Brazil is a giant joke.  What a shame that the Portuguese (and Spanish)spread their culture over such huge areas!  These countries could have been as rich as New Zealand-or at least as wealthy as the US south. Instead they’re basket cases.

“Clearly this bodes well for the tea party”

Although Tirica is illiterate by our literacy standard, and also a clown by trade, I feel the association with the Tea party is way off: Tea Party folks are not illiterate or/and clowns… and the reverse does not hold true either.

Tiririca’s party (PR-Partido da República) is linked to President Lula’s center-left coalition (some say “socialist”)and has pledged to back up an eventual Dilma Rousseff government(Gov. candidate and former guerrilla, jailed and tortured during the Brazil military dictatorship, US-run by the way,—not your run-of-the-mill-libertarian-privatize-everything-long-live-British-Petroleum-fuck-the-poor-and-the-gulf-of-Mexico-while-we-are-at-it Ron-Rand Paul/Sarah Palin/Tea-Party-people—). Granted Tiririca is illiterate, and far from being the the only one in Brazil, but he certainly isn’t a Tea-Party-like bigot.

He may in fact be a good representative for those like him who have been left behind: bright but illiterate.

A few years back, Tiririca ran afoul of a Brazilian anti-racist law when he made a joke about a black woman’s “steel wool” hair [cabelo bombril]. The suit was dismissed when his black mother said that it was the way she talked about her own hair at home, as politically incorrect as it might have been. And her illiterate son thought it was of course ok to write a song about it and, lo and behold, it quickly became a huge popular success , black, white, and all-the-shades-in-between people. That was the beginning of Tiririca’s fame.
Pretty bad song in my opinion, but I certainly wish the author all my best in congress.

Moving to another Brazilian entertainer:
“O Brasil não é para iniciantes” Tom Jobim
Brazil is not for beginners.
Al