If you click on Español atop any page of the official White House website, top menu, there’s a large page full of various stuff in Spanish.

Obviously, this won’t make Lou Dobbs and the red-faced red-meat red-staters very happy.

I got to wondering if there were any signs of the Spanish pages being in flux, any hints that Spanish-language content might be trimmed back at some expedient point. What I found makes me wonder if they’d be able to figure out how.

Visit the White House’s site map. You’ll find a column of clickable links, all of which work… except one. Click on “En Español”. . .

And nothing happens.

It’s just a programming error, a screwed-up tilde unaccounted for in the anchor link. Fixable in about thirty seconds by anyone who knows how. However, if you scroll down to the actual “En Español” section, further down the page, you’ll also find that it’s the only section whose sub-sections are not elaborated.  So somebody sure wasn’t eager to deal with all those funny-sounding words.

Click through, and yes, you find a second index of Spanish-language content, completely separate from the Español link in the top menu, now buried three levels into the site. This seems to have been created a couple of years ago.

There’s also a third Spanish index, here. This one seems to have its clock permanently stuck on the immediate post-9-11 period, however. Not unlike some people in the White House itself.

My guess is this is just a screw-up, and somebody at WhiteHouse.gov has no idea that ../spanish.es.html and ../spanish/index.es.html and ../espanol/index.es.html are three different pages going to three different indexes of Spanish-language content.

No wonder they’re trying to put a lid on Spanish. ¡Ay caramba! It’s just so damn confusing.

I have absolutely no idea what the actual explanation is. Just pointing it out for now.