Not this damn story again

I was at a loss to explain a recent trend in my blog traffic - people looking for articles or posts on the controversial (outside of Mexico) cartoon character Memin Pinguin. Three years back, I wrote a couple of irate posts regarding the Memin postage stamp, but figured that the drama had since gone back to Mama. But here he comes again, apparently:

A comic-book character popular in Mexico for generations has run into a cultural barrier at the border, where Americans see him as a racist caricature.

For more than 60 years Mexicans have followed the adventures of “Memin Pinguin.” But the dark-skinned Memin’s exaggerated features in “Memin for President” came as a shock to Houston, Texas, Wal-Mart shopper Shawnedria McGinty.

“I was like, OK, is that a monkey or a boy?” McGinty said. “To me it was an insult.”

In attempt to head off bad press, Wal-Mart is moving the offending comic books off the shelves and presumably to an undisclosed location. Meanwhile, Mexican readers continue to say that any problems with Memin stem from not knowing the character.

Last time around with Memin, my reaction was linked supportively by Michelle Malkin and flagged as “angry” (moi?) by Brian Montopoli at the Columbia Journalism Review’s Blog Report. This time, however, I’m not turning the dial to eleven - partly because I’ve done my outrage, thanks. And partly because I more fully accept now an annoying bit of relativism: that there are areas of discourse where different cultures, informed by differing but valid (within their context) histories will simply have to agree to disagree. If only they would stay tidily within their contexts…but they never do.

The main reason, however, I’m begging off on this story is that - as I realized three years ago - it’s going fucking nowhere.

The Mexican postage stamp story is the kind of brief-but-intense disturbance you get with inflammatory stories that really have nowhere to go. Either Mexico says “Oopsie, racist-ass stamps, our bad,” and withdraws them, or they say (as they did) “Our culture, our stamps, our business and none of yours,” in which case everyone’s already said their piece and people move on to the next story-of-the-moment.

Next story-of-the-moment, please. And hurry.

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Mexico on Memin Pinguin stamps: No apologies
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Held hostage by a single word