Austin Hispanic contractors’ group apologizes for posting video deemed offensive to gays
by Guest Contributor Andrés Duque, originally published at Blabbeando
The Austin American-Statesman reported yesterday that a local Hispanic contractors’ organization had removed a video from its website and given apologies after a local television station received complaints that it contained demeaning portrayals of gays (”Hispanic contractors’ group pulls video called demeaning to gays“).
The U.S. Hispanic Contractors Association had recently been in the news for leading a successful protest against a morning talk radio show on KLBJ-AM in which a co-host had repeatedly referred to Latino immigrants as “wetbacks”. On Monday, the parent owner of the radio station announced that the show would be canceled. That same day, though, KVUE TV broadcast the news report highlighting that the same organization that led the fight against the anti-immigrant slur had the questionable video on its website.
What’s exactly in the video and is it truly offensive to gays? You be the judge. The American-Statesman says that it consists of outtakes from a promotional ad for the Association featuring Mexican-born comedian Paul Rodriguez which were never used in the ad that actually aired. The paper described it as “Rodriguez dressed as a construction worker walking in an effeminate manner”.
The Association has taken the link to the video off their site but I’ve managed to get my hands on a copy and have posted it above. The clip in question begins at the :30 second mark and lasts 35 seconds. In it, Rodriguez seems to be ad-libbing his way through the shoot and starts riffing on the gay community in Austin, speaking both in English and Spanish. Here is the transcript with translation of Spanish-language phrases:
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Paul Rodriguez: Doesn’t Austin have like a gay… a big gay population?
Contractor in blue: Si, esta rogado por locas ["Yes, nellies always ask him out"]
Paul Rodriguez: So you go, you go [prances] ‘and specially for you…’ [walks and simulates grabbing contractor's butt, contractors laugh, Rodriguez goes back and simulates holding contractor's testicles]
Paul Rodriguez: Cough! [contractors laugh]
Paul Rodriguez: [prances again] Estas bien nalgón ["You're cute, big butt guy"]
Paul Rodriguez: Let’s go, let’s go…
Off-camera: [Unintelligible]
Paul Rodriguez: [prances some more] dale a tu cuerpo alegria, Macarena ["Give your body happiness, Macarena", a quote from the song Macarena by Los Del Rio]. Here we go…
At 1:57 there’s another bit in which Rodriguez addresses the two contractors as women and hands them over what he describes as invitations for them to join Jenny Craig and lose some weight.
After removing the link from the Association’s site, spokesperson Paul Saldaña, speaking to the American-Statesman, said “The video was in poor taste, and we certainly need to be held accountable to the community’s expectations.”
Frank Fuentes, the organization’s chairman, told the paper “We shouldn’t have had it up there. I personally don’t think it equates to what happened on the radio station, but I can understand why people would think that.”
Both Saldaña and Fuentes said that Rodriguez had initiated the banter and that it was never part of a script. They said they had contacted local LGBT organizations and advocates and requested a meeting with them to apologize for the incident. The meeting, they said, is scheduled for later this week.
Their immediate action to remove the link and willingness to be the ones to actively seek a meeting with local LGBT leaders speaks well for the Association despite having posted the video in the first place. I also find it suspicious that people started to complain to media only after the Association’s successful actions in shutting down a xenophobic radio show. Something tells me that fans of the show combed through the Association’s website to find anything they could pin on them and show them in a bad light.
As for the video’s content, does it offend? I guess it depends on your sensibility. To me it comes across as puerile, stereotypical, and – yes – a tad homophobic. But hey! It’s Paul Rodriguez! Does it absolutely rile me up and make me want to boycott Austin, Texas? Oh, please, there are bigger fish to fry. At least, once on notice, the organization acted swiftly and properly.
Carmen Van Kerckhove is co-founder and president of
9jah wrote:
Hmm. This certainly can be construed to be problematic as it furthers the stereotype that being gay equates to an inability to control sexual impulses even in a non-sexual environment (hence the pinching of the butt in the work environment etc.) Also, I don’t speak spanish and cannot make out some of the dialogue (is “Nellie” derogative?). But I don’t know how offensive this would be to the gay community.
Still, stamping out bigotry forever will require offending parties to learn to apologize without qualifications and attempts to save face because it adds injury to insult. Frankly, the feelings of the offended matter more (particularly when they have done nothing to bring about said offense).
Yet, the author puts great effort to prove the association is a scapegoat in the matter and little to explore how/why what was done may have been offensive to the gay community.
Posted 19 Aug 2009 at 10:56 am ¶
jsb16 wrote:
From your description, I’d say the video was in bad taste, and the association did the right thing when it was pointed out. But bad taste doesn’t become offensive, generally, until it becomes chronic and/or the people making the comments refuse to acknowledge that it might offend.
Then again, I know someone who can’t distinguish between the NYT firing someone for making up stories and the IBD hushing up their idiocy with respect to Stephen Hawking’s medical care, so it shouldn’t surprise me that people think a relatively isolated incident of bad taste can’t be distinguished from chronic prejudice.
Posted 19 Aug 2009 at 1:15 pm ¶
erin wrote:
@9jah – the term “nellie” is actually English, not Spanish and can most certainly be pejorative. it’s basically reserved for calling a man effeminate – which is obviously a terrible thing for a man to be. ::eyeroll::
I think I agree with the OP – it’s not necessarily the hugest deal in the grand scheme of things, but it was certainly projecting a stereotype and was demeaning. The fact that the org in question took it down immediately, apologized with no equivocation and is meeting with local LGBT groups makes all the difference.
Posted 19 Aug 2009 at 1:18 pm ¶
inkst wrote:
Yeah, for me the video is.. meh. Paul Rodriguez is a jackass, but aside from that I didn’t find it personally offensive. I agree with the poster though, in that I very much appreciate the fact that the association simply said, “Ok, sorry, we’ll take it down,” without trying to downplay or justify the content. In my opinion, if you put something out there that someone finds offensive, you need to just take their word for it.
In the town I live in, the city was trying to come up with a name for a music festival they’ll be hosting in September, and a fair amount of folks came out to speak against the original name, which they found to be offensive against the southern community that has settled here historically. Some other people got all huffy about their offense and tried to make a stupid fight out of it. I just thought, “hey, if citizens of this town find it offensive, have taken the time to state why they think it’s offensive, then that’s that. Change the effing name!” It’s not that hard to just apologize and move on with simple things like that.
Posted 19 Aug 2009 at 6:18 pm ¶
NH wrote:
I think this is pretty offensive and there is some defensiveness from people who want to automatically give any minority the benefit of the doubt here…just my two cents.
It’s funny that the organization would campaign against a negative portrayal of themselves and then perform essentially the same action to another marginalized group. Whether or not they initiated the discussion has nothing to do with it. They condoned the message from the moment they threw it online.
Posted 26 Aug 2009 at 1:36 pm ¶