Of course, in writing about the complex feelings and confusions that the movie Beverly Hills Chihuahua brings up in me, I must be challenged by local lovers of chihuahuas. How on earth could I possibly write such hateful and horrible rhetoric onto the purely innocent puppy dog–especially when said puppy dog has no greater ambition than to make innocent school children as happy as can be?

How could I?

Maybe this is how?
Maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t hyper sensitive Latinos that created Latino=dog imagery, but politicians that are hell bent on playing on fear and difference to get elected?

“They are distorting the facts and ridiculing the Hispanic community,” said Brent Wilkes, executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens. “It’s a shameful piece. It really is gutter politics.”

Carrie Cantrell, a spokeswoman for The Republican State Leadership Committee, an Alexandria, Va.-based political organization that works to elect down-ticket Republicans in state races, said she appreciates the groups’ opinion, but that the ad was simply a parody of a well-known popular culture reference, a Chihuahua once used in Taco Bell advertising.

She did not apologize.

Oh, look at that–popular culture used and manipulated to make a racist point? How unuuuuusual.