Prometheus 6

Mr. Carton and Mr. Rossi held an on-air news conference a few hours after Mr. Caraballo’s comments. Seeking to profit from the recently ignited firestorm, the Jersey Guys gathered a corps of journalists, most of them Hispanic, in their Trenton studios and gleefully refused to back down. They insisted that the campaign was not anti-Hispanic and that the phrase “La Cucha Gotcha” was inoffensive, likening the song “La Cucaracha” to a lullaby or a patriotic standard like “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

An Immigrant Segment by Radio’s ‘Jersey Guys’ Draws Fire
By ANDREW JACOBS

NEWARK, March 22 — Craig Carton and Ray Rossi think mental illness is hilarious and Asian-Americans are best mocked with sing-song Chinese accents. The men, hosts of an afternoon radio show called “The Jersey Guys” that is heard here on WKXW (101.5 FM), favor adjectives for politicians that have to be bleeped out.

Two weeks ago, Mr. Carton and Mr. Rossi started “Operation Rat a Rat/La Cucha Gotcha,” a listener-participation game that encourages people to turn in friends, neighbors and “anyone suspicious” to immigration authorities.

They introduced the segment with mariachi music and set the campaign to end on May 5 (Cinco de Mayo), a well-known Mexican holiday.

At the risk of stating the obvious, the phrase “La Cucha Gotcha” is meant to evoke the Spanish word for cockroach.

Here in New Jersey, where 15 percent of the population is Hispanic, reaction to the show has not exactly been positive.

At a news conference Thursday, Hispanic elected officials and others condemned the campaign as “dehumanizing,” “poisonous” and “idiotic,” threatening boycotts of the show’s advertisers unless the Jersey Guys apologize.

“Scapegoating and stereotyping Latinos does nothing but give bigoted individuals a platform to make ethnic slurs and racist comments,” said Assemblyman Wilfredo Caraballo of Newark, calling the campaign a “publicity stunt” that could incite violence against Hispanics.

But anyone expecting an apology was sorely disappointed when Mr. Carton and Mr. Rossi held an on-air news conference a few hours after Mr. Caraballo’s comments. Seeking to profit from the recently ignited firestorm, the Jersey Guys gathered a corps of journalists, most of them Hispanic, in their Trenton studios and gleefully refused to back down. They insisted that the campaign was not anti-Hispanic and that the phrase “La Cucha Gotcha” was inoffensive, likening the song “La Cucaracha” to a lullaby or a patriotic standard like “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”