Responding to a reader's inquiry about what second language to study, the Vanity Fair columnist “Dame Edna” stated, “Forget Spanish. There's nothing in that language worth reading except Don Quixote, and a quick listen to the CD of Man of La Mancha will take care of that. There was a poet named García Lorca, but I'd leave him on the intellectual back burner if I were you… . Who speaks it that you are really desperate to talk to? The help? Your leaf blower? Study French or German.” I am aware that Dame Edna is a ficticious persona, but I disagree with the so-called entertainment value ascribed to this column. Whom does it entertain? The readership of Vanity Fair is largely upper-middle-class and upper-class white. The Hispanic community, outraged by the remarks, demanded a retraction, reminding Vanity Fair that if the whole Hispanic labor force went on strike, the US economy would break down. Readers cited as well the number of radio and TV stations broadcasting in Spanish, sixty to seventy percent of whose audience can follow programs in Spanish and English (the United States' bilingualism, much to Dame Edna's grief, is not English-French). Additionally, more than half the students in schools and universities who enroll in a second language choose Spanish. The voices calling for retraction were not leaf blowers but architects, physicians, mathematicians, engineers, sociologists, psychologists, athletes, writers, moviemakers, painters, journalists, governors, and bankers. And, last and most obvious, Hispanics make up the largest minority group in the United States (at present some thirty-seven million, or thirteen percent, and probably some fifty million by 2010 [Klineberg]).
