"The more things a man is ashamed of,the more respectable he is..."
- George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman
By DUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
The Paz Files
BROWNSVILLE, Texas - The story of Jerry McHale is the story of the laughing snake. He is this town's Big-Time political operative, a man who's crafted his own savage journey across a piece of harsh geography so tough that many men simply give up and go on the government dole. McHale, editor of a string of biting blogs that have both entertained and damned this community, has asked for little in return, oblivious to the pain he has caused, pushed onward by the realization that, like Neil Armstrong, he's had to account for a largely-criminal world not his own.
In our search of the one person who stood out or made a difference in The Year 2011, we pondered the work of such notable achievers as Manny Gomez, head coach of the wildly-successful Harlingen High School football Cardinals who made it to the quarterfinals of this past season's state playoffs. And there was Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos, the rare Hispanic Republican, who fended-off attempts by the opposition to steal his election and then proceeded to do nothing out of ordinary, other than keeping things calm, allowing the press to look elsewhere for cheap scandals. In the judge's insular world, the villain became Roger Ortiz, the county elections administrator who played the partisan pinata for several days before rendering the verdict Cascos wanted. Outside his home, Ortiz lives in infamy.
So it is McHale who takes the honor: Person-Of-The-Year.
We have often both praised and criticized him. A California transplant who arrived in town some 40 years ago, the ingenious McHale has become the incontrovertible face of Brownsville. In fact and myth, he is both weathervane and weather stripping. In columns on his whip-like blog (http://www.browntownnews.com/), the largely-uneducated citizenry gets the good, the bad, the ugly and the ugliest. Whether it is a write-up about the college president he despises more than any of a hundred local women who over the years declined his sexual advances, McHale also generously brought fame to humble shopkeepers, street vagabonds, lissome waitresses, barbacks, gadflies, fuck-ups and a host of other Brownsville characters who were handed their 15 minutes of fame free-of-charge on a blog many call "the town's paddle."
In the negative column of his ledger came horrible reports so unfair that even he had to laugh while typing them. When his best friend and fellow blogger Juan Montoya was jailed for driving recklessly and driving while intoxicated, McHale wrote about Juan out on some lonesome prairie, unable to maintain his own blog. When Montoya was again jailed this year, McHale wrote Juan was off to Cuba for something or another. It's a human failing, but one forever forgiven in this vulgar bordertown home to some 160,000 legal and illegal residents. McHale's attacks have spanned all that is life in town - from politics to the courts. He's been sued, he's been threatened and he's been derided by almost all of the locals he has upbraided. He's written in favor of the Gay lifestyle except for that lived by another local blogger, Bobby Wightman-Cervantes.
And he has tirelessly and ridiculously pushed Brownsville as some nightclub paradise, a sort of Mecca without the prize, a honeymoon without the wife. But he's drawn support even for that joke, the populace here possessing what pop-sociologists call the "Goddamned Particle," that ability to blow-off falsehoods in the name of the oppressed collective. A barhopper from way back, McHale has been everything from Disco Freak, to Urban Cowboy, to Panama beach boy to wannabe boxer, his lone battle in the ring ending in a quick, one-punch knockout at the hands of a heavyset teenager from Mercedes.
But that was yesterday.
Today, he is the recipient of our Person-Of-The-Year. In our learned estimation, McHale exhibits the quintessential personality of anyone calling themselves a resident of the star-crossed Rio Grande Valley, a person able to look at the face of poverty and laugh, able to see wrong being done and still call for another beer, able to ignore a friend's failings and still throw dirt on another in the same boat, able to be completely at ease with Texas-Mexico border life as partly truth and partly fiction...
- 30 -
17 comments:
What? Not McHale! Anyone but him. He's just a bully. Why not the mayor?
You have to be kidding me, how many glasses of wind did you drink??. Man, LaCandrelle would have been a better candidate, or how about Rudolf VonBulow the Hitler lover.
McHale, ran like a chicken without a head, after someone threaten to suit him, for calling the individual a flam-man. Man, you guys have lost your marbles.
You can read a lawsuit that a former BISD board member's wife had on McHale. He is being exposed for what he really is (someone that talks about everyone as long as it doesnt hit the pocket) in other blogs because he fails to "see" the light when criticizing the BISD school board and saying how fantastic the former board president is, and how nice the HR person is, etc. Well, simple, you dont bite the hand that feeds you because that hand can fire you and you need the $$$ to support your family.
About him being the person of the yr. Maybe for bloggers. Birds of the same feather fly together?
For those of us seeing things first hand, well, he is NOT.
the Paz Files always looks at the Valley with different eyes. For that perspective perhaps what Mchale is doing means something. To us here in town he's a pest. But it is good writing.
The editor of the Paz-files doesn't reside in the Valley, from what he writes, he occassionally visits South Texas and spends time with his friends. At the local bars, like the Sportman's.
Even Juan Montoya would have been a better choice.
Damn, who made up the name of the new sports editor, Hands Vela, looks more like common labor, not a writer, Sports Writer on top of that. Weird people the Paz-file hires.
juan Montoya: two jailings, doesn't support his kids, drinks to much. He was never a candidate. Just saying.
It does not take as much to be a sports writer as it does to be a real writer or reporter. Sports writers are a sad lot, few have gotten past the eigth grade.
ALL:...Sports Editor Hands Vela got his name from his father, who, as so happened, was a huge fan of Hall-of-Fame receiver Raymond Berry of the old Baltimore Colts. It was Berry, No. 82, who made Johnny Unitas a great quarterback. Hands Vela may look like a South Texas laborer, but, as with with everybody in the Valley, looks are damned deceiving. We're lucky coverage of RGV sports is in such good, capable hands... - Editor
Hand Vela, looks like he is from Matamoros. I don't know why, but I think he is and I have seen him in el parian in Matamoros. He don't look like a reporter.
that guy Hands Vela I think is a Matamoros cop. seen him outside a few restaurants. Can't wait to see his reporting on sports!
Rudy, Rudy, Rudy. Man, that's sad. I loved the movie, tho.
Rudy, Rudy, Rudy. Man, that's sad. I loved the movie, tho.
McHale is a sad Irish Prick, with that said, most of the Irish are always sad, as well as pricks.
Jerry can be self-effacing and have visions of grandeur at the same time, which means that he can be a fun guy to be around, (most of the time).
I think that is Jerry's best quality, most of the time he is fun to be around, and is one of the few people in Brownsville that you can carry on a semi-intelligent conversation with. So yes he gets my vote for "Person of the Year".
Lupits Reyna
I heard at Gilbert's Rest. at Southmost and East 14th. street, that Hands Vela real name is Hound Vela, because he is always looking for a free taco. Another Greasy sports writer, like LaCandrelle Jefferson from Jamaica st. in the Bronx.
Hands Vela lives in Las Prietas neighborhood of Brownsville, with a fat woman who teaches 3rd grade in public school. He looks like a loser, however.
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