Gustavo Arellano in the New York Times

Gustavo Arellano’s Ask A Mexican is reviewed in the Fashion & Style section in today’s New York Times.

My favorite part:

 “Part of the joke is the assumption that the reader doesn’t know any Mexicans,” said Ted Kissell, editor of The OC Weekly. Mr. Arellano, he noted, “is a surrogate Mexican for our English-speaking readership.”

Mr. Arellano, born in Anaheim to Mexican immigrants, one of them a father who crossed the border illegally several times starting in the 1960s, doesn’t deny that his satire is not for everyone. “I use the column to give the straight dope but also be as rude as possible to people who deserve it,” he explained. Accordingly, his responses often cite studies and statistics in a flurry of profanity. And he tackles some questions with the gusto of someone who not only wants to set the record straight but also wants to settle scores.

“Gracias for illustrating the great double standard in America’s immigration policy,” Mr. Arellano wrote in response to a reader who suggested that Mexicans stay in Mexico to improve their own country. “Centuries of immigrant waves chose not to improve their homelands and to try their luck in a new land, and we rightfully celebrate their pluck as pioneers. Yet when Mexicans follow in the footsteps of our gabacho forefathers, we accuse them of lacking self-motivation and want to shut down the border.”

Then, in typical fashion, he used an epithet to refer to the reader and challenged him to give up his cheap labor and “taco-and-enchilada combos.”

Here is is some video I took with my Treo at Gustavo’s book tour stop in Pico Rivera, California: