Essential Heroes: A Momento Latino Event (Momento Latino, CBS-TV, aired October 26, 2020)

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2020 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved

Last night I was anxious to get home by 9 p.m. so I could watch a show on CBS that had looked interesting from the promos: the awkwardly titled Essential Heroes: A Momento Latino Event. The show was somewhat surprisingly only about an hour long -- given the depth of talent in America’s Latino/a community (I HATE, LOATHE, DESPISE AND DETEST that horrible term “Latinx” -- apparently pronounced “Latin-Ex,” to rhyme with “satin sex” -- that’s become beloved of the Thought Police of Politically Correct Language even though only 3 percent of Latinos/Latinas/Latinxes use it) one could readily imagine this running twice as long -- and for something billed at least in part as a musical special there were only four songs: an opening number by rapper Pit Bull called “I Believe That I Can Win” (it wasn’t quite as awful as, say, the Pulitzer Prize-winning garbage of Kendrick Lamar, but I still wish, hope, pray for and would like to see the day when this rap-crap ceases to be popular); a Spanish-language number by Juanes (ironically the commentary he made after he sang was subtitled but his -- or their, since Charles assures me that “Juanes” is the name of a group and not just an individual singer -- song wasn’t; about all I could make out as a recurring line was “Yo quiero pensar,” and I’m clueless as to just what he wants to think); a nice duet by Luis Fonsi and Kelsea Ballerini called “After the Rain Comes the Sun” (I’m ashamed to admit that I hadn’t realized Kelsea Ballerini is Latina; I’d always assumed the name “Ballerini” was Italian); and a closing number, filmed in Brazil before the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic (you could tell because there was an audience and the performers weren’t “socially distant”), starring Gloria Estefan in one of her typical dance numbers, “Get On Your Feet.”

There wasn’t any audible influence of Brazilian music, but who cares? Estefan has her groove and she knows what to do with it, and the song is infectious even though it’s one of those dance tunes that instead of making you want to dance leaves you feeling like you’re being ordered to. (One of the things I liked about ABBA was their skill at making truly infectious dance records that made you want to get on your feet.) Early on in the show there was a nice comedy routine between George Lopez and Rita Moreno (still looking good!) framed as an argument over that ghastly term “Latinx,” with Lopez joking about how ridiculous it is and Moreno throwing shoes at him while insisting that “Latinx” is needed as a way to describe Latinos who don’t fit into traditional gender categories and as an outreach to “LGBTQIA” Latinos. (That’s using one horrendously ghastly P.C. perversion of language to defend another; had our Viral Dictator not intervened and canceled the 2020 Pride events, along with just about every large-scale public event except for Trump’s Nuremberg rallies, I had planned to wear a T-shirt saying, “I AM A GAY MAN, NOT AN ‘LGBTQ+ PERSON.’”)

In some ways, the presentations of community heroes were more interesting than the songs. They included Jose Rosario and Nora Vargas,who work to build awareness of mental health issues within the Latino/a community (Rosario described himself as “Afro-Latino,” though he looked more Black than Latino to me, and Vargas acknowledged her own history as a mentally ill person who had once been in an institution); John Leguizamo doing a potted version of his “Latino History for Dummies” routine about all the major breakthroughs in science and medicine Latinos had been responsible for (including the Aztecs for inventing chocolate -- which is sort of true; the original Aztec chocolate drink was a bitter-tasting alcoholic beverage and it was the Spaniards after La Conquista who thought of taking the alcohol out, adding sugar and making it into a solid candy); DACA recipient Sarahi Esperanza Salamanca, the first of her family to attend college; Lin-Manuel Miranda paying tribute to chef Jose Andres of World Global Kitchen, a worldwide relief effort to supply both food and people trained to cook it into disaster spots (it’s a favorite charity of Stephen Colbert’s and he’s had Andres on his show several times to promote it); and a tribute to the Dictor family of Los Angeles, both for their resourcefulness in keeping their restaurant open during the pandemic and because the family patriarch had finally naturalized as an American citizen and can therefore join his U.S.-born (or not, but already naturalized) family in voting in the 2020 election.