The Daily Howler - 08/31/05

THE QUESTIONS NOT ASKED! How well can Calixto read? A fine profile doesn’t quite ask: // link // print // previous // next //

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 31, 2005

ALL WEEK, THOSE BACK-TO-SCHOOL BLUES: Darn it! We had to do a show last night. As you read today’s report, can you notice the attendant loss of focus? In 200 words or less, explain. Compare and contrast today's report with those from Monday and Tuesday.

Special report: Back-to-school blues! PART 3—THE QUESTIONS NOT ASKED: The Post’s Darragh Johnson listened hard to Calixto Salgado (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 8/30/05). Her subject was 14 years old, the son of Salvadoran immigrants, and he (and his friends) told Johnson a great deal about “the fault lines Calixto must negotiate as he...enters ninth grade” in Gaithersburg, Maryland, a community in the DC suburbs. Johnson discusses Calixto’s thoughts about gangs—the gangs that have gotten so much attention in the Washington area recently. She mentions the fact that this low-income child volunteers at the nursing home where his father works. She tells us that Calixto feels special because he’s an altar-boy at his church. (“After serving at one well-attended Sunday Mass, [Calixto] decides that being up on the altar ‘means I'm serving for God. It means God chose me. There was a whole rack of boys in the Mass—a whole rack of boys. But God chose me. I'm up there for a reason.’”) And, in one passage, she quotes Calixto and a string of his friends explaining how they think they’re perceived by the wider society. Just last year, a former Maryland governor had a nervous breakdown after struggling to order breakfast at a local McDonald’s; his young server’s English wasn’t real good, and the former governor was disturbed to no end. (The current governor then chimed in with foolish, ill-advised statements.)