? He’s the right-wing radio commentator who attacked the Mexican community by accusing them of engaging in voter fraud and then called them “wetbacks” on his radio show. Funny, there has yet to be any proof of illegal Mexicans engaging in voter fraud.  As for that “wetback” slur Belling used, well, the unilateral decision by the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce prevented any effort to have Mark Belling removed from our public airwaves. By the way, a baseball coach for the University of Oklahoma Sooners was fired for using a slur against African-Americans a few weeks ago and a “Hispanic” university student was arrested for issuing an email with a racial slur at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

But I digress—let’s get back to the new Highspanic magazine. Indeed, the parade, pomp and fanfair drummed up for this new bimonthly magazine by the Highspanics in Milwaukee, was supposedly created to welcome this new addition into the Latino media market.  Indeed, this magazine is really all about reporting the interest of the “Highspanic” community, you know, those people who walk around with plastic faces that highlight surgically made up smiles.  The very same people who sold the Mexican community’s dignity for 30 pieces of silver to Clear Channel radio so that they can appear to be the more “rational and reasonable” part of the “Hispanic” community.  Oops, there I go again—mi culpa.

Anyway, let’s get down to some political spinning as Maria Monreal-Cameron says that I do. Because spinning, of course, is one having an opinion or espousing his or her thoughts on a matter. And having an opinion is out of line in the “Hispanic” community, especially when one has to say things that make right-wing Highspanics uncomfortable.

Indeed, Highspanic right-wingers in Milwaukee are trying to silence their critics by attempting to control the news media. Taking a chapter out of President George W. Bush’s media control plan, right-wing GOP Highspanic types like the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the Hispanic Heritage Council, and to some extent the Hispanic Professionals of Greater Milwaukee; this group appears to have a balance of right-wingers entwined with political moderates—I don’t believe anyone there is a lefty—want media that promotes their royalty and blue blood status within the Highspanic elite.

Preferring reporters who would be nothing more than, as Bill Moyers, a political commentator calls, "willing stenographers" for community leaders looking to promote their self-interests and that of their non-profit agencies over actual events that matter to the community, right-wing leaders have turned to the corporate giant, Journal Communications to establish a "Hispanic" bimonthly magazine.

Coming on the heels of Belling's slur against the Mexican community, Hispanic Chamber of Commerce leaders have been promoting hard the new corporate-welfare-supported magazine "Aquí Milwaukee”--or is it Aquí some money Clear Channel, now that they are buying ads with Clear Channel radio.

Could the Highspanics be looking to punish journalists and op-ed writers who tell the stories that make the caciques uncomfortable?

Indeed, exposing a group that sells its community for 30 pieces of silver got an angry response. Hence, the Pro-Republican Highspanic leadership of this community sought out other media venues that they could influence.

In truth, the idea is to stop critical analysis and promote an American eagle without a left wing.  They prefer to continue to blind the bewildered herd of people who are unable to sift and winnow thru their pretentious and pompous veil of decadence and political opportunism.

Indeed, “Aquí Milwaukee” will feature the Hispanic community in much the same light as the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce does, for sale and without much focus on the real issues that matter. Just like they did by taking ads out with Clear Channel radio, this magazine will show itself to be nothing more than a product designed to maximize profit and forsake substance and critical reporting.  It will ignore and it will move to help isolate grass-roots leaders free to express themselves in a manner consistent with the ideals of a free and democratic society.

Indeed, Bill Moyers recently said of the corporate-control media in our community that we are building, "An unconscious people, an indoctrinated people, a people fed only on partisan information and opinion that confirm their own bias, a people made morbidly obese in mind and spirit by the junk food of propaganda, is less inclined to put up a fight, to ask questions and be skeptical. That kind of orthodoxy can kill a democracy — or worse.” [You can read his speech at: www.freepress.net/conference].

He’s correct.

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