Posted on 10/14/2003 12:45:53 PM PDT by mrustow
As I write this column, a bit of harmless, racist, fluff is transpiring on the TV screen: The Hispanic Day Parade. A celebration of Latin "pride." The hosts are alleged journalists Jim Watkins, who is white, and Lolita Lopez, who is Hispanic, with Hispanic reporter Matt Garcia working the street (the announcers note that reporter Marysol Castro, who worked with Garcia in 2002, is on vacation in Costa Rica, or she’d be there, too). The parade this year was dedicated to the memory of Latin singer, Celia Cruz, who died on July 16 at the age of "around 79." Lolita Lopez, who is apparently an expert on both Latin and non-Latin – i.e., ALL – cultures, tells us, "I think it’s hard for non-Hispanics to understand how important Celia was to Hispanics."
Imagine if a white TV host said, "I think it’s hard for non-whites to understand how important Frank Sinatra was to whites." He’d be fired and whitelisted from the industry, before you could say, "KKK." But let a Hispanic mouth such racist twattle, and she’ll get a promotion.
Music is universal; anyone who loves music can appreciate Frank Sinatra. Likewise, to the degree Celia Cruz’s singing was great -- having heard very little of her music, I’m in no position to judge -- anyone can appreciate it. Granted, an English-speaker may have an advantage with Sinatra, just as a Spanish-speaker may have an advantage with Cruz, but one’s racial or ethnic background will not help one. (And language fluency is more important for appreciating the lyrics, rather than the singer.)
And yet, Lopez and Watkins do not appreciate Cruz as a singer. Their concern is with "how important Celia was to Hispanics." Thus is something universal – art – hijacked and turned into the private property of racist "pride." Thus does any Latin ignoramus become an "expert" on music written or performed by any Latin, the way every black ignoramus today thinks he is an "expert" on any and all music (and non-music, i.e., hip hop) ever performed by blacks.
The hosts then read a trivia question: Who was the 1940s Hollywood love goddess, who was born in Mexico as Margarita Carmen Cansino? I immediately shouted out, "Rita Hayworth!" (When my mother came for a visit later that day, and I told her the question, she refused to even say, "Rita Hayworth," responding simply, "Everyone knows that!")
Actually, she was born in Manhattan, but who’s quibbling?
When Watkins and Lopez come back on, the hosts – who apparently have never seen any of Hayworth’s many wonderful movies, launch into a lecture on white racism, though without using the phrase.
Lolita Lopez, who reacts as if she were hearing the name Rita Hayworth for the first time, informs us that "people didn’t know that" Hayworth was Hispanic. Watkins adds, helpfully, that "Maybe it was because it was not so popular for someone to be" Hispanic back then. "Not so popular," as in THOSE RACIST WHITES.
And now, to the facts. As my mother noted, everyone knew that Rita Hayworth was a Latin; that contributed to her mystique, and she became a huge star playing a hot tamale, Gilda.
However, the real reason Rita Hayworth wasn’t known as a "Hispanic," was that she wasn’t one. Her father, dancer (and son of a dancer) Eduardo Cansino, immigrated to America from Spain in 1913; Rita was born in Manhattan on October 17, 1918. Until a few years ago, "Hispanic" referred to countries that had been conquered by Spain, and where Spanish was spoken, but not to Spain itself. Hispanic nationalists then decided to eliminate the distinction between conqueror and conquered, as regards Spain, replacing it in the role of conqueror and colonial power -- history be damned -- with the U.S.
Since Hayworth’s mother, Volga (whose maiden name was Hayworth), was Irish-English, Hayworth would more accurately be described as Anglo-Irish than as Hispanic, but with cultural/racial imperialism, one need have only one drop of the privileged culture, to be defined by it. (One drop of culture? Hey, I’m not the one who started using culture as synonymous now with race, now with religion; I just follow matters where they lead.) If anything, it was Hayworth’s Anglo-Irish roots which were suppressed. Heck, it would have been more accurate, had she been identified as being of Jewish descent (on her father's side), than as Hispanic. Where's the ADL, when you need it!
Semantics aside, far from hiding the Latin portion of her background, Hayworth’s first film studio, Fox, reportedly exaggerated her Latin side, by dying her dark brown hair black. Later, producers had her hair colored red, and eventually, auburn, but she often played Latins (in Blood and Sand, You Were Never Lovelier, The Loves of Carmen, and countless supporting roles in B movies early in her career).
As Hayworth-scholar and webmistress Cynthia Claudia De La Hoz wrote me, “During the 30's and 40's Latins were ‘in.’ Especially when it came to the dances - rumbas, congas, tangos, cha cha's. And they did love to play up Rita's Latin side for certain roles. With Rita's look she could be an exotic temptress one minute and an all-American sweetheart the next. That's part of the reason she was Columbia Pictures' greatest asset and audiences loved her. If you read old articles you wouldn't read ‘Rita's mother is half English and half Irish,’ but they would say ‘Rita's father is Spanish’ and they often included pictures of she and him from their days as the ‘Dancing Cansinos.’”
Indeed, not only did the Latin branch of Hayworth’s family tree contribute to her mystique, but it took on a life of its own. Hayworth was reportedly the inspiration behind the classic 1954 movie, starring Ava Gardner, that Joseph Mankiewicz wrote and directed, The Barefoot Contessa. Contessa recounts the life of actress "Maria Vargas," who was discovered by a ruthless Hollywood producer (billionaire Howard Hughes) as a barefoot-dancing, impoverished Spanish peasant. Like Hayworth, "Maria" chose her men poorly, and ended up with an Italian aristocrat who murdered her; Hayworth had in 1949 married, and in early 1953 divorced, Muslim Prince Aly Khan of Pakistan. There the similarities ended – although she was discovered by a Hollywood producer while dancing, Rita Hayworth was never poor, was born and raised in the U.S., and was the third generation of a family of moderately successful dancers, The Dancing Cansinos.
(At the time, some observers believed Contessa was based on the life of its star, Ava Gardner, who grew up barefoot in rural North Carolina, and also had notoriously bad luck with men.)
With blonde Betty Grable, Rita Hayworth was one of the two most popular pin-up girls among American G.I.s and flyboys during World War II. Her many wonderful pictures include Gilda, The Lady from Shanghai, Pal Joey, The Story on Page One, Separate Tables and They Came to Cordura. Hayworth was a lovely dancer, but could not sing; her singing voice was always dubbed. Although she made her mark in musicals and light comedies, in the late 1940s through the 1950s, she developed into a solid dramatic actress. Hayworth had five unhappy marriages – to Edward C. Judson, Orson Welles, Prince Aly Khan, singer Dick Haymes and screenwriter James Hill.
Sadly, Rita Hayworth was stricken, while still in her forties (some of her friends have claimed the onset was even earlier), with premature senility, which was then renamed "Alzheimer’s disease." She suffered increasing difficulty remembering her lines; by the time she was in her early fifties, the job proved impossible.
For years before Hayworth’s death on 1987, at the age of 68, supermarket tabloids incorrectly identified her bizarre behavior as stemming from being a drunk. In her last years, her daughter, Princess Yasmin Khan, cared for her. The publicity surrounding Hayworth’s early demise, however, and a fundraising and publicity campaign begun and continued into the present by her daughter, provided the greatest spur to support for, and research into senility/Alzheimer’s. No one who knew anything about Rita Hayworth’s life would fail to mention the Alzheimer’s connection.
All of this would be news to Lolita Lopez. We live in a time in which well-to-do ignoramuses are designated "experts" on people and subjects based on the flimsiest, demographic connection.
Later in the broadcast, Jim Watkins shows colorfully clad South American dancers, and says the costumes and dance expressed the “anger” of the people at being enslaved, but never mentions that it was the Spaniards who were the slave masters. (School children today are taught that only white American men were slave masters.) The sage Lolita Lopez adds, regarding the costumes, that there’s a "deeper meaning" to things that seem ordinary.
Considering Watkins and Lopez’ huge credibility problem, I’m skeptical, to say the least, about their slave dancer story.
And so, Lopez and Watkins encourage Hispanics watching the broadcast to hate innocent whites (but not Spaniards), based on non-existent, past "racism." As Lopez emphasizes, the audience is "absorbing everything."
The lies spread by Jim Watkins and Lolita Lopez are, unfortunately, all too typical of today’s mainstream media reporters, and of educators, as well.
The Hispanic youngsters in the parade’s TV audience attend schools where teachers and administrators – many of whom are themselves illiterate in English – typically refuse to speak English to their Hispanic students. That’s the real face of "pride." These racist, incompetent "educators" fill children’s heads with the notion that they are victims of "discrimination," and that it doesn’t matter what they do to improve their lot.
It’s no wonder that at 44.1%, Latin immigrants have by far the highest high school dropout rate of any group in New York City, almost three times the overall rate of 16%, and over three times the non-Hispanic rate. And when the dropouts fail to get jobs, they will know why – "discriminacion!"
The same Hispanic ethnic gangsters who deprive Hispanic kids of an education, then demand money for "dropout prevention programs" (read: more patronage jobs for Hispanic ethnic gangsters).
Not only do Hispanic "educators" refuse to teach Hispanic children English, but like "news people" such as Jim Watkins and Lolita Lopez, they deliberately teach them lies.
Howard Schwach, the longtime editor of the newspaper, The Wave, which serves the Rockaway area of Queens, recently retired after over thirty years as a classroom teacher and social studies curriculum (and textbook) writer within the New York City school system. In the September 19 edition of The Wave, Schwach wrote of the propaganda foisted on the world by the schools and by National Public Radio (NPR), which once came to Far Rockaway IS (Intermediate School) 53 "for three days to do a story on the need for an increased Bilingual program – a program that destroys Hispanic kids but is the darling of Latino politicians everywhere…."
"When the story aired, however, there was a segment about the history being taught at the school decrying the fact that a Hispanic man … played a big part in the Confederacy. In fact, he was billed as being ‘more important to the Confederacy than Robert E. Lee.’
"He never existed."
Schwach told how such lies are spread by the New York City teacher’s union, the United Federation of Teachers, and the New York City Education Department (the newly renamed Board of Education), under the guise of "authentic learning." Authentic learning propagandists insist that unless history is rewritten – like pseudo-historical Hollywood movies and TV shows -- to place non-existent blacks and Hispanics in prominent historical roles, kids from those groups will not be interested in learning. "Authentic learning" is the multicultural culmination of "relevance."
(If the propagandists were logical, they would realize that their claims imply that it is impossible to teach Hispanic kids: Either they will ignore teachers, or demand flattering lies from them.)
For better or worse, such demands are not made in the name of white kids.
(Schwach has also written of how the UFT trains teachers to instruct children that a non-existent black woman was one of the leaders of the 1848 Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention, in order to engage black children.)
Just imagine how those same students would likely react to someone who later on, destroyed their illusions about the precious Hispanic role in the Confederacy. And why would an educator seek to elevate Hispanic kids’ self-esteem, by inventing a hero who was a pillar of the slave system? Do these people even know what the Civil War was about?!
The interviewers were shocked at Schwach’s refusal to write curricula based on lies, and refused to hire him. Maybe they could get some help from NPR and the WB.
And as retired New York City assistant principal Edwin Selzer observed in a sworn affidavit published in the anthology, The Failure of Bilingual Education, "once a child was in a bilingual education program, he ... was never mainstreamed into regular English-speaking classes." Selzer reported, too, that "many students graduating from Eastern District High School were illiterate in both Spanish and English."
Bilingual education is the greatest method ever devised, to arrest language acquisition.
At the top of this column, I spoke of "harmless, racist fluff." I need to revise that statement. This stuff is not harmless.
In case you’d like to complain about the WB’s combination of racism and ignorance, its news director, Karen Scott, can be reached at (212) 210-2411, and e-mailed via links at this page.
Veddy interesting.
I wish I had a copy of the shows where Joe Piscopo does Frank. The best ones are where he's singing a medley of contemporary songs. Such as "Hit Me With Your Best Shot". Also the one where he's arguing over who "calls the shots" when Frank and Dean and Sammy are out on the town.
I liked the Phil Hartman one too.
Wrong analogy. Better would be "hard to imagine non english speakers understanding..."
Hispanic is not a race.
The whole PC diversity stuff is garbage thought.
But too often criticisms of it are off the mark.
This guy makes some good points, but sounds like another whiner to me for the most part. Besides, Frankie S was half-Sicillian, making him an "African" in the eyes of many northern Italians anyway.
I LOVE the games we play with race and ethnicity in this country, don't you? :-)
Frankie S was widely respected by many for his work in the Civil Rights movement. If you ever get a chance, read the memoirs of George Jacobs, Frank's personal assistant who happend to be a "person of color."
Sometime in the nineties, we rented "They Came To Cordura". I had not seen a Rita Hayworth movie since, oh, probably the fifties. That is, for about 35-40 years. My wife, who was born in 1948, barely recalled her -- more by reputation than anything else.
But, when Rita made her first appearance in that movie, my jaw dropped and my wife gasped. My Gawd, she was a fantastic looker, wasn't she? I'm convinced the term "drop dead gorgeous" was coined for her.
Speaking of such things, I'm probably of the same generation as Nicholas Stix. And Rita Hayworth's Latin blood was very well known and a recognized part of her mystique -- even to us rubes in the outback of Oklahoma.
Since it's 30 years since I saw the flick, I won't vouch for the accuracy of the above -- excepting for the impression that R.H.'s startling beauty made on me.
And did I mention, that she was a serious actress?
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