Cinco de Mayo

[David Casseres]

>Okay...so now I know what "Cinco de Mayo" is.  But why is it being
>celebrated in the USA? I could perhaps see it being celebrated in the
>southwest, where you have large hispanic communities...but anywhere else,
>I just don't get it.

Easy: lotsa Mexican immigrants, even compared to a couple of years ago.  
Mind you, unlike some Californians, I'm not wringing my hands over this; 
it does raise some problems, but they are far outweighed by the marvelous 
schadenfreude I will experience when the "English Only" creeps actually 
experience what it is to be in a linguistic minority.

>I would think that with the Alamo and all, that Anglo-Texans would be
>rather put-off by the whole thing.

Anglo Texans actually do a whole lot better than a lot of other foax at 
getting along with Chicanos and new Mexican immigrants.

>Do they now celebrate the 4th of July in Mexico?

The resident gringos do.

>Are we going to be celebrating Bastille Day here in the US next year?

The French residents do, already.

>And why all of the use of it as a marketing ploy?

Ah.  Because in our wonderful country, *anything* that involves enough 
people becomes a marketing ploy.  You can sell a helluva lot of beer at a 
Cinco de Mayo celebration.

If Mason & Dixon sold as many copies as the number of beers sold at Cinco 
de Mayo bashes last weekend in the U.S., there would be M&D T-shirts, M&D 
hats, M&D Beer, and an M&D miniseries on TV, to be followed naturlich by 
the M&D sitcom, "Thomas Pynchon's Mason and Dixon: The Movie," and 
"Dixon! Mason!" the Andrew Lloyd Weber Broadway musical.

>I suppose all of the above might make me sound like some sort of
>xenophobic, jingoistic nutcase but, honest, I'm not; I just don't
>understand how one moment you've never heard of the thing and the next
>you're seeing it all over the place.

No, you don't sound at all like an XJN.  Believe me, I know what they 
sound like, we've got plenty of them around here.



Cheers,
David