“Juan Epstein” imagery will outlive actor

I’m sure that most people who reminisce about the mid-1970s situation comedy “Welcome Back Kotter” will focus their attention on John Travolta.

He turned his role as an Italian lothario into the role for which his career will be forever associated (Tony Manero of Saturday Night Fever) and has had an acting career that lasts to this day.

COMPARED TO THE other primary players from “Kotter” for whom that sitcom was the highlight of their careers (which I always thought was a shame for Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs, but that is a subject for future commentary).

Yet I can’t help but think that one of the most significant parts of that show (depicting semi-obnoxious comedian Gabe Kaplan as a schoolteacher returning to his Brooklyn roots to teach a new generation of high school miscreants) was that of Robert Hegyes – the actor who died last week.

For he was the one who gave us the part of Juan Epstein.

That is, Juan Luis Pedro Felipo de Huevos Epstein – the kid of Puerto Rican ethnic and Jewish religious backgrounds who perpetually came up with fake excuse notes to try to get him out of just about everything – all bearing the signature “Epstein’s mother.”

NOT THAT THERE was anything about the character of Epstein that should be regarded as a serious study of the Latino ethnic population – then, or now.

Unless we consider that just about all of us are mutts of some sort. Perhaps the Epstein character was a preview of the type of people our society is going to be filled with (and has already worked its way there in significant numbers).

But I doubt that was what went through the minds of the writers of “Welcome Back Kotter” when they created the role. I suspect what really went through their minds was the idea of it sounding incredibly funny, if not downright absurd, to have a Puerto Rican Jew.

A guy eating asopao (a gumbo-style soup made from shellfish) with matzoh balls while wearing a yarmulke? Somebody deserves a special place in limbo for coming up with that sacrilegious image.

BUT IF YOU think I’m about to claim to being offended by a 37-year-old image on television, I’m not about to get that worked up. Besides, the image of the “Puerto Rican Jew” stuck.

I’d be willing to bet that if you asked anyone to name a Jewish Latino, the name “Juan Epstein” would be one of the first (if not THE first) that would be spouted out.

Hegyes (who was neither Puerto Rican nor Jewish) created a concept that will manage to outlive him. We will be using the name of “Epstein” as a punch line for generations – even though I’m sure younger people won’t fully comprehend why they’re laughing.

The Hungarian/Italian-American actor who lived to be 60 had most recently worked as an educator at various colleges – teaching young people about the crafts of script-writing and public speaking.

PERHAPS HE EVEN gave them a few lessons in the way to write an excuse – at least for a quickie gag.

Then again, perhaps it is good that we have the image of “Juan Epstein” to ponder when we consider the people of Latin American ethnic backgrounds who have chosen the Jewish faith to follow.

Because if we didn’t have the Hegyes character to laugh at, we’d have to deal with the fact that the most prominent Puerto Rican Jew would be Geraldo Rivera.

Do we really want to have to think about Geraldo any more than is necessary?

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Be wary of people who tell you what Florida’s Latino vote will be

At some point Tuesday night when you hear results from the Florida primary election, somebody is bound to try to supplement it by giving you figures that purport to be the Latino/Hispanic/Cubano/whatever vote for the Republican presidential dreamers.

ROMNEY: Not really the Latino leader

Heck, there’s even a poll that has been out there in recent days that says Latinos in Florida prefer Mitt Romney over Newt Gingrich by a ratio of seven to four.

I’M SURE SOMEONE is going to try to claim that whatever figures the exit polls produce is the evidence that this particular GOPer is the preference of Latino voters.

This is the person who’s going to take away the Latino support that was influential in Barack Obama getting elected as president in the 2008 election cycle.

This is the evidence that Latinos are realizing that the Republican Party is our salvation – the ones that are going to help us rise from our current status into something approaching civilization.

Nonsense!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I HAVE NO doubt that some people who have ethnic origins in a Latin American country who are registered to vote in Florida will pick a Republican ballot and cast a vote for one of the tontos seeking the GOP nomination for U.S. president.

GINGRICH: Keep trying



But I’m also pretty sure that a larger number of Latinos will have no interest in casting a Republican primary ballot. Which means some presidential candidate is going to claim to have a Latino majority of support, when in reality the majority will be those who don’t want any of these payasos in office.

Take that poll I referenced earlier – the one commissioned by the Univision television network that says 35 percent of Latinos want Romney, compared to 20 percent for Gingrich – with the rest of the Republican field getting so little support they may as well not exist.

That still means the bulk of Latinos don’t want any of these people. They’d rather have either an apathetic Obama (which he has been on many issues of concern to the Latino segment of society), or they may decide not to vote at all.

TAKE THAT SAME poll by Latino Decisions (a group that does studies trying to determine where the Latino segment stands on many issues). An Obama/Gingrich campaign would see Obama take70 percent of the Latino vote, while Romney would hold Obama to “only” 67 percent Latino voter support.

OBAMA: Winner, by default?

This could even happen in Florida, where the latest figures from the Pew Hispanic Center show that more Florida-based Latinos are registered to vote as Democrats (564,513) compared to Republicans (452,619) – continuing a trend that has been continuing for the past six years.

My point in all of this being that you are going to hear a statistic telling you who “won” the Latino vote in the Republican presidential primary on Tuesday. It will even be an accurate figure – and not completely worthless for studying.



Yet the truth is that many Latinos probably didn’t vote in that primary, no matter what Marco Rubio says or thinks – and many across the nation may be seeing their “voice” as being expressed on Nov. 6 when the bulk of Latinos vote against whomever the Republican Party nominates to run against Obama.

IN SHORT, MY ethnic brethren will be voting against the candidate whose rhetoric offends them more than Obama’s inactivity. We’re going to vote for the candidate who we hate the least – which is how many people will be voting in this particular election cycle.

Which means we may have well assimilated politically into society as a whole.

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It's Latinos who still believe in the “American Dream”

I’m sure there are going to be some people who will dismiss a new Pew Hispanic Center study as the whining of Latinos – it says that 54 percent of my ethnic brethren believe we have been hit harder by the economic struggles of recent years than others in our society.

It's not just a CD to many Latinos

Of course, anyone who’s honest has to admit that the problems we have faced for some five years now haven’t benefitted anyone in any way.

BUT THE PART of the study released last week that caught my attention the most was a part that turned up near the end – it seems that we are eternal optimists.

For some 67 percent of Latinos expect their financial situation to improve during 2012 – higher than the 58 percent of the U.S. population as a whole. Also, 66 percent of Latinos told the pollsters that they expect their children to enjoy a higher standard of living than they have now.

As opposed to 48 percent of all people who think the same thing.

Are we just naïve? Gullible? Or is the American Dream still alive and thriving, and the people who have their hang-ups now are merely upset that more people are trying to grab a piece of that “pie” that our nation supposedly offers up that makes us one of the most desirable places on Planet Earth in which to live?

IT COULD BE that there are those among the 16 percent of our society that is Latino are at a place on the economic scale that isn’t pretty high. Therefore, just about anything would be regarded as an improvement. I’m not going to deny the element of truth in that argument.

For that same survey showed 75 percent of Latinos saying their personal finances were only “fair” or “poor,” and that 28 percent of those Latinos who own homes are having problems with the mortgage payments.

But it is an encouragement to see the belief in our society that still exists.

For it makes me all the more convinced that Latinos are going to be the impetus that keeps our society alive and thriving. We’re still willing to work and push and strive for better – which is what we should want in a society.

NOT A BATCH of people whose idea of reform for our society is a series of policies that amount to “protectionism” for themselves, and exclusion for anyone else who might also want to try the immigrant route – which truly is the basis of our society.

It is why I occasionally make the joke that the people who rant and rage about immigrants turning the United States into a “third world” nation are the ones who really would turn this into “third world” status if they ever were given their vision of what this country should be like.

Such optimism from my ethnic brethren is encouraging to read about – even though I’m sure the xenophobes of our society aren’t going to want to believe it.

Somebody still believes in the concept of America, and is interested in the idea of being a “real” American. It isn’t the people who usually try to claim that label for themselves.

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GOPols on Puerto Rico

Personally, I do believe the day will come when Puerto Rico will become another state in the United States.

The flag, as envisioned by statehood backers



So the fact that Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney made comments on Friday while campaigning in Florida that some people seem determined to interpret as support for statehood strikes me as officials saying the incredibly obvious without offending those people who have a hang-up about this issue.

I REALLY DON’T think that either official, especially Romney, said anything terribly new. Yet it is the drawback of covering campaign activity that there are times when things get blown out of proportion to their true significance because space (and airtime) needs to be filled.

For the record, both campaigned at the Hispanic Leadership Network, where they were asked about the issue. Gingrich said he thinks Puerto Rico residents should decide the issue by referendum, and is prepared to respect whatever view they support.

“I am not dictating the outcome of the referendum,” he said. Which makes his rhetoric the typical political response – take no stance, and hope that confusion and chaos among Puerto Ricans prevents them from ever coming to a consensus on the issue.

Romney took a similar stance, only adding that he expects Puerto Ricans to support statehood in a referendum that will be part of their November general elections. “I expect the people of Puerto Rico will decide that they want to become a state and I can tell you that I will work with (Gov. Luis Fortuno) to make sure that if that vote comes out in favor of statehood that we will go through the process in Washington to provide statehood to Puerto Rico.”

DUH!

If the people of Puerto Rico do decide in favor of wanting to be a state (instead of a commonwealth with lesser rights, even though all their residents are U.S. citizens by birth), Romney (or any politician) would be hard-pressed to stand in the way of Congress going through the process that results in a place becoming a state.

Which isn’t exactly an overnight process either. It will take time.

If anything, I would have thought it a more newsworthy answer if Romney had said something in opposition to statehood for Puerto Rico. Because I suspect that would have gained him more political support from the ideologues than he will get from Puerto Rican voters living in Florida who go to the polls on Tuesday.

THIS IS ONE of those issues that gains little traction among Latinos as a whole. The bulk of us whose ethnic origins don’t include Puerto Rico don’t get all excited about this one.

And even many Puerto Ricans don’t put it at the top of the priority list – particularly if they are not among the 4 million who live on the island.

Why should someone who has already left the island care about the fact that their ethnic brethren don’t get all the benefits of their U.S. citizenship, when all they’d have to do to get it is make the same move to the mainland that many Puerto Ricans have made?

If anything, my only interest in the issue is because of the fact that I see how much it outrages some ideologues to think that Puerto Rico might someday be the equivalent of Hawaii. The idea of a state where Spanish is the indigenous language  most commonly used does bother those people.

SO PERHAPS IT would be a good thing for a state of Puerto Rico; although I realize it is a tad juvenile to support something just because it offends somebody else.

But at a time when our nation is so rapidly becoming significantly Latino in composition, perhaps the time has come to quit thinking of Puerto Rico solely as the spoils the U.S. got from Spain after “winning” that war in 1898.

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¡Too much trivia!

There is a serious problem in the suburbs of New Haven, Conn., and it doesn’t have anything to do with a local mayor making a silly remark about eating tacos to show support for Latinos.

Yet that is what is drawing public attention – the fact that East Haven Mayor Joseph Maturo, Jr., made an apology to anyone who was offended by his wisecrack.

IT MAKES ME wonder if it was, in part, deliberate. Because with all the attention going to his wisecrack, a lot of people seem to be downplaying (if not outright ignoring) the fact that police in that Connecticut town are showing signs of singling out the 10 percent of the local populace that is Latino for extra attention that some people say borders on harassment.

While such claims are heard in many places across the nation, the actions in this town were so severe that they caught the attention of the FBI – which recently arrested four East Haven police officers.

Those police officers who are supposed to be upholding the law and protecting the populace were (according to the FBI) performing illegal searches and making false arrests on Latino business owners and residents.

Late last year, the Justice Department issued a report that said East Haven police engaged in “discriminatory policing” against Latinos.

THAT IS SERIOUS. If anything, it goes so far to undermine any argument that the conservative ideologues like to make about immigration and ethnicity-related issues if the only way they can get their stance to prevail is from strong-arm tactics by the police.

Yet this has become an afterthought – getting a mere mention of a phrase or two in broadcast reports I have seen.

Because it is much easier for them to focus on a mayor being a nitwit and making an “apology,” which I sense those broadcasters think puts them on the “proper” side of this issue.

If they truly were on the “proper” side, they’d have been looking into these allegations of harassment (instead of most likely dismissing them as the rants of cranks) or thinking that such reporting would amount to “taking a side” on this issue.

PERSONALLY, I’M NOT all that offended by Maturo’s remark (when asked what he would do to show support for Latinos in response to the discrimination claims, he said, “I might have tacos when I go home”). It strikes me as being too stupid a choice of words to take seriously, let alone get worked up over.

Yet it seems that many people would rather denounce a political person for saying something stupid than address the issue of whether the police are behaving in a manner that borders on criminal.

THAT is the real problem we face here.

Not that this is the only trivial moment appearing in the news broadcasts these days. If anything, the confrontation between President Barack Obama and Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer may be even more pathetic.

IT IS NO secret the two don’t really get along. Brewer has her hang-ups that the federal government would oppose the fact that Arizona state officials are trying to meddle in a federal issue (which is what immigration policy is).

BREWER: Wants the attention?

The two have even met before, with Brewer going out of her way to pass along an impression of that meeting that made her look as heroic and triumphant as possible.

So her attempt this week to berate Obama when he arrived at a Phoenix airport was just more of the same. If anything, it seems like Brewer is the one who is eager to keep this rivalry alive.

Which means if we want to really cast a harmful blow to Brewer on this issue, the best thing we could do would be to ignore her.

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A ¿War about the Latinos? So goes Florida primary

They want our votes, yet don’t seem to have a clue how to really reach us.

GINGRICH: Mocking Mitt



I couldn’t help but think that thought upon learning of the campaign back-and-forth taking place Wednesday between Republican presidential hopefuls Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney.

I’M SURE THEY think they were trying to get the support of my ethnic brethren. Yet all that really seems to have happened is that the two candidates seemed determined to gain the support of other voters without seeming to be pro-Latino.

In short, Wednesday will be one of the days whose activity will be used as evidence as to why these candidates were incapable of gaining legitimate support from Latino voters.

For the record, Gingrich – who has tried in recent years to make himself appear to have an interest in growing the number of Latinos who back the GOP – engaged in rhetoric meant to mock Romney.

He said that some suggestions Romney has made that would supposedly encourage people in this country without U.S. citizenship or a valid visa to leave on their own is a mere fantasy.

ACTUALLY, HE REFERRED to it as an, “Obama-level fantasy.” Gee, tying the Romney name to the Obama name.

It does nothing to make Latinos think Gingrich cares about our interests. He’s just trying to make the ideologues despise the thought of Romney as the Republican presidential nominee all the more than they already do.

ROMNEY: Invading Cuba?

If anything, it means he’s willing to use us as the negative part of the “punch line” to try to get himself a few more votes in the upcoming Florida primary elections.

But Romney showed he’s capable of using the same tactics. He claims that Gingrich’s efforts in recent years to take an interest in Latinos is nothing but pandering.

THEN, HE ENGAGED in some pandering of his own toward the Miami exile community that likes to think South Florida is just an extension of Havana – the way it was some six decades ago.

Just as we had a “drug czar” to oversee programs meant to reduce the spread of illegal narcotics, Romney says he would create a “czar”-type position to oversee our potential future relations with Cuba, and perhaps the rest of the nations of Latin America.

In his words, this person would promote freedom throughout the region. Which, to me, is rhetoric bordering on the ridiculous!

Because it strikes me as being more about trying to one-up people, compared to the rhetoric that Barack Obama used during the ’08 election cycle with regards to Cuba.

OF COURSE, THE ideologues despised that rhetoric because it implied he would want to seek some sort of real relationship with the Caribbean island nation – rather than the implication being given by Romney – who also made comments in Miami that had some people wondering if he was implying the possibility of a military strike if he gets elected.

His rhetoric was vague. But if he really is thinking such thoughts, that ought to be enough reason to vote against Romney for president.

Anybody who can’t accept the failure of the Bay of Pigs attempt at a Cuban invasion  some five decades ago would only be driving this country into a bigger debacle if they were thinking of some similar, 21^st Century-style plot.

Let’s only hope THIS amounts to little more than campaign trash talk, to be forgotten as soon as possible after the Tuesday primary in Florida – which is about the only place in the country that might show even the slightest interest in such talk.

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1 in 4, compared to 1 in 7

The Florida presidential primary elections will take place Tuesday, and will give us the first election where the Latino population is significant – and not merely fast-growing (such as Iowa or South Carolina).

Just how significant are we talking?

THE PEW HISPANIC Center released its own overview of the Florida electorate, showing just how many Latinos potentially could show up at the polling places next week.

And for those people who think the Florida Latino vote is the Miami exile community, that’s only part of the story.

For the record, 13.1 percent of the state’s registered voters are Latino (about 1 of every 7), compared to 23 percent of the state’s overall population being Latino (about 1 in 4). Insofar as ethnicity, 32 percent of the Florida Latinos eligible to vote are Cubano, while 28 percent are Puerto Rican and 9 percent are Mexican-American (compared to 59 percent of Latino eligible voters nationally).

Now I know the ideologue argument – those are small and should be ignored. Which would be true if the rest of the Florida populace were united in opposition.

FORTUNATELY FOR MY ethnic brethren, the idea of those people agreeing on anything is ludicrous. Which makes our number sizable enough to break any sort of tie. It is why any candidate who has engaged in hostile campaigning activity to date potentially is going to pay for it now.

The statistic that amazed me the most is the fact that 452,619 Latinos are registered to vote in Florida as Republicans, compared to 564,513 Latinos registered as Democrats.

The past six years have seen the shift away from the Republican Party for Latinos in Florida. Those exiles are dying off, and their hostility toward the “Party of Kennedy” is not being passed down to the future generations.

If anything, it may well be the hostility toward GOPers that is developing in recent years, and could become a long-running trend (the number of Latino Democrats in Florida registered to vote has increased by nearly 200,000 people since 2006 – while Latino Republicans has increased by only about 38,000 since then).

SO IT WILL be interesting to see how the turnout comes down next week.

For the chance is good that the majority Democrats of Florida Latinos will not be turning out in force because of Barack Obama running un-opposed. What about the Latino Republicans?

Will they feel compelled to turn out in any significant numbers? What if a large number decided to sit it out for the GOP primary? Which is what the Republican operatives are ultimately hoping happens in the general election – as they want Latinos to “sit it out” and vote for nobody, rather than Obama.

There is one potentially depressing factor – Florida has about 2.1 million Latinos who are eligible to vote. But as indicated earlier, the number of people who are actually registered is about 1.1 million.

THAT MAKES 1 million Latinos who are fully capable of registering to cast ballots on Election Day, but who won’t.

I realize that Election Day apathy exists among all ethnic groups. Perhaps Latino apathy in Florida isn’t any worse than any other place.

But it still is dismaying to see 1 million Latinos decide it’s not worth bothering to express their voice with a vote – which is one of the perks of living in this society.

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