I'm Fed Up With Geraldo Rivera

Just this morning, I heard Laura Ingraham interviewing Geraldo Rivera on her radio program about illegal immigration. Rivera stood adamantly for two political points:

1) If you oppose ILLEGAL immigration, even if you make it exhaustively clear that it is ONLY the illegal kind you object to, you are STILL somehow against LEGAL immigration as well, and are making it harder for all immigrants--that is, for Hispanic immigrants, the only ones he seems really to care about.

2)If you express ANY concern about a fact which has been all too well covered up by the hard-leftwing media establishment--the fact that a seriously high proportion of illegal immigrants from Mexico have been committing predatory violent crimes in the United States--you are a racist, or at least you are enabling racists.

Men like Rivera, who demand that their own ethnic group be given privileges and favoritism far beyond what ANYONE else gets, call to my memory an interesting and instructive situation that occurred in the entertainment world some years ago.

Someone wanted to make a movie about the early-20th-century lives of the Mexican Trotskyite Communist couple, Diego and Frida Kahlo. Actress Laura San Giacomo, an Italian-American, eagerly pursued the chance to portray Frida in the movie. But my readers will not understand the true significance of the way her desire was treated unless they know something about the history of Hispanic actors in the English-speaking cinema. Stay with me, now; Miss San Giacomo will wait for us to get back to her.

Over most of the history of talking movies, Hispanic actors have been in a position to portray characters from an amazing variety of racial groups. Hispanic actors--Ricardo Montalban and Cesar Romero among them--appeared as American Indians, India-type Indians, Arabs, Chinese, French, and certainly Italians. But guess what happened to Laura San Giacomo when she tried to be cast as a Mexican woman?

It might have been the reason why she ended up calling her TV series "Just Shoot Me."

Hispanic-supremacist activists, who had NEVER complained about a HISPANIC actor portraying an ITALIAN character, went ballistic at the outrageously offensive suggestion that an ITALIAN actor be likewise allowed to portray a HISPANIC character. Miss San Giacomo was given the boot; in fact, the entire project was shut down until they found an actress who wanted the role AND who had the politically-approved kind of chromosomes, namely Salma Hayek.

No one even slightly more honest than Geraldo Rivera could fail to recognize the rejection of Miss San Giacomo as a textbook example of a gross double standard, of "What's Mine Is Mine And What's Yours Is Mine." But that's no more hypocritical than the policies of the Mexican government--which refuses to let ANY language other than Spanish be used for official business in ITS offices, and yet pretends to believe that upholding English as the dominant language of the United States is uniquely racist. And those who champion this double standard, KNOWING that it is a double standard, rely on confusion of issues to keep from being held accountable for their dishonesty. Perhaps most notably, they will claim--KNOWING this to be false--that any call for Hispanic immigrants TO learn English is the same as an attempt to force them NOT to remember Spanish AT ALL.

The more I encounter of self-serving logic-distortion by Hispanic illegals and their front men, the more I wish to see almost EVERY OTHER nationality being given preference over them for admittance to the United States. Of course, Geraldo Rivera would want to believe that this is because I'm a racist. To which I would reply, "NO-O-O-O...it's because I'm 'prejudiced' against DISHONESTY, no matter which collective group is showing the strongest performance in it at a given time."

REALLY Despicable Songs

Even before I knew Jesus as my Savior, I was capable of recognizing some wrong things as wrong. For instance, I was capable of realizing that it was wrong for a man to use a woman sexually at his whim, insisting that everything be on his terms only, giving her no loyalty or stability in return. Therefore, when the folk-pop song "Gentle On My Mind" came out, I knew it for the heap of garbage it was, pleasant though its melody might sound. That song, from the viewpoint of a profoundly selfish man, spoke as if the man were doing the woman a favor by taking all she could give yet leaving her at will.

Because ideas have consequences, entertainment has moral significance. The entertainment community self-servingly squawks about supposed "censorship" any time someone like me raises this issue; but what I'm advocating is ANSWERING the liars, not forcibly silencing them. Accordingly, I invite members to identify other songs, recent or not, which support and glamorize things that are actually evil and wrong. Remember Isaiah 5:20: "Woe to those who call evil good and good evil."

It's an old example I've chosen, but I hope that any Christian reading this will take more thought for analyzing and refuting the grossly wrong ideas conveyed in popular songs. They can do real damage. Someone said, "If a man were allowed to write the songs of a nation, he need not worry about who wrote the books." Often the best way to answer evil songs is to ridicule them appropriately. (Conservative singer Paul Shanklin has proven in recent years how powerful satire can be as a weapon on the side of truth.) "Gentle On My Mind" begins with these words which mock the very idea of marriage:

Well, it's knowin' that your door is always open
and your path is free to walk
That makes me tend to leave my sleeping bag
rolled up and stashed behind your couch.
And it's knowin' I'm not shackled by
forgotten words and bonds,
And the inkstains that have dried upon some line,
That keeps you ever moving on the backroads
of my memory,
And keeps you ever gentle on my mind.

So, back when the song was new, I parodied it in such
a way as to mock the selfish exploiter instead:

Well, it's knowin' that I've got you suckered
into thinking that I really love you
That makes me tend to leave my sleeping bag
rolled up and stashed behind your couch.
And it's knowin' I'm not bothered with responsibility,
'Cause you never seem to catch on to the trick,
That keeps you ever moving on the backroads of my memory,
And keeps you ever gentle on my, er, uh, mind.

That may be a little coarse, but it is all at the expense of the evildoer. The very conservative minister who married Jan and me has heard this parody, and completely approves of it because of its intent. As a matter of fact, Kevin shares with me an appreciation for a Christian singing group called Apologetix, which has done many superb send-ups of secular songs. Not necessarily wicked songs in their case; but the parodies always serve a good purpose.

An obscure early song lyric of mine, preserved

"Jesus Never Lies"

Jesus, in His years of living as a man,
said the most important things in plain words.
Many things He said are hard to understand,
but He wasn't playing games with vain words.
Jesus, on the night He was to be betrayed,
had a lot to say to the Eleven:
Told them that they never ought to be dismayed,
told them that there really is a Heaven.

Isn't it great that Jesus told the truth,
and tells it still?
--Never has lied a single time, and never will!
Isn't it great that Jesus told the truth,
and tells it now?
--He reminds us we must repent, and shows us how.

Sin won't go away if we deny it's there;
it's a thing that someone must atone for.
Freedom from a guilty heart, and from despair,
we must look to Jesus Christ alone for.
If you hear a self-appointed prophet say
there's another way to God than Jesus,
Let him hear the truth and send him on his way;
we must never let the Devil seize us.

Isn't it great that Jesus told the truth,
and tells it still?
--Never has lied a single time, and never will!
Isn't it great that Jesus told the truth,
and tells it now?
--He reminds us we must repent, and shows us how.

Jesus never comforts anyone with lies;
flattery's the method of the Devil.
Jesus tells the truth, and sets us free to rise
up into a higher, better level.
There are many mansions in the Father's place;
Jesus would have told us were it not so.
When we're taken into the angelic race,
we'll be well aware of how we got so.

Isn't it great that Jesus told the truth,
and tells it still?
--Never has lied a single time, and never will!
Isn't it great that Jesus told the truth,
and tells it now?
--He reminds us we must repent, and shows us how.


(c) Joseph R. Ravitts