By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
BROWNSVILLE, Texas | How do you measure true friendship? It isn't what it used to be, that's for sure. Friends come and go in our hurry-up, throwaway society. Once, friends were for life. I still have a few from my high school days in McAllen, the City of Palms. We hang out at bars and restaurants somewhat often. My trusted pals in college and the military stay in touch.
Then there's the weird, inexplicable ending to Dr. Tony Zavaleta's 47-year-long friendship with local Blogger Jerry McHale. It ended roughly two weeks ago.
"He burned me for no good reason," Zavaleta told The McAllen Sun on Wednesday. "We have been friends for 40 years. I will never talk to him again. Never."
Asked if he remembered the first time they met, Zavaleta recalled it was sometime in 1976, when McHale was covering local sports for The Brownsville Herald and Jerry's then-wife Leticia was a student in one of Zavaleta's classes at Texas Southmost College.
At the heart of the stunning demise was sloppy reporting by McHale (shown in photo at left) and spare wheel blogger Jimmy Barton (shown in photo below) to do with disgruntled students and the TSC welding program. Zavaleta is a TSC trustee.
For days on end during a two-week period, McHale posted blaring stories about the college's ITEC stewardship, or lack of it, hanging stories on former Director Tom Tynan, who labeled a senior TSC administrator as being a "crook," has since left the college. In all, the two hellbent bloggers did nothing more than chase a rumor, feed off of it like starving, retarded sharks and settle nothing.
It was during the rackety, barnyard heyday of the junior high mess - characterized as the off-off-Broadway "Welding Recital" by The Sun - that an inquisitive McHale stumbled into Zavaleta at the popular bar/eatery Cobbleheads. When McHale attempted to join his old friend and TSC Chair Adela Garza for what he later wrote was a chance at an interview of the two, Zavaleta told him to get lost.
"I aggressively asked him to leave us alone," Zavaleta said. "We were discussing TSC business. I probably overdid it. All I said was, 'Largate, Jerry!' "
Zavaleta said he was further "hurt" when McHale wrote about the encounter as if someone had attacked him. Zavaleta added that McHale also kept making fun of his disabilities.
Not much new has come down the Blogger Pike about the issue magnified ridiculously by McHale and his ever-fawning shadow, house husband Barton.
Zavaleta says he wants peace in his life, even at one point asking that we not make things worse for him, this perhaps because he knows how cruel McHale can be when posting to his blog. It's a shame, 'cause these two were ascloseasthis for almost 5 decades!
Not that it is anything new for McHale.
The 73-year-old blogger also burned ex-drinking pal Juan Montoya, another blogger. For some unknown reason, McHale wrote that Montoya was the third-best writer in local blogging, placing him, presumably, behind himself and the non-college-educated, non-journalist Barton.
As could be expected, Montoya quickly distanced himself from McHale, demanding that Jerry no longer use his stories for his blog - something The McAllen Sun also did earlier this summer. McHale and Montoya once socialized like crazy, but that was then. When we would ask about Juan during our phone conversations with untrustworthy McHale, all he would say is that it had been long months since the two had had a beer.
Who knows how McHale has digested all of this? He writes about living a solo life as if a homeless dude. His dying blog seems to be the heart of his breathing, that including selling ridiculous advertising dreams to uninitiated political candidates in need of some publicity.
Not quite the accomplished journalist (he never challenged himself in larger markets), McHale full-well knows the stories on the welding debacle he imagined were just as major a debacle for him personally. He - and the 75-year-old vocabulary-deficient Barton - never, ever bothered to contact any of the particulars - not TSC Chair Garza, not Zavaleta and not even Tynan. Like gossipers more than journalists, they simply went with what they were being told by a few disgruntled students.
But, like we said, neither McHale or Barton ever worked for a newspaper, McHale's sportswriting for The Herald was not in a serious, investigative news vein. Here is where McHale and lesser blogger Barton might've used a meeting with Blogger Montoya, who does have extensive newswriting experience.
But McHale burned him, too.
It'll be interesting to see if McHale approaches Zavaleta with a full apology. He should.
McHale was wrong, and we say he likely knows it...
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Valley friendships are never lasting friendships. I have found that to be true. Little things kill them, although they shouldn't. Egos get in the way.
ReplyDeleteEcho that.
DeleteThere are friends and then there are friends. This blogger dude seems more an idiot than anyone I'd want to befriend. No forgiveness.
ReplyDeleteMan, that's a long friendship. 47 years. How do you end something like that? I've never been there, though. I had friends in the army, but all of them faded into their own hometowns.
ReplyDeleteperhaps that poor blogger felt humiliated at the restaurant. His feelings were hurt, so he lashed out. So childish. jmho
ReplyDeleteOuch!
ReplyDelete