Illegal Mexican immigrants are adulterous alcoholics, coke-addled urban cowboys, and lovers of only the finest lowest class transvestite prostitutes. Not the first thought that comes to my mind but how else could you arrive at a different conclusion from this week’s “progressive” Nashville Scene cover story?

Walking into El Dos de Oros (a Mexican bar) is like stepping into another country. A very loud, dark and crowded country.
[...]
Downstairs in the basement, a man whose bright-yellow polo shirt offsets his mocha-colored skin holds out his hand. In his palm sits a matchbook, slid open to reveal a thin, thumbnail-sized Ziploc baggie lying in a bed of strike-anywhere matchsticks. Inside the bag is less than a gram of white powder. Another man—this one wearing an enormous tan leather cowboy hat and black suit with matching leather trim on the lapels—reaches for it with a grin.

“Excellente,” he murmurs slowly, disappearing behind the bathroom’s lone stall door.

The night is just getting started at El Dos de Oros.

So rarely do I read something and not have an idea of what the writer is going for. A piece that starts off as a Mexicans-in-Nashville-carve-out-a-folksy-local-scene will now be a prime target for police surveillance thanks to that line. And for a town that has had so many adult oriented businesses shut down allegedly under the color of health codes violations, this story has legs. Horribly, shaved mens legs in mini skirts:

To buy a drink for Crystal or many other girls at El Dos de Oros—including the transvestites—costs $10. With that money they will buy themselves a 4-ounce $1 can of beer. The remaining 9 bucks goes straight into their respective pockets.
[...]
Sometimes, if the girls are drunk enough, they might let some of the men put hands up their skirts or feel their breasts. Though Crystal will soon be so drunk she can barely stand up, she and her sister are earning. On a good night, the girls can take home $300 each.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t have a whole lot against whoring per se, but El Dos de Oros sounds like an economy sized bucketful of AIDS waiting to happen. Leaving aside the fact that illegal immigration is a top domestic concern and national security risk, if I or any of the well-groomed staff of 6MB had rolled out a piece characterizing illegal aliens as sexually deviant dope-fiends that the blogswarm to call us nativist xenophobes would be en route faster than you could say “Speedy Gonzalez”.

Match this with The Scene’s ritually irrelevant “Ask A Mexican” column and one can’t help but wonder how the racism of The Left gets such a free pass. Any takers?

But then, in what I’m sure was intentional, things take an even more disturbing turn:

Ben and his partner are soon joined by Gracia, a 23-year-old transvestite from Mexico City.
[...]
He can also make some money here.

“These men like me,” Gracia says, “and I like to dance, have a beer, so it’s nice.” He says that he does pretty well if he wants to, taking home over $100 on a busy weekend night.

He might do better, but there’s quite a bit of competition.

Eh, tranny prostitutes operating in the open? Big deal. But here was the money quote:

Gracia’s friend “Ashley” (my quotes) can usually be found perched atop a stool, sipping a beer and trying to catch the eye of men on the El Dos de Oros dance floor. Originally from Honduras, Ashley now manages a Jack in the Box restaurant in South Nashville. He actually likes his job, but he admits that it would be awkward if fellow employees knew how he spent his weekends.

“I’m not sure they would understand at all,” he says laughing. “Here though, they do.”

So did The Scene just say that the manager of the Antioch Jack-In-The-Box is a transvestite prostitute? Call me crazy (you’re crazy), but I think sales of Jack’s Meaty Breakfast Burrito may have hit a brick wall.

At first, I was thinking this entire piece was an exercise to see what they could get away with in light of the Kroger’s grocery chain removing Out & About magazine from their racks. As if to gain some Michael Moore-ian attention by trying to provoke the food giant into signaling out their flagging weekly for moral rebuke.

But if removing Out & About was the right thing to do, how long should it take them to find the heterosexual balls to remove The Nashville Scene?

The He/She/It Civil War Continues…

And it’s Brother against, er….hrm..brother as the Tennessee Transgender Political Coalition gives the story’s author, P.J. Tobias, a cauliflower ear for maligning Mexicans as transvestite hookers portraying Mexicans as bad dressing dope sniffers giving love a bad name improper pronoun usage.

It was with great dismay that I saw the totally incorrect use of terminology regarding the transgender customers of the club.

First, the term “transvestite” is a perjorative term and is considered insulting. If a male-to-female transgender person lives in their birth gender, then the proper term is Crossdresser.

Second, regardless of whether or not a transgender person “has transitioned” (ed. my scare quotes), that person should always be addressed by the gender pronoun appropriate to their gender presentation. The Transwomen described in the article should have been referred to as “She” in every single instance.

So we are arguing over whether he’s a whore or she’s a whore? Observe the moral high ground.

If the Scene’s High Justice of Diversity, one Bruce Barry, bangs his gavel of homo-sensitivity about Mr. Tobias’ head and shoulders, we should expect a decree forcing him to sit down to pee for 6 months at 30%.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 27th, 2007 at 8:07 pm and is filed under Bizarro, Illegal Immigration, Old Media, Tennessee. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.