Todos En La Familia

By now, everyone is aware of the story in which Chicago White Sox manager, Ozzie Guillen, calls a news reporter a "fag". What made me laugh was Ozzie initial explanation of the comment. He stated that there was a language barrier and that by calling the reporter a "fag", he wasn't calling him a homosexual but merely stating that the reporter lacked manliness. Duh...isn't that what most guys mean when they call another guy a "fag"?



Ozzie said that in his native country of Venezuela, calling a man a "fag" or its' equivalent would only be used to make a point to imply that the reporter should "act like a man" and that the term "fag" was somehow not necessarily a derogatory term for homosexual. The White Sox manager was only challenging the reporter to act like a man.



And for 12 hours, the media seemed to give Ozzie the benefit of the doubt. For a second there, I thought that Ozzie was going to get away with it and I was shocked. I was already starting to scribble in my notepad, "note to self: when making future racial or sexually derogatory remarks, claim to be of South American descent, and blame the language barrier for the blatant mis-understanding. Kind of like a "Get Out Of Jail Free" card.



And then, people got wise and Ozzie got slammed. You just can't blame him for trying I guess.
Maybe, Ozzie has just chosen the wrong career. Maybe the Sox skipper should sign a side deal with Univision to do a remake of a certain classic 70's TV show. It could be called "Todos En La Familia" and he can play a character called Archuro Bunker who sits in his house and insults everyone who walks in the door with a cadre of ethnic, gender and sexual slurs. To add to the zaniness, he can have a live-in son-in-law, who he could constantly refer to as "cabeza de carne". I'm sure he'll be slipping in a few "fags" here and there since that term doesn't seem to offend homosexuals of hispanic descent. Univision is sure to have a hit on their hands.



Lastly, Ozzie is insisting that he refuses to take "sensitivity classes" mandated by MLB, because he would first have to take English classes for the material to be meaningful to him. That kind of implies that it's only possible to be offensive if your native language is english. Something, many of us have suspected for about two decades.



I love Ozzie and I love his brashness and complete honesty, but how about swallowing a dose of common sense and just bite the bullet. Just think of the mileage that Univision could get out of Archuro Bunker in sensitivity training classes in the pilot episode of "Todos En La Familia"!



Who is the Venezuelan Mel Brooks? We'd insist on him directing.