Today

I read this in the Dallas Observer...

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Multiculti--Ask a Mexican

By Gustavo Arellano 

Published: November 1, 2007

Dear Mexican: How do I go to the Mexican grocery store and bakery to buy supplies for our Día de los Muertos party without looking like I'm doing the kitschy-goofy thing I'm doing? I walk up to the register and smile ingratiatingly, saying ""Gracias"" as usual—but a basketful of sugar skulls and other themed items hefted to the register in my Irish-mutt arms isn't subtle. I don't really mind looking stupid, but I don't want to offend anyone.

—Lost Me Lucky Charms

Dear Mickette: Chicano yaktivists will cry holy Aztlán because you're appropriating Mexico's holiday for revering the dead, but screw 'em. Go ahead and miss the point of Día de los Muertos, Lucky Charms: You know better than anyone else that America doesn't truly accept its immigrants until ethnic cultural feasts get warped into besotted celebrations attended by opportunistic politicos, and people forget the original meaning behind the occasion. Wasn't St. Patrick the guy who drove the Jews out of Amsterdam? Similarly, Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) is fast becoming corporatized, with do-it-yourself sugar-skull kits available at craft stores and hipsters building altares not to honor the souls who rest with God but because they read about it in Lonely Planet. Enter the Mexican grocery stores and bakeries with pride, Lucky Charms: You're multicultural! You're having a fiesta! You don't know que chigada you're doing! Really, the Mexican isn't too bitter about your cultural imperialism—you're just fulfilling the prophecy that is the ""Irish I were Mexican"" T-shirt.