Yes, I did get to go to Deontay Wilder’s WBC world heavyweight title defense, and, no, I didn’t come away with the makings for a championship prose piece about it.
It was quite an evening in Bartow Arena by any account. During seven hours of spectating, I watched some of the best and worst aspects of contemporary pugilism enacted by players with cool names such as Dejan Zlalicanin and Ahmed Elbiali. A lot more of the world seems to be participating in world boxing championship competition nowadays.
I did glean some observations: based on aggregate time spent standing with perfect posture in uncomfortable footwear and holding up signs, Corona Beer’s Ring Card Girls may have the worst job in sports. Also, if Birmingham is to be taken seriously as a venue for world title bouts, we’re going to have to get a lot more celebrities to sit prominently at ringside. From my vantage, all I could see was Evander Holyfield and WERC Radio’s Jeff Tyson.
The big fight of the night? Deontay played rat-a-tat-tat on Eric “Drummer Boy” Molina for the KO, but based on two fights at the top he’s not ready yet to take on Wladimir Klitschko to unify the title. For some elevated prose about the sweet science itself, go find George Kimball’s essay collection, At The Fights. Compared to the writers therein, I lack the language to explain what it all means.
It’s not the first time I’ve had a problem choosing the right words, according to our latest correspondent, Ukuu Mubako Lumumba Tafari, who has written to protest last week’s column’s headline:
Hello. I really love your weekly. You have been a voice of sanity and reason in the Bham press world, and make my bicoastal life a much more pleasant experience, as far as news outlets. This is why I was so surprised and disappointed to see the headline about the banditos.
You chose to highlight something good about a group from bham by using what is considered to be insulting and racist by many in the Spanish speaking community…By doing so you actually are re-enforcing people’s stereotypes about people in bham, bigots, arrogantly intolerant, poorly educated and proud of it. Look up that “stinking badges…” quote, and it’s stereotyping of Mexican people…But if you don’t care or did it intentionally then shame on you. I still love you, but I slipped up on that one. Ciao “We don’t need no stinking bigotry.”
Mr. Tafari seems in a mood for an apology of some sort. Perhaps you’ll recall that in this space last week, I profiled the comers in a band that calls itself Banditos. The headline for that column was, “They don’t need no stinkin’ badges.”
Ordinarily, a writer in periodicals can disavow any knowledge of the headlines that crown his creations, since they are customarily written by people in the layout or editorial departments. At Weld, I include a headline with every submission for no additional charge. Sometimes I have the header even before I start typing the column. Sometimes, as was the case last week, the headline is the last thing added in the wee hours of Monday morning, when there is no malice aforethought, let alone forethought.
I jumped at Mr. Tafari’s suggestion to look up “stinking badges.” What I found, thanks to the researchers at This Day In Quotes, is that the quote I was referencing is really a misquote.
A fascinating gent named only B.Traven wrote an adventure novel entitled The Treasure of the Sierra Madre in 1927. Its hero, or anti-hero, is Fred C. Dobbs, a prospector in search of said treasure. In the hills of Mexico, he encounters, for the lack of a better word, banditos, who claim instead to be police. “If you are the police, where are your badges?” he sensibly inquires. Comes the reply: “Badges, to [expletive] hell with badges! We have no badges. In fact, we don’t need badges. I don’t have to show you any stinking badges, you [expletive] and [Spanish expletive]!”
When Warner Brothers made a movie of the book in 1948 (with Humphrey Bogart playing Dobbs), obviously some language had to be sanitized. John Huston, who wrote and directed the screenplay on location in Mexico, caused the answer to Dobbs’ question to become: “Badges? We ain’t got no badges! We don’t need no badges. I don’t have to show you any stinking badges!” The line is uttered by the actor Alfonso Bedoya, who appears clearly Mexican and clearly a bandito.
What’s missing here is any sense of racial stereotyping. In fact, when the Library of Congress entered the movie into the National Film Registry, it was praised for being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
The quote became less so when Mel Brooks bowdlerized it for his classic 1974 comedy, Blazing Saddles, in which actor Rick Garcia, playing, yes, a Mexican bandito, is offered a badge by Attorney General Hedley Lamarr. “Badges?” he replies. “We don’t need no stinkin’ badges!”
That’s the line that stuck (even though this specific iteration seems to have been uttered first in an episode of The Monkees in 1967, with Micky Dolenz handling the heavy bandito acting). Blazing Saddles is also enshrined in the National Film Registry, less I suspect for its cultural significance than for the beans scene.
That’s the line that also came to mind when I was wrapping up that profile of Banditos, not one of which hails from Mexican territory, as far as I know. So thanks to Mr. Tafari for his surprise and disappointment. To cite the esteemed comic John Hodgman, your critique made me check my privilege and give the issue thought. Nevertheless, I’ll probably keep writing things the way I always do. I could pledge to do better, but, wait for it, secretly I believe that we don’t need no stinkin’ pledges.