No more answers from "Ask a Mexican" columnist

Gustavo Arellano, whose "Ask A Mexican" column has angered and amused a great many Mexicans and non-Mexicans alike, is apparently no longer taking questions. His column today in the OC Weekly ends with this note:

"And with this, the Mexican formally bids adios, effective the feast day of St. Melito. It’s been a great run ... but all the hateful e-mail, the attacks ... and the fact that few of you have bothered to submit video questions to my YouTube channel wear on a guy, you know? Besides, like Mr. Dooley, Olle I Skratthult and The Katzenjammer Kids before me, this column’s time has come: It’s no longer necessary to explain Mexicans to Americans because Mexicans are Americans."

Update: Could this be a joke be on us?

-- Jesus Sanchez

Photo: Robert Lachman / Los Angeles Times

Comments

[Mike]

Wrong Mexicans are Mexicans. They dont want to be Americans.

[Erik Butts]

who cares

[Diego]

I'm pretty sure this is an April Fools' Joke, not only because it's coming out this week, but because the feast day of Saint Melito is April 1st. Mark my words.

[Betsy Ross]

Good Riddance! What a worthless columnist. He quit because he was under too much stress? HA! What a chicken!

[Michael Dills]

I really enjoyed his comments. I am married to a 2nd generation Latina, and can relate. Our son is a true Califonian.
Sorry to see you go.
Mike

[Alex]

Sorry, but have to say don't let the door hit you on the way out! This guy had his uber-alles views that were nauseating not only to Mexicans or Non-Mexicans, but to HUMANS. Good riddance Gustavo!

[Hector]

I for one hope this is an april fools joke. The weekly column is always funny and very poignant.

[Steve Wong]

As a Chinese American I can honestly say that the pride
the Chinese community takes in their communit, race and cultural traditions
would never allow for this type of blatant disrespect this writer brought to his culture.

[Felipe]

It is unfortunate that the OC could not assign Gustavo a more challenging beat instead he is relegated to the an ethnic ghetto section of the newspaper. Gustavo failed on youtube because his material lacked gravitas the youth of today want regatom or latin hip-hop. Hopefully Gustavo can move on to better things in his career.

[Bill]

Maybe it can be replaced with Ask a Minuteman.
Or Ask a Yaleman (how's that pledge to rebuild New Orleans workin' out?).

[Abhi Buch]

The only thing that saves us from each other and ouselves is a sense of humor. If you can laugh at your own foibles, you are saved. Sometimes, some one has to stick their neck out to get us going. Fact is, we are all kinda wierd, and funny to boot. Mexican, American, Oriental, Indian.... what's the difference? We live together, we work together, lets laugh together.

[Robert]

Yes. Him and Navarro are a worthless waste of space. Hyphens are for foreigners NOT Americans. Anyone who puts their home country before America needs to return there. Today!

[Gary Goch]

This was the only thing worth reading in the Village Voice. Now I am left with the restaurant reviews only. Too bad. The Mexican was not only funny he was very funny in an intellectual way.

[steve]

mexicans are not americans, nor will they ever. untill they learn our language and culture and stop exploiting our counrty, then they will never me Americans.

[Bob]

As a gabacho who learned lots about my fellow Americans from his columns, I hope that he keeps writing in the same vein.

[tony garcia]

It was a good run Gustavo. Thanks for speaking up and adding humor to what is unsettling or confusing to most Americans. Mexicans will endure anything and still keep their sense of humor no matter what is said or thought about us.

If Americans are annoyed because they think we don't want to be American, it is because most Mexicans are more concerned about being persons before anything else. It may take generations before Americans will evolve from their ethnocentrism. As it stands, the rest of the nations of this planet are catching up to America. This makes them nervous

In the meantime, Mexicans will continue to do what they have to in order to live. Because there is a higher law than the Immigration Laws of this nation. The law of survival and the right to live as fruitful & meaningful an existence as those individuals that we work hard for.

[A Garcia]

I completely understand Gustavo Arellano's need for to take a break from the assault of your average willfully-ignorant conservative who becomes Nazi facist when they avail themselves of the anonymity of the internet (for examples, see Above). Basically, I'd get bored too. I'm a little sad 'cuz I never got to ask him my question. Awh, well... I guess I'll never know who'd be a better 'latin' lover of Wonder Woman - El Santo, Mil Mascaras or Blue Demon... any-guey... Good luck, brova... PS - I have to do this:

We are Mexicans...
We are Legion.
Expect us.
(lol!)

[John]

"Ask a Mexican" fascinated me all the way over here in New England, where we don't have many Mexicans. I think the reason Gustavo draws such ire from white Americans is because he effectively showed how little we really know about anything beyond our own backyard. I'm rather sure of this because for the 2 years I lived in California, the number one question I was asked was: "You are from New England? What's the capital of New England?"

[Nacho Libre]

Thank you for ending the ethnocentric stupidity! Now can we please get on with journalism that isn't offensive to real Americans, you know, the ones WHO STOOD IN LINE to BE HERE?

[Gabacho Libre]

C'mon, Ask A Mexican is hilarious, healthy, and awesome.

To Steve Wong above: Gustavo Arellano's humor in his column is a sign of his confidence in his community and himself, of strength and not of disrespect.

To Felipe, you obviously don't read the OC Weekly if you think GA's writing is relegated to an "ethnic ghetto section".

April Fool's joke, I hope. But I could see how after a while it wouldn't be as fun and it would be harder to find .

[Daniel]

Mexicans are Americans?!

Maybe a mapmaker might think so, but in virtually every other respect, Mexicans are about as American as Hugo Chavez is Swedish. Americans don't litter the streets, sidewalks, parks, playgrounds, schools, parking lots, and highways with anything and everything that can and should be put into a landfill instead. Americans don't spray paint, ink up or otherwise vandalize every wall, fence, monument, church, office, factory, home, garage door, railcar, school, freeway sign or any other surface they can thoroughly and utterly deface, nor do they cost their government millions in repairs, repainting and resurfacing, stringing thousands of miles of razor wire, installing solid steel barricades or chain-link fencing to try and get some control over it.

Americans don't behave like jackals when they're in a group of "friends," then pretend they wouldn't harm a butterfly when by themselves. Americans don't - just like a young Hispanic punk did this very morning to a friend's car after getting it home from the detail ship - key the daylights out of strangers' cars just because he couldn't imagine ever being successful enough to legally own one himself.

Americans don't walk up to people and ask them if they're in a gang, and before they can respond that they wouldn't be so utterly idiotic as to ever join a stupid, worthless, good-for-nothing group of low I.Q. punks who barely rate being called human beings, shoot them to death on the spot.

Americans don't have dozens more children than they can possibly afford, leaving the mothers to fend for themselves or turn to drugs for help (or turn the babies over to relatives they barely know or to friends they know even less), to come back only when its time to beat them up and knock them up again, overwhelmingly burdening to beyond the breaking point ER's, hospitals, school districts, social services, courts and county jails across the country.

Americans don't earn extended stays at taxpayer expense in state prisons from one coast to the other because it's easier to shoot the clerk at the stop-and-rob instead of actually reaching into their pockets to pay for the six pack they need for the night's drive-by shootings. Americans don't teach their children how to steal cars, how to stage accidents, how to file false claims for injuries in stores and on the road, while doing it themselves as a way of life.

Americans don't fail to fly the American flag when they rally, and instead fly the flag of a country which won't take responsibility for any of its citzens' deplorable actions, which hides murderers, rapists, carjackers, cop killers and every other kind of thug their society produces by the thousands.

Americans don't rack up one capital offense after the next and when the heat is (finally) on, kill the officer who pulls him over in the stolen car some poor slob couldn't afford to properly insure in the first place and hop a bus to Tijuana, never to be seen again.

No, Mexicans are not "Americans." They're just Mexicans.

[Dee]

We will miss you Gustavo.
You were a breath of Fresh Air in this often cruel society!
Best Wishes and May you achieve your Dreams!

[Marie]

Mexicans do live on the Continent of North America so they are North Americans but they are NOT Citizens of the United State of America. My son is a New Yorker, my other son is a Californian, and I'm a Virginian, we are each residents of those states and together we are Citizens of The United States of America and that also makes us North Americans. It's not a question of Continent but of Country. One Continent but two very different Countries, one a super power with complex laws and culture and the other a third world country with a simple underdeveloped culture, It is no wonder Mexicans get Country and Continent mixed up, they also get illegal alien and immigrant mixed up, but so do our politicians, U.S. Citizens should know better. Example: The United States of America equals an American on the continent of North America. United States of Mexico equals a Mexican on the continent of North America. Mexicans are North Americans but are not Americans.

[Leavit ToBeaver]

The only "joke" I detected was the "mexicans are Americans"
I wonder what our ancestors who died in the mexican war thinks about that?
They gave there lives to clean out the garbage.
Now I see why. Remember the ALAMO.

[Vito]

You are a completly ignorant gringos. For us and the whole world, except you and your ignorant and paranoic minds, America is a continent, from Alaska to the Patagonia (in Argentina and Chile, ignorant).

And for the blogger named Leavit Tobeaver: The mexican-american war is a shame for you country. You shouldn't mention this war, because it only bring to you shame and show the kind of people that you really are. You never can justify this war, where a strong country took of advantage of a weak and poor country.

This is what really happened in that war but you don't want to accept it. And although you don't accept it you are living in a land stolen with violence and through the most reprehensible and unjust ways. You are just paranoid and hypocritical people.

But you are right in something: the only thing that you and your people doing very well is kill people, because you are killers and pirates.

The mexican-american war is really a shame for you gringos and it always will be a stain of many that will accompany you until the day that you burn in the hell dear gringos.

I'm sorry, but I said only the truth. May God forgive you gringos.