Ethnic Avenue – The Street That Crosses All the Others

Sooner or later, everyone encounters one of those fat guys that thinks his girth automatically makes him tough or, worse, that his fatness is roughly equivalent to being muscular.

Sadly, there’s wide pandemic of this type of wannabe-tough-guy asshole in the urban Latino and black communities, a problem I attribute largely to the popularity of football, which rewards a few linebackers–with little more ability than that of clogging up space–with the largely undeserved labels of “tough” and “athletic.”

I usually ride back here.

It’s pretty easy to know when you’re dealing with one of these idiots. For one, they’re enormous. They waddle around, often in some sort of sports gear, trying hard to look hard. And, they’re one of the more likely candidates to diagnose your staring problem. If he’s assumed any position of authority–however minor–rest assured that he fully, and regularly, trips on his power. Think bouncers, the occasional bus driver, and–of course–tow-truck operators.

There’s a TV show that relies almost entirely on these characters for its poorly staged theatrics—TruTV’s Operation Repo. The show, which features a group of (mostly Latino) male and female “tough guys” doing sham repossessions, is an unsettling reminder of why the United States and Mexico are numbers one and two—respectively—on the list of the world’s fattest countries.

It used to be that we consistently portrayed the fat guy as inferior to the fit guy.(And, often, as the bad guy.) The Blutos of the world routinely got their asses kicked by the slimmer, buffer Popeyes.

But nowadays, we celebrate the Blutos.

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