Marcelo Claure & J Lo
About that dustup over Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure‘s use of the king’s English…
Apparently, Brett Schulte, an LA-based social media consultant that no one had ever heard of, tweeted the following: “I think they meant @marceloclaure for an MVNO. He’s so outclassed he can barely speak the language. @sprint sucks.”
For those who might not be aware, Twitter is designed for people who like to send moronic insults. I have received a few already today, but I lack the ethnic mojo to take out my tweeting morons.
Claure, by contrast, seems to have it. He tweeted back, “YOU are an ignorant racist. You should be ashamed of yourself and your dumb comments.”
Incredibly, this trivial exchange resulted in the top story on the Kansas City Star’s Friday Email blast, headlined, “Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure calls writer of Twitter comment ‘an ignorant racist.'”
For the record, Claure is a Bolivian native with a seemingly French name. He hails from a wealthy family going back several generations and speaks with a slight accent.
As to his race, I haven’t seen a DNA breakout, but he looks pretty white to me.
He might have a touch of Aymara blood, but it has to be pretty strained. At six-foot six, he is more than a foot taller than the average indigenous Bolivian male. And if it means anything, J-Lo performed at his 40th birthday party.
I raise these questions to clarify who it is that gets to call someone a racist and make headlines for so doing. If Claure came, say, from France and was mocked for his accent Pepe Le Pue-style could he credibly call the mocker a “racist?” If he did, would the Star back him up?
How about if he came from Spain? Or Greece? Or Brazil?
How about if faux Indian Elizabeth Warren called someone a racist? Would that count?
What the world needs is an updated neo-puritan catechism to tell us exactly who can make fun of whom and along which lines.
Short of that, Schulte would be well advised to hole up for a week and hope he still has a career when he re-surfaces.
Rich Steele is a citizen journalist and head of the NSAAS (Non-Smokers Against Anti-Smoking).
He’s what liberals call a white hispanic.
Or as latinos refer to as a ‘True Spaniard’. Whatever the hell that means.
How’s this for a groundbreaking idea: nobody makes fun of anybody.
Well the tweet was correct about something at least, Sprint does suck!
Dear Mr. Steele: In modern America charges of “racism”, “sexism”, “homophobia” etc. are thrown when the person you are arguing with is winning the argument. Right back to Joe McCarthy in the 1950’s: Back then, when a conservative was losing an argument he/she accused their adversary of being “soft on Communism.” The more things change, the more they remain the same. In Christ, Ernest Evans