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Collision at the Intersection(ality)
San Antonio has fired its sixth poet laureate “after posting a poem that included a Spanish word that is considered a racial slur.” (The term is “mayate” – it took me a while to find it as most articles would not quote it.)
It’s probably small of me to get so much schadenfreude from these sort of conflicts, but it’s inevitable when racial grievance mongers are in the driver’s seat.
I just realized that I unintentionally expanded my intersectionality crash idea, but it’s completely fitting. Since being the most offended makes one the winner in the grievance Olympics (I guess I am mixing my metaphors — or is it analogies?), it had to happen. Anyway, I find it delicious. Let me also ask — does this guy appear to be full of crap just from a look at his picture, or is it just me? Here is the link.
Published in General
Thank you for finding the word, not that I will ever need it. I had simply been piqued by the refusal of various sources to say what it was. One website flatly stated it would not reveal it. Another referred to it as the M-word. Or M-palabra, I guess.
I am tempted to go to Google Translate and stick this word in and see what happens. But I will master my curiosity and just let the affair slide by.
As for the photo of the now-ex-laureate: the wristwatch is such a weird accent. He writes poetry AND he’s never late for appointments!
Sixth ?! A lot of towns don’t have even one poet laureate. I think I will send this to the mayor:
Our town does not harass or hate
The LGBTQIA+ or straight
We do not judge or oppress
The woman with extra tackle under her dress
Nor turn away the undocumented
Nor are the homeless scorned and resented
We forgive all minor crimes
Even when done many times
Let the selfish haters move to some red state
To evade our love mandate
While we look at our town via heart and soul
And see beauty– not some [REDACTED]
Rhyming doggerel can help us see
And so the poet laureate should be me
Why does San Antonio think it needs a poet laureate?
This always happens in the “reporting” on “hate speech” or “slurs”. You an never find what the alleged perp actually said. Just trust the “journalists” – they’ll let you know if and when to be offended, they just won’t say what you’re supposed to be offended about.
It’s crazy-making.
I love it too. I especially enjoy when Muslims and the trans preoccupationists collide. There isn’t enough popcorn in the world.
Because it’s run by snooty lefties who pretend to be cultured.
That’s what Important cities do. They have a Poet Laureate, and at least one statue of St. George Floyd, and…
June Bug is a slur?
I mostly saw references to gay men, but the outcry seems to be that it’s racial, so I’m not sure what that’s about.
The things you learn! The possibility that mayate is a word for June bug that has been, uh, colloquially repurposed gave me an idea: look it up on Spanish Wikipedia. And there it is. Nothing about its use in impolite company. However, the insect itself, quite apart from the word corresponding to it, may suffer misuse. The subsection marked “Game” describes tying threads to the forewing and a hind leg, then letting or forcing the bug to fly, which it will do, in circles. I mean if you hold the other ends of the threads. However, this may result in yanking off the leg, and is not an ethical way to treat animals.
Someone should write a poem about this. It should be titled “Citation Needed.”
The history of this article is interesting. Seems this subsection has come and gone – a lot of reversions. At times it has gained an extra sentence urging readers not to indulge in such cruelty. Among the brief explanations given for this or that edit, the one that especially intrigues me says “This may be informative but it can incite people to try it.” No, wait, there’s an even better one, where someone said he’s changed a word to make clear that such a game mistreats the insect; and with specific regard to the hind leg, what had read “is not recommended” now reads “must not be done.” However, before and after that point in the revision history, the subsection still said that while this game is fun, you need to release the insect before you hurt it.
Well, I could go on and on, but I think we all agree: foreign cultures sure are interesting. And I’m just talking about how they treat other species. How they treat other races may be more interesting still.
Is he at least a cowboy poet laureate?
Naw, that’s gotta be cultural appropriation, or something.
He would be a vaquero poet.
When I was in the Army Reserve, I spent a summer at Ft Lere, VA doing Advanced Training. With us was a contingent of Puerto Rican National Guardsmen. From them, I learned some “interesting” pejoratives. The ones that were guaranteed to start a shoving match to even a fistfight were when they called another fellow a Cubano blanco. They had another term, maracon which is, I suppose, the opposite of a mayate. One could say that you sort of need both to tango I suppose. Mexicans didn’t really seem to think the name was all that bad, it was sort of like calling someone a queer or a fag.
The Party will tell you what to think, comrade.
And so the expression “the mainstream media” has been supplemented by “the Pravda press”.
He looks like a mayate vaquero poeta from El Rancho Dudo.
Well this is the same crowd of people who saw to it that the Native Americans in our nation would never again have to look at a Land Of Lakes butter wrapper that featured its iconic and gorgeous young Native American woman.
Like Babylon Bee stated “They literally took the photo of the woman off the photo of the land, and did not notice the irony in doing that!”
See here for both meanings.
The word is so secret you have to do an internet search. The poem is apparently so evil that it has no name lest you inadvertently stumble upon it.
Meanwhile the n-est of n-words remains in rap circulation.
The poem’s use of ‘mayate’ may or may not contribute to its literary value (assuming). ‘Redeeming social value’, as it were.
But it is a hallmark of leadership to begin rending garments and donning hairshirts before anyone accuses you of an actual sin.
How ’bout them Redskins?
Yes, I noticed recently there is more than one now.
More like a blanco, Cubano, meracon to me, but like it matters?
Ooo, I wonder if they thought he was using the Chicano reference to a Black person? It might be helpful to see the darned poem.
You forgot to mention the $200k “folk art” mural.
If not now, it soon will be.
I am sure he is as great a poet-a veritable Shakespeare or Keats- almost the equal of the former poet laureate of New Jersey, Amiri Baraka – who wrote this great stanza of poetry about Condelezza Rice:
“Who know what kind of of skeeza is a Condeleeza”
fyi- skeeza is a dirty slut
As you can probably guess he also included many flattering comments about Clarence Thomas in some of his poetry (not). His antisemitic poems motivated Gov McGreevy (a prize himself) to terminate the position & thereby save NJ from further embarrassment. They tried to fire Baraka, but found there was no legal way to do so, so they abolished the office. But just because a poet “viewed blacks as morally superior than whites, who he believed were innately evil” and “advocated for the rape of white women by Black men, believing that it was a politically legitimate act” is no reason a Democratic Governor shouldn’t have put him on the state payroll.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiri_Baraka#cite_note-85
If this were the 1970s, this guy would be doing his thing, shown on late-night UHF channels, wearing a leisure suit.