I did a diary on this news item last night. Tonight's diary is a follow up that includes some original research, some more video, and comments drawn from folks on the web.
This is the deal, so far: a Latin music superstar named "Daddy Yankee" appeared with John McCain at a mostly Latino high school in Phoenix. As Kos diarist LeftofArizona pointed out, that McCain appearance was a violation of Arizona state law.
But the story doesn't end there. Before a crowd of giggling, excited Latina teenagers, McCain plugged Daddy's big reggaeton club hit, "Gasolina." What McCain may not have known at the time was that "Gasolina" is a song about "f***ing." (continue)
Last night the Wall Street Journal posted an article quoting McCain aide Brooke Buchanan saying that "Gasolina" was McCain’s "favorite."
When asked what that song was about, the rapper smiled: "Energy independence."
Well--no, it's not. Here is the video that accompanies the song, and you don't have to speak any Spanish at all to realize that "hey--this is a song about..." Well, here's the video, see for yourself.
Well, okay.
Let's give the McCain campaign a benefit of a doubt. My Spanish is pretty bad, let's ignore the imagery in the video, if we can, and check out the lyrics. Maybe it's just a nice song about motorcycles and cars and how they need gasoline.
Well, no, actually. Last night commenters here and elsewhere pointed out that it was actually a song about f---ing. Some pointed out that "Gasolina" is Puerto Rican street slang for "sperm," and the woman singing back up was demanding more "sperm" from Daddy Yankee. In the English lyrics excerpt below, the translator says "gata" is slang for "babe." But other commenters wrote in to me last night to tell me that it's the equivalent of an American slang word: "p***y."
Da - ddy Yan- kee !
shake it mambo so that my cat (cat = babe) can turn on the engine,
shake it mambo so that my cat (cat = babe) can turn on the engine,
shake it mambo so that my cat (cat = babe) can turn on the engine,
Get ready, because whats coming is to give it to her, (hard!
Mamita, I know that you aren't going to take away (hard!)
What I like is that you let yourself get taken away (hard!)
every weekend she goes out to have fun (hard!)
my cat doesn't stop hanging out because
She likes gasoline (give me more gasoline!)
How she loves gasoline (give me more gasoline!) 2
x
Here's some comments from around the web that were rounded up yesterday about lyrics to "Gasolina."
From Playahata:
One has to wonder if the conservative Republican was simply pandering when talking about Gasolina. If so would he have made a point of mentioning the song "Gasolina" which is a reference to semen and the song itself has lyrics loaded with sexual references. In the urban community there is some debate about what the word "gasolina" means but in this context, one thing is certain: It’s not a petroleum product.
A campaign spokesman said McCain had no comment when asked whether McCain knew about the sexual references in the song.
From Ricardo, a commenter to a news blog in Miami:
"Gasolina" is Puerto Rican street slang for male ejaculate. "A ella le gusta la gasolina. Dame mas gasolina." (She loves gasoline - gimmie more gasoline!)"A ella le encanta la gasolina." (Oh how gasoline delights her!) Who in hell let McCain do this?
Another commenter on the same blog disagreed; he said he was from Puerto Rico and that "gasolina" wasn't slang for sperm.
A Kossack who teaches women's studies to Latina students in New York wrote:
it's about what comes out of the male pump - and "Duro" hard refers to ...errrr...well you get the idea.
To the settle the contentious issue, I consulted the online Urban Dictionary. The most popular meaning of the slang term "gasolina" is, indeed, "sperm," or "skeet," as some would have it. (The vote on whether that's the accurate meaning was 347 thumbs up for that definition, 209 thumbs down.)
And now here is the video of John McCain introducing Daddy Yankee to the teenage girls at the high school. You will see a smiling, approving John McCain extolling Daddy's virtues as a family man and applauding as Daddy goes down the line of excited teenage girls and gives them all hugs.
The funny part--to me--is that even though McCain and his staff were oblivious to the sex angle: that audience of teenagers almost assuredly was not. Why didn't one of them give the Senator a "heads up," if this appearance was supposed to help him? You notice at one point in the video, a very large white man leans in to talk to McCain "off-mike" for a moment, just before McCain introduces Daddy Yankee. He's telling McCain something confidential; I was afraid for a moment that the man was telling McCain: "Hey--you may not want to do this, Senator, this is a song about a girl who loves jizz and wants it hard.("Duro!", according to the lyrics.)"
But either he didn't say that or McCain ignored the warning. I'll bet Daddy Yankee thinks it's pretty funny, in his private moments.I realize that the Dem convention is well underway, and the focus this week is on that convention. That is proper; that is appropriate. But I hate to see a moment like this slip by unnoticed on the Daily Kos--especially in light of the fact that McCain's appearance at the high school was, in and of itself, illegal.
Something is wrong with our priorities here if the Republican conservative candidate can appear at an American high school before an audience of ecstatic teenagers and plug a song about "f***ing"--and that goes largely unnoticed. Yes, we should all be concerned that the media is giving far too much coverage to the PUMAs to the detriment of real news--but let's not make the mistake of giving too little coverage to a seventy-one year old white man who's plugging a "f**k song" at a high school, to court the Latino vote.
If you're traditional media, it's a given that anything that has anything to do with sex, scandal (the McCain appearance was illegal) and political gaffes trumps real news any day. I think this is just the kind of thing that could break up the media news cycle about "division among the Democrats."
And, yes--I sent it in to "Countdown with KO," last night. Countdown's off the air for a few days while KO is covering the convention with Matthews.