Posted on by Californiacontrarian

The Tortilla Affair


I awoke with a start this morning with a nightmare of sorts. I dreamt that the headline in my local paper read, “City Shut Down; Tortillas Found on City Bus.”  OMG – “this is scary,” I thought to myself. 

Too far out, you might say, but you do not live in San Diego where there has been a huge hubbub about a recent alleged racial incident. This alleged racial incident involved the throwing of tortillas at a predominantly Hispanic high school basketball team after a contentious close basketball game. How many tortillas were thrown to warrant two consecutive front page headlines in my local newspaper? Hundreds? Fifty? Err, no, but “at least two!” OMG! Two tortillas! 

How many were injured? First of all being injured by a tortilla is, for all practical purposes, a palindrome in and off itself. Furthermore, if anyone received as much as a scratch from a thrown tortilla, that would have been the headline. To me it is uncertain whether anybody was actually hit by one of these flour projectiles … again there is no mention of anybody actually being hit much less injured by one these dangerous tortillas.

Those of you who do not live in California may well be shaking your heads at this point Throwing tortillas? WTF! Barbaric? Childish? In fact at some schools, University of California, Santa Barbara, in particular, throwing tortillas after a sporting event is a tradition …  as Tevye  in Fiddler on the Roof, sang, “Tradition, tradition, tradition!”in fact it has been a tradition at UCSB for many, many years! A racist tradition? No! at least not according to past students at UCSB who actually tossed celebratory tortillas after sporting events. In fact in this instance, the tortillas were brought to game by a prior UCSB graduate for, in his own words, as a means of celebration. In even more of an irony, the gentleman who supplied the tortillas was part Hispanic.

After the alleged racial incident the typical feeding frenzy amongst local politicians predictably occurred. Three local Hispanic politicians then inflamed the situation by calling for the winning team to be stripped of their title. BTW, it is extremely unlikely that any of these politicians were within ten miles of the incident, but of course, in this day and age, that doesn’t really matter. (“Let’s just inflame the situation.”)

Gente Unida, a human rights border coalition then chimed in. What was their horse in this race? The incident had nothing to do with the border and nothing to do with illegal immigrants. (“Who cares, let’s just inflame the situation.”)

North County Equity and Justice Coalition also chimed in: revocation of Coronado’s championship is “exactly what needed to happen.” Of course that makes perfect sense … Not! Was anybody from this organization at the game? Of course not, but that doesn’t really matter, does it? 

This organization is now merely another arm of “cancel culture,” … inflame, inflame, inflame!

But the cancel culture disciples are everywhere. The Coronado Unified School Board, in a closed meeting, immediately fired the basketball coach. Why a closed meeting? Why come to judgement on the coach within three days? (Shhh! We are cancel culture and we can do what we want!) Perhaps the fired coach will seek legal counsel, and find out what actually occurred in the closed school board meeting.

Then within another day the statewide California Interscolastic  Federation (CIF), not to be outdone on the cancel culture scale, revoked Coronado’s Regional Basketball Championship, and placed the school’s athletic program on probation until 2024! (Punish future Coronado athletes for years into the future. Sounds about right for the cancel culture enthusiasts.)

I sent a letter-to-editor to my local paper concerning their front page stories on this incident. I basically asked if they were purposely trying to inflame the situation by making it front page news. No response, and, of course, my letter was not printed.

FYI: There was a follow up to that nightmare headline that awakened me this morning:

The second headline read: “Three more bus drivers fired after tortillas found on their buses.”

7/3/21

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