This will be a brief diary. Having caught the news of Richardson's apology for supposedly calling someone a "faggot" in Spanish, I think some clarification is in order.
I ran across the news of his apology at Raw Story:
The erstwhile governor also apologized for having using the Spanish word for faggot on "Imus in the Morning."
"You know, I’m Hispanic," Richardson said. "I felt the sting as a kid of being stereotyped. And I apologize, but I meant no harm when I said that. It was one of those exchanges that I was caught off guard. No, I am not backing off. I apologize."
And then, I tracked down the exchange from Imus:
Almost exactly one year before Imus was to lose his show for using a slur to describe the Rutger’s women’s basketball team, the shock jock used the Spanish word "maricón" in an on-air exchange with Richardson.
"Bernard on the staff here has been claiming you’re not really Hispanic so-- that you're just claiming that for some sort of advantage or something," Imus said to Richardson, tongue clearly in cheek. "You can just answer this yes or no and this will answer that question. Would you agree that Bernard is a maricón?"
Without missing a beat, Richardson replied in Spanish, "Yo creo que Bernardo, sí — es un maricón si él piensa que yo no soy hispano. [General laughter] Was that good enough or what? [General laughter]"
"That’s good enough for me," Imus replied.
But, maricón doesn't translate into "faggot," at least not in Guatemala, where I live. It's more like "sissy." You hear fathers say it to their 4-year sons, "Stop acting like a maricón."
There are much uglier words that would translate into faggot, like hueco (which also tends to better capture some of the attitudes towards sexuality that are, naturally, different in Latin cultures.)
If I had heard that exchange, I wouldn't have thought twice about it (except perhaps that it was a somewhat vulgar exchange and that Imus was a Gringo idiot for using the word in the first place.) If he had said "hueco," it would be a different story.