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The comedy superstar reveals how coming to the U.S. from Mexico shaped his artistic sensibility

By Rolling Stone

Where does Louis C.K.’s off-kilter comic vision come from? Turns out the answer may be “Mexico.” C.K. was born in California, but moved to his father’s native Mexico at age one – he and his family didn’t move back to the U.S. until he was seven or so. “Coming here and observing America as an outsider made me an observing person,” C.K. tells senior writer Brian Hiatt in the new issue of Rolling Stone.

My experience is as a Mexican immigrant, more so than someone like George Lopez. He’s from California. But he’ll be treated as an immigrant.

Click on the picture to read the full story.

[Image courtesy Rolling Stone]

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By Julito, Latino Rebels

The current wave in marketing has agencies everywhere telling brands that if you don’t go “Latino,” you will miss out on the NEXT BIG THING. So in a world where agencies are looking for business and brands are now ready to spend on the “Latinization” of their offerings, it is getting messy out there.

Add to the fact that when brands finally go “Latino,” they have only one shot to get it right, and you can understand the pressure. In the rush to embrace the U.S. Latino market, many brands will get bad advice. Such is the case of brands like Clorox Latino. If the Latino connection doesn’t fit, don’t force feed it because most of the time, the brand will just stumble out of the gate and it will look unauthentic and stale.

Which brings me to what everyone in the Latino space is talking about this week: Rolling Stone’s bilingual issue, which will hit the stands later this week. You can read the reasons why it is such a GREAT IDEA somewhere else. Here is my five reasons why I think this is just another example of a interesting initial idea that got lost in the execution phase. And another example of a “Latino” idea gone bad.

1. Pitbull? The best that Rolling Stone can do for its first cover is Pitbull? I can understand if this were another magazine, but this is Rolling Stone,  a brand that I have known since the early 80s, when I became a loyal reader. To me, the magazine and the brand have always tried to take risks. You would think that when it came to its first bilingual issue, it would have taken a risk. If Rolling Stone REALLY knew what was up and if it wanted to gain some cred in this first issue, choosing Calle 13 over Pitbull would have been the way to go. But I guess Calle 13 is too edgy for a magazine/brand that earned its chops from being edgy. Lost opportunity. Just gets us some ads to place and we can say we are down with Latinos. Yawn.
2. The “Café Tacvba is the Radiohead of Mexico” Headline: Really? This is the problem with mainstream English-language U.S. magazines. Being hip means you come from England (Radiohead), but Café Tacvba, who I will argue was just as influential to bilingual and bicultural kids growing up to different types of music, is just a second-class band that reminds you of Radiohead. Hey, you think this is just me who is saying this? Univision News mentioned the poor comparison in a profile about the legendary band, and the head of Rolling Stone México basically had to tell his readers that the main Rolling Stone brandhas no flipping clue about Café Tacvba (mistake #1: the U.S. magazine spelled it “Cafe Tacuba”), as well as anything else about rock en español in Latin America. The letter even said that the list of the 10 Greatest Records of Latino Rock sucked. Imagine that when other magazines in your family basically tell you that your knowledge of music in Latin America is awful. Ouch. (Advice to Rolling Stone: maybe you should actually have your Latin American properties develop the next bilingual issue?)
3. Any magazine that features Sofía Vergara these days is just shilling to a PR agency: Once again, yet another English-language publication celebrating the “amazing” contributions of Sofía Vergara. The Charo Factor lives on! Is Sofía a stereotype or is she more than that? As if making it an intellectual debate will gloss over the fact as to why she is in the issue in the first place. You have male readers. Putting Sofía in the issue will attract those male readers. If Rolling Stone really wanted to gain some respect, it would have added  Ana Tijoux’s name to the cover? Yes to Sofía, but no to Ana? Come on.
4. The ads and the rational behind them: I am not making up the next few sentences. This is what Sundar Raman, marketing director for North American fabric care at Proctor & Gamble, told The New York Times about why it was running Gain ads in this “Latino” section: “Gain scents are more expressive, more emotional, and it just so happens that both Hispanics and African-Americans are more predisposed to scents being more experiential.” W… T…. F. Dear Mr. Raman, please don’t talk to the Times any more? Thanks.
5. The Lost Opportunity: It is clear that Rolling Stone just didn’t dig deep enough into its initial Latino issue. Why assume that its growing Latino readership wants to read articles in Spanish? Why overlook so many big musical themes that actually are deeply connected to young bilingual and bicultural music fans? For example, you know what would have rocked? A piece about why almost any true rock fan in Mexico LOVES and WORSHIPS Morrissey and the Smiths. Or what about The Clash and its history of incorporating “Clash Spanish” into its music? These are just two of many interesting and nuanced stories that go beyond an issue that would rather segregate its “Latino” content than celebrate it within the pages of the “mainstream” issue.

By Verónica Villafañe, Media Moves

For the first time in its 45-year history, Rolling Stone magazine is including Spanish ads in a special 15-page section titled “Latin Hot List.”

The Nov. 22 issue has Daniel Craig (as James Bond) on the front cover, but if you flip the magazine over, a secondary cover on the back page will also feature Pitbull with headlines entirely in Spanish.

The “Latin Hot List” promotes Latino artists and performers including Puerto Rican rap group Calle 13, and Pulitzer-Prize winning author Junot Díaz.

The issue, which hits newsstands this Friday, has articles written in English and includes interview sidebars in Spanish with no translations.

Matt Mastrangelo, the publisher of Rolling Stone, told theNew York Times that 17% of the magazine’s readers are Hispanic and that the section materialized from discussions with representatives of Lápiz, a Chicago multicultural agency.

You can read the NYT article here.

This article was first published in Media Moves.

Veronica Villafañe is an Emmy award-winning journalist, who has worked as an on-air reporter in Spanish and English-language television news. She has worked for Univision, Telemundo, CNN en Español and Los Angeles Fox and UPN stations before diving into a convergence model at the San Jose Mercury News. She is currently the Managing Editor of Intersections South LA, a community news website.