Mirthala Salinas - back in the news biz. Radio biz, that is.

Her rise through the ranks at Telemundo was swift. Her fall following the disclosure of an affair with Antonio Villaraigosa, mayor of our fair city, was a spectacle. And now she's back - on the radio this time. Hoyinternet.com has the details:

Cuatro meses después de renunciar a su trabajo como reportera de Telemundo-Canal 52 debido a su amorío con el alcalde Antonio Villaraigosa, Mirthala Salinas ha regresado al campo periodístico de Los Ángeles como co-presentadora de un programa radial.

The gist is, four months after getting dumped by Telemundo, Salinas has been hired as co-host of the morning talk show, "Hoy por Hoy", which airs Monday through Friday on W Radio, XETRA 690 AM.

--Veronique de Turenne

Comments

[deBeer]

Just the fact that the ex is working a Spanish language radio station in So Cal is bad enough...Now this?...A paragraph in Spanish is really necessary to tell the LA Times readers the story? Come on. If I want to read Spanish I'll visit my local B of A branch.

[Mike]

You have got to be kidding....unnecessary Spanish with English translation in the LATIMES, Im glad I cancelled my subscription.

[Don Juan de la Huerta y Heredia]

Stop crying you resentful, crybabies. Show some respect for other languages and learn one, if you have the ability.

[Espanol Si!]

I speak so-so Spanish, but don't really read or write it. But, if it makes people mad to print Spanish in the LA TImes - then do it by all means! I may just subscribe!

[Slug]

Adios, muchacha! Vaya con Hillary.

[Lost in Pearlblossom]

Why do people need to interject their opinion on language and society in this story?

This is a story about Ms. Salinas and her coming back to journalism, not a commentary about the growing use of Spanish in California.

[Espanol Si!]

'Why do people need to interject their opinion on language and society in this story?'

Prolly cuz it's fun!!

[Bruce Wilson]

Actually it's very important to comment on the Spanish language in this blog because it shows the state of affairs in L.A. The Spanish language papers like HOY are ON TOP OF THINGS while the English language papers simply regurgitate the same hard news we've already seen on the front page of Yahoo instead of focusing on community interest.

[pete]

what country are we in again? if the times are going to print in spanish, then to be fair, print them in every language. d@mn mexicans want everything.

[Paul Olivas]

I have no problem with it ,all you people voting for change. Welcome to change.

[Geebuz]

Hey Mike, guess what, there's Spanish in the masthead. It's called the "Los Angeles" Times. Get over yourself, moron.

[Carolina]

I am so proud to be latin girl, since i was a child my mom teaching me to be respectful about other countries, culture and different kind of persons..

This is the big difference!! I'm so glad that in my country all language are welcome, maybe this is a sign that we need to learn other languages.

Graciasssssssss..LOL

[danny]

It's discrimination to NOT include all foreign languages and favor only a Spanish transalation. We must also have: Chinese, Japanese, Korean, French, German, Russian, Tamil, Urdu, Thai, Czech, etc. etc. etc. so as to NOT be exclusive.

Inlcude ALL or none.

[GEAH]

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[A]

No offense, Carolina, but do you really think there's no discrimination in Mexico, or among Central Americans? A 2005 nationwide Mexican poll set up by Sedesol and the National Council for Prevention of Discrimination found that 8 out of 10 Mexicans confront discrimination daily. The victims listed are "women, girls, the handicapped, aborigines, seniors, HIV/AIDS sufferers, homosexuals, non-Catholics and foreigners", and the situation for natives (aborigines) of Mexico is particularly awful.
Discrimination happens everywhere. Oddly enough, it's something we all have in common, while we're busy using it to point out our differences.

[SGV]

What a pitiful existence of the American Yahoo to not only be fearful, but also devoid of any culture.

As much as you'd like to wipe away any trace of Hispano-America in this region, the culture has been here far longer than Europeans have been in the U.S. So do you throw a fit when you visit Hawaii and hear the native language being spoken?

[mara]

Goodness! You mean I moved to a town that's half Latino only to find that a language other than English exists?

[Lost in Pearlblossom]

Again, I repeat my point - this is not a story about Spanish, English or matters of language. It is a story about Mirthala Salinas. Her connection to the theme everyone seems to be obsessed with is tangential at best.

However, if we are going to talk about language and its place in Los Angeles, lets first ask why are we so obsessed with it? It is really that uncommon for a city or a region to have more than one lingua franca? In Medieval and Early Modern Europe, it was common (as it is today) for people to speak different languages, using each one for a specific function in life. There is a great quote attributed to Charles V, the great Holy Roman Emperor. Supposedly he was quoted as saying, "I speak Spanish to God, Italian to Women, French to Men, and German to my Horse." Though humorous, this quote speaks to the fact that it was common for people to use not just one or two, but four languages. You can find this today in place like the Netherlands. Even in Mexico most middle class people speak English (as well as Spanish).

What is frightening is the notion that the United States needs to be monolingual. It makes use look a bunch of troglodytes.

Or even more frightening is how people boil down this issue to simple ethno-racial soap boxes. This is not an "us" versus "them." The only people who gain from that strain-of-thought are Lou Dobbs, Ann Coulter and the Republican and Democratic Parties, who use linguistic and racial identity politics to divide us for electoral gain.

[Pappi Chulo]

Mirthala con Antonio POR VIDA!!!

[Pepe]

There is a country in Europe that has four national languages, Switzerland. And here we make a big deal about the NATIVE language of California? By the way Spanish, Castellano, was spoken in Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, California and Florida well before English was.

[jimmy]

quite amazing how a simple story turns racial for some knuckle heads(debeers/mike/pete), no further elaboration needed, blog closed.

[artie]

....... madre! ?Como chin....con su espanol? Blah, blah, blah, blah. Vayanse a la ...... Ajua!! Viva Mexico, cabr................!!!!

[Plebe]

We also need a Mike-to-English translation...preferably with proper punctuation.

[Easy there!]

Hoy is owned by the same company as LAT and the Spanish excerpt from their website is just cross-marketing - dollars and cents, the American way, free-enterprise baby. Besides, Spanish is an Indo-European language, like English, so it can't be that hard to understand with a little effort if you put your mind to it. And if you want to get down to basics, the Celtic peoples migrated in antiquity to what is now the UK and Ireland from the Iberian Peninsula (present day Spain and Portugal) - so we are all interrelated whether we like it or not!

[LOUIE]

Mike..where'd you read about this if not in the L.A. Times. I think you cancelled your subscription because you didn't want to pay to read the paper anymore. But, you obviously still read the paper, named after the city that was founded by Mexicans. Choice is wonderful. You can choose not to read the paper or even move to a city without Mexicans, if you can find one.

[Bill]

To MIKE...

Yes! Spanish in the Los Angeles (soft g) Times...huevon.
Get out more often...Proud monolingualism is sign of not being tuned in.
If you have a problem with a paragraph in Spanish then you're in the wrong town.
I'll applaud the Times if they manage not to cave into such racist paranoia.

[jt]

dieu na ma. translate that homathons

[antonio v]

Los españoles o no nosotros somos todos las putas de los medios que se convierten.¡Los tiempos del LA aspiran!

[NorCal son with a SoCal education]

Does the LA Times in-house style guide normally proscribe the publication of untranslated quotes? I've never seen any quotes in the LA Times presented in anything but English. I must conclude that Turenne is using the Spanish original text for some particular effect. I cannot speculate as to what effect that might be.

[Jenny]

The ignorant ones are those who go to other countries and expect them to speak your language.. so what does that say about those who expect Americans to have to learn to speak Spanish to communicate inside America.. ? Well, what it says is that they are lazy, both mentally and physically.

I wonder how many strings Villaraigosa had to pull to get his puta a job?

[Pam]

Using Altavista's Babelfish translator, here is the translation, which sounds kind of hashed because the writer's spanish is as bad as their English probably would be, but it's even more funny because of it.

Four months after resigning to its work like reporter of Telemundo-Canal 52 due to its love affair with mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, Mirthala Saline it has returned to the journalistic field of the Angels like Co-presenter of a radial program.

[HAHA]

Hey Jenny -

I think you need to give him a "job" LOL

[Mr.X]

A mi me encanta que el espanol se difunda en toda la sociedad. En una democracia, la voz de la mayoria es la que mas se escuha y se le hace caso. Y si es verdad que los Latinos ya son la mayoria en Los Angeles (y muy pronto en California) y si nosotros queremos que se nos hable en espanol, pues yo no veo nada malo en eso: simplemente es democracia en accion. O acaso ya no cuenta la democracia cuando no se aplica a favor de los Anglo-Sajones?

En pocas palabras, si negocios (restaurantes, televisoras, bancos, etc.) quieren nuestro dinero, entonces tendran que hablar nuestro idioma y punto. Ya se ve en todas estas empresas la importancia del espanol ya que contratan empleados que hablan espanol, se ve en las pancartas escritas en espanol que anuncian sus servicios, y se ve en las lineas telefonicas de servicio al cliente donde tambien se habla espanol. No hay necesidad de descartar que tambien hay 3 cadenas de television nacionales: Univision, Telemundo, y Azteca America, ademas de muchas televisoras locales que hablan in spanish only.

Tras su triste historia de intervenciones, no debe sorpender que por generaciones, Latinos se han apegado a lo que quedaba de sus sociedades tras las invasiones extranjeras: al espanol y a su cultura. Lo que cambio fue la frontera y no nuestras costumbres. Lo que se puede apreciar ahorita es el resultado logico de retener nuestras costumbres en una escala masiva. Otra vez, un ejemplo de democracia, la fuerza de la mayoria.

El Anglo-Sajon mucha veces interpreta esto como si fuera un ataque contra el y el estilo de vida en EEUU. Si no somos como ellos, luego lo toman como una ofensa. Ellos se preguntan, "Por que no asimilan? Que les pasa, que se estan creyendo, que este es tu pais? Estan muy equivocados, este es el U.S.A " Hablan como si ellos fueran los que decidieran que es mejor para el pais, y que nuestras aportaciones no eran lo suficiente bueno, como si no pasaran la prueba de calidad.

Pero la verdad es que nosotros tambien somos norteamericanos y estamos aportando lo mas sagrado - nuestra cultura - a la identidad norteamericana. No se trata de venganzas por injusticias del pasado, solamente es una expresion de lo que siempre hemos sido y somos: norteamericanos de ascendencia latina.

[tepozbloga]

Que enfado. Otra vez con la misma vaina. Me dan sueno, la verdad. Que se consuelen los decerebrados que se oponen al uso del espanol con que no les hablemos en otros idiomas como el nahuatl, quechua, spanglish, etc.

Learn another language and stop being so ridiculously stupid. Los Angeles is all about diversity whether you like it or not. So, stop your cantaleta and enroll in a language course hoy mismo (so you won't feel left out) Or better yet, ponganse a contemplar why you have such a narrow view of what it means to be an American.

[chanklas]

what's really gonna blow all you bigots' minds is when Mandarin becomes the most commonly spoken language in California, followed by Spanish--which will be a lot sooner than you think.

While your Idiocracy continues crumbling into a useless pile of monolingual grunts and rightwing-radio christofascist bonehead epithets, the rest of us interested in actually participating constructively in civilization with our fellow humans on this planet are learning not just Spanish, but French, Portuguese, Arabic, Mandarin, Farsee, etc., as well as many of the indigenous languages of the Americas that were spoken for centuries long before English (or Spanish), and that are still spoken by millions of people, here in "America."

[joseph]

Quel type de nom étranger est Veronique de Turenne?

[Rosa]

Hey Pete, your ignorance shows right through your comments. Mexicans are not the only people that speak Spanish. It seems that YOU want everything. Diversity is what makes L.A. great. I'm proud to be Mexican and lucky to be born in a county where I have friends of many nationalities with many customs. It's great to be exposed to diversity which makes you more tolerant to differences and gives you the ability to accept people for who they are not where they come from.

[Mr.X]

English translation of my previous post for the Spanish-challenged:

I love the fact that Spanish is permeating our society. In a democracy, the majority is the voice that is often heard and heeded most. This is very American. And if it is true that Latinos are already the majority in Los Angeles (and very soon in California) and if we want to be addressed in Spanish, well then, I don't see anything wrong in that... It's simply democracy in action. Or does democracy no longer count when it's not in favor of Anglos?

In short, if businesses (restaurants, media, banks, etc.) want our money, then they're going to have to speak our language... period, because that is how we want it... This has nothing do with English-only-speaking customers and their heartfelt concern for those Latinos who speak only Spanish. This is a preference that Latinos (even those who speak fluent English and have a B.A. in English) insists on if the company wants our business...

And apparently, the importance of Spanish has not been glossed over since these companies hire employees who speak Spanish, advertise in Spanish, and answer phone calls in Spanish.

Needless to say, our "campaign" has had a big impact: there are currently 3 television stations that transmit nationally in Spanish: Univision, Telemundo, and Azteca America, plus countless radio stations, newspapers and local television stations that broadcast solamente en espanol...

The Latino influence can be seen everywhere in restaurants, entertainment, sports, books, internet, etc., etc...

But why are Latinos so stubborn about keeping their roots, you might ask?

Well, throughout its sad history of foreign invasions and conquests, it should come as no surprise that for generations, Latinos have clung on to and cherished the most important and basic facets of human existence: family, culture, and language. For example, if 3 centuries of being dominated and enslaved by the Spanish, invasions by the French, and the theft of half of the Mexican territory by the U.S.A. in 1848 couldn't change the Mexican character, why do some people believe that Mexicans would just give up their identity when they "move" to the U.S.?

In effect, what changed was the border and not our culture and customs. What we see happening right now is the logical result of retaining our culture on a massive scale. This is but another example of democracy, the influence of the majority, and of changing demographics.

The Anglo may interpret this as if it were a personal attack against him and life in the U.S.A. If Latinos are not 100% like him, then Anglos take it as an offense. Anglos ask, "Why don't they assimilate? What's wrong with them? Do they think this is their country (Mexico)? They're wrong. This is the U.S.A." They speak as if they were the arbitrators of what is and not American, what is best for the country, and what they have concluded is that the contributions of Latinos are not good enough.

But the truth of the matter is that Latinos are also Americans, and we are contributing our most sacred treasure-- our culture -- to the American identity. We are not seeking vengeance for past wrongs or trying to impose our values or language on our fellow Americans. We are simply expressing what we have always been and continue to be: Americans of Latino heritage. We will not change just because some Americans find this offensive. It's who we are, for better or worse...

[MaryJ]

Hey Mr. X, I'm a native-born Californian of some "advanced" years. I remember the paradise that was Anglo-California in the 60s. Know what it looked like? Best schools in the nation, best infrastructure, no Third World ghettoes, no ugly graffitti on every single public and private sructure, no drug gangs. Your "culture" isn't as precious as you think it is. Maybe you should ask yourself why every Latin American country is a Third World toilet that no one wants to live in (including yourself), while Anglo-American countries (US and Canada) are First World declent countries that EVERYONE wants to live in.

[Sciencemaster]

Dear MaryJ:

Paradise? I'm guess I'm still a kid, but wasn't the 60s also a time of segregation in schools as well? And blatant discrimination was a little more rampant I think. Doesn't sound like paradise to me...

And EVERY Latin American country being a Third World toilet?? How you make these comments without feeling silly is BEYOND me. I find it sad that in the 21st century there are still those who feel its okay to make broad, ridiculously generalized comments like that and think they're sounding intelligent. Then I remember that ignorance is ageless.

I'm an African-American and I love the fact that LOTS of things inclduing Spanish are permeating our culture. Art, music and languages from ALL OVER THE WORLD can be easily shared thanks to technology and other things. And it makes anywhere more interesting to be.

[MaryJ]

Sciencemaster -- Yes, Anglo-Calfiornia was a paradise compare to what it has become after the Mexican invasion. As I said, no drug gangs, no graffitti, very little poverty, very little crime, number one school system in the nation, number one infrastructure, number one everything. A working-class man like my dad could support a family of 8 on a single working-class income and afford to own his own home too. I repeat: PARADISE.

And no, we didn't have segregation in the schools in California. (Where do people learn these things?) My father's boss was black and that was 40 years ago. And yes, most of Latin America is a Third World toilet -- that's why they all want to come here, remember?. Mexico has the 6th highest homicide rate in the entire world, and most of it is controlled by drug cartels that are far more vicious than our own Mafia. Also, maybe you should also check out Latin America's record on racism if you think it's so great.Maybe YOUR ignorance is the one that's "ageless."

[Mrs. X]

"Hey Mr. X, I'm a native-born Californian of some "advanced" years".

Good. That means you're 'on your way out' - it's good to know that & be rid of jerks like you. And yes there was segregated school in California brain box. If you had any knowledge whatsoever you could research it for yourself. I guess you weren't a product of such 'great education' yourself. You're pathetic.

[Irony?]

I find it funny that the Latino posters are referring to anyone who speaks English as an "Anglo," but get offended if they are all lumped together as Mexicans. Anglo refers to a very specific group of people, just like Mexican does. Mr. X's defense of why some Latinos are pushing for Spanish is also very ironic. If native South and Central Americans hold onto their culture so dearly in the face of opposition, why is Spanish part of your culture at all? Its from Spain! And Easy there!, yes both English and Spanish are Indo-European languages, but so are Sanskrit, Russian and Farsi. Can you figure those out?

But the whole language debate is fairly unimportant. Despite the hopes or fears of either group, Spanish will not survive intact in America. Nor will Mandarin or any other language. It will happen exactly the same as it has for every other language or culture that has "invaded" America. We will keep some terms and blend them into the language and people will even forget that they are "ethnic." Think of "mafia," the pronunciation of "Pittsburgh," "hutzpa" or even the older Spanish to English transfers like "patio."

And things like Cinco de Mayo will be blended in, just like St. Patrick's day was. Tacos like pizza. Tequila like german beer. US history has had a number of immigrant waves, and each time we have been different after each. Each time the newcomers have brought something new to the table and eventually been absorbed into the new whole. Just think, how many Bostonians still speak Gaelic, how many north Mid-westerners speak Norwegian/Swedish or how many New Yorkers are fluent in Italian?