Los Nueva York Times

It is a great day in the old country. A Mexican superhero has stepped in, put his shoulder down, and stopped dead the train that was about to squash that poor gray lady in distress that is the New York Times.

Way back when, when I was but a wee mite in college, running around in confused inebriation, I occasionally sobered up enough to help put out the daily newspaper. In a stunning lack of good judgment, the good people of the Sun had entrusted me with a position fairly high up in the ranks of middle management. Despite the high potential for disaster, we somehow succeeded in avoiding what every Sun editorial board fears most: being the first Sun board to fail to put out a newspaper on any given day.

There were some close calls. Hammer fights, two-for-one margarita specials at Chili's, and an unwarranted sense of immortality were among the things that conspired to make the feared "A Day Without a Newspaper" a reality.

Thankfully, these weren't enough to stop the machine, and we did put out a newspaper every day. Less legible and coherent on Fridays, that's true. But at least Cornell had its news.

Why this long digression? Simple. The bailout of the NYT by Carlos Slim has reminded me of another of these things that would have stopped the presses for the wrong reasons.

When I was elected, I had an ambitious project in mind. In retrospect, it was a terrible idea, and thank God for the good judgment and relative sanity of the powers that be. If not for their repeated Nos and exhortations to drink more water, my plan for the newspaper might have become a reality, and would have shuttered and destroyed a 129 year-old entity.

What I wanted to do was turn The Cornell Daily Sun into El Cornell Daily Sol.

Somewhere, Pat Buchanan just sat bold upright and screamed, "I knew it!"

In fact, I have managed to dig through my files and find parts of a speech I gave advocating for the Mexicanization of the newspaper:

We will be making some changes to the Cornell Daily Sun. Or, as it will henceforth be called, El Cornell Daily Sol. For starters, we will be switching languages.

The paper will now be entirely in Spanish. If you don’t know it, learn it. Nouns now have genders. Everything now ends with an “o”-- as in el desk-o, or la stairs-o. New Sun Style, people. Do not break these rules or I’ll have to go Castro on all your asses.

In the opinion section, we will devoting things entirely to issues having to do with Mexican culture. As you all know, latinos are dashing, romantic creatures. So we’re taking the paper in that direction. I don’t know how many of you have heard, but Doc Skorton, Cornell’s next president, will be a regular columnist starting next year. I’m thinking that it would be great if he were the next sex columnist. “Ay, si, doctor” seems to me an appropriate moniker.

Other sections have to fall in rank too. Sports. You will be overhauled. You will only follow three sports. 1. soccer. 2. bullfighting. 3. cockfighting. Start your research. Arts. Only telenovelas are to be followed. Mariachi music. If you think of a celebrity to follow, think no more of Tom Cruise, but of Bumblebee Man. This is the focus we seek.

See? I had gone completely insane. I sounded like Hugo Chavez on Percocet. The paper would have become a complete disaster, notable only for its tequila reviews and general sense of anarchy.

This is what I fear may happen to the New York Times. Mexicanizing the rest of the newspaper may create some trouble. Do we really need a sports section that focuses entirely on Eduardo Najera and Vinny Castilla? Sunday Styles dedicated solely to sarapes? And does Maureen Dowd really need another margarita?

On the other hand, this means more coverage of Salma Hayek.

Hmmm.

Viva Tequila!