Ohhhh Mexico, I’ve never really been, but I’d sure like to go.

The Anti-Defamation League wants you to know that Mexico is not dirty. Apparently they’ve never been to Mexico.


T-shirt said to be offensive to Mexico
Claims ‘New Mexico: Cleaner Than Regular Mexico’

The Anti-Defamation League has asked Urban Outfitters, a Philadelphia-based retailer which targets 18- to 30-year-old shoppers, to stop selling the shirt.


The Associated Press
Updated: 3:28 p.m. ET July 26, 2005
PHILADELPHIA - The Urban Outfitters retail chain is once again upsetting some people with a T-shirt it’s selling. The shirt reads: “New Mexico, Cleaner than Regular Mexico.”
An official with the Anti-Defamation League wants the retailer to stop selling the shirt -- because it suggests that ”Mexico is a dirty place.”
Urban Outfitters has run into similar controversy before. Two years ago, it stopped selling a game called ”Ghettopoly” after black civil rights leaders protested. Last year, it stopped sales of a T-shirt that read, “Everyone Loves a Jewish Girl,” surrounded by dollar signs. The Anti-Defamation League objected to that one, too.
It also angered pro-voting groups with a shirt that said, “Voting is for Old People.”

Now I know what you’re thinking, here goes Quiana and her Anti-Defamation League prejudices. Damn straight. I can’t help but be angry about how, according to the ADL, it’s apparently ok for Falwell and Santorum to vilify homosexuals, but God forbid you pick on Mexico. God forbid you use your right to free expression to offend other people. Good thing being a bitch is illegal in America (I’d better go into hiding). Good thing that the ADL’s right to sue and be little whiners supersedes our rights to obnoxious garb. “Harold that man’s T-shirt is too glib, quick call the ADL!” I feel like the ADL is a bully that can run around telling people that creating funny t-shirts (although a bit outrageous) is wrong—quick accuse the makers of anti-Semitism, racism, sexism, ageism. Tie them up and burn them at the stake!

I know that the ADL is concerned that people will believe that all Mexicans are dirty if they see that t-shirt (not that the shirt is even implying that), but let’s be serious, if I see a lady with a t-shirt with a picture of a beaver on her shirt and an arrow pointing down, I don’t think that there is an actual beaver in her pants, nor will society at large begin to think that all ladies have large flappered mammals in their pants. Likewise I think that people who hate Mexicans are stupid assholes who not only have the right to any stupid t-shirt they want, but who the ADL can’t make not be assholes no matter how many clothing retailers they blackball. It’s every American’s God-given right to be an asshole if they feel like being an asshole and no amount of t-shirt destruction will stop that. So while I can see where the ADL is going with this (even though I think that they are a bunch of liberal art major, bourgeois, ass-clowns) I still stand behind Urban Outfitters. The American government set the precedent for picking on Mexico so why should our retailers take any more care? Mexico’s condition is appalling. Its government is fundamentally corrupt in every fashion, from the president down to the neighborhood police force. Things are so terrible in Mexico that leaving your family, swimming a river and risking death in the desert to come here, live in fear, not be able to communicate, to be the victim of atrocious racism, and pick our fucking berries is the best possible opportunity available for people to improve themselves. This sob story may make you believe that the ADL is right, quit picking on Mexico. Well fah, I say. I think that Americans would do well to remember that Mexico isn’t really Cabo and Mazatlan, Mexico is Tijuana and tiny towns full of desperate dirty people.

About 8 years ago I went to Tijuana to work with orphans and the destitute at the Tijuana dumps. The dump used to be a pile in a valley with mountains all around. They’ve filled the valley, to the point that the mound of refuse is a mountain now. Countless poor live next to this mountain making their living by sorting through the trash. Eating what they can, selling anything worth money. I bathed children for the first time in their lives because water is too precious to waste; I deloused them and gave them the only new clothes they will probably ever own. These are kids with scabies, worms, and appalling health problems and deformities that are so awful that, were your pet to have them, you would have it put down. I didn’t know that there was that much puss in the entire world, and I sat and squished it out of sores on babies so the staff doctors and nurses could figure out what the hell was wrong there.

There is a cemetery at the dump for people who are born in the trash and die in it. The people are so poor that they don’t know what to do with their loved ones when they die, so they bury their dead children, parents, and friends in cardboard boxes or just leave them on the ground knowing that if they buried them someone would just break in and steal their clothes anyway. There are decaying corpses on the ground and the children play on the other side of the road. But don’t worry, the cemetery will probably be swallowed by garbage soon if it hasn’t happened already. At least then they will be buried.

I know that Mexico isn’t even the poorest place in the world, but remembering this experience makes me feel despondent so deep inside I can’t even express it.

ADL, don’t you fucking dare sit in Manhattan in tailored suits drinking Starbucks and tell me that Mexico isn’t dirty. Or that that t-shirt isn’t funny just because it’s true.

Sorry guys, this was going to be knee-slapping funny, but I just got pissed off instead. Don’t fret, more poop and sex entries to come.