Royko Again Roils A Minority Group p.19

By: MARK FITZGERALD

IN THE PAST year, Chicago Tribune columnist Mike Royko has managed to offend an impressively diverse range of groups: gays, police, Croation Americans, women and African Americans.
Now, yet another group is calling for his dismissal: Many Chicago Mexican Americans want Royko fired for a Feb. 27 column that insulted and stereotyped Mexicans on both sides of the border.
"Let us be open about this," Royko wrote in the column. "There is no reason for Mexico to be in such a mess except that it is run by Mexicans, who have clearly established that they don't know what the heck they are doing. Just name one thing that Mexico has done this century that has been of any genuine use to the rest of this planet. Besides giving us tequila."
Two days later, Royko wrote a column "apologizing" in the same satiric tones of the original piece. He also suggested that Mexican Americans hadn't actually read the piece because he received no complaints until the paper had been on the stands for 14 hours.
"Not until Hispanic [radio] broadcasters lifted words and lines out of context did the salsa suddenly hit the fan," Royko said.
The satire of column and apology fell a little flat for many Mexican Americans. Some of them reacted by organizing a boycott of both the Tribune and its Spanish-language free weekly, Exito.
"I'm disappointed he would say such things when he or his family are immigrants themselves. This is a nation of immigrants," Dan Guerrero, a west Chicago student, said at a protest rally in front of Tribune Towers. More than 1,000 people attended the rally, which frequently erupted with chants demanding respect from Royko and the Tribune.
Demonstrators dumped bales of Tribune and Exito copies at the door of the newspaper. One huge banner depicted Royko as a pilgrim burning a Mexican at a stake. In his hand is a bottle of tequila.
Speakers during the rally made frequent references to alcohol. "We are protesting against this little man who is nothing more than a drunk and a degenerate . . . a person without scruples," Rodrigo Malgarejo, leader of Mexican Students de Aztlan at the University of Illinois at Chicago, told the crowd in Spanish.
The Tribune, which had stayed silent when gays and blacks were demanding Royko's dismissal, defended the columnist in a statement released Feb. 29.
"The column . . . was political satire. It was well within the confines of irony. Anyone who has read Royko over the past 30 years knows he is not reluctant to speak sharply and sarcastically. We recognize that some people were offended by Royko's column and regret that they have misinterpreted the intent," the statement said.
It hasn't been a very good year for the 64-year-old Royko. Last May, he pleaded guilty to drunken driving, resisting arrest and failure to yield. He was fined $1,600, sentenced to two years probation ? with the requirement he abstain from alcohol during the period ? and required to perform 80 hours of community service.
A few weeks later, however, the police report of Royko's December 1994 arrest turned up and was widely disseminated in the gay press. It portrayed an extremely intoxicated and belligerent Royko spouting profanities, threatening to urinate in the middle of a police holding area and lamely attempting to throw a punch at an arresting police officer. What infuriated gays and lesbians, however, was his repeated slurs at the officers and paramedics.
This January, Royko riled African Americans with a column about "the unusual names that many blacks select for their children."
"I suspect that a personnel officer at a corporation might be more inclined ? all things being equal ? to lean toward hiring an accountant named Arthur Smith rather than one named Wanakumba Smith. It just looks neater on a business card," he wrote. Royko, whose column appears Tuesday through Friday, wrote a rare Monday column to apologize for that piece.
Royko, whose column first appeared in the old Chicago Daily News in 1963, hinted in his Feb. 29 piece that he may be ready to call it a career: "A resignation? Very soon, but not quite yet. I have my own schedule for retirement."