George Lopez's Crusade

Ruben Navarrette Jr.

DALLAS -- Nobody likes an angry comedian. But an honest one will always find an audience.

Case in point: the brutally honest George Lopez. The Mexican-American comic insists he has learned to control his coraje (righteous anger) over the way that Latinos are shortchanged in Hollywood.

Sure. Just ask his theory on why it has taken so long for Hollywood writers, directors and producers to dream up Latino characters with depth and dimension.

"These are white guys with laptops," Lopez told me. "And to them, given what they see, Latinos are the gardeners. Every housekeeper and nanny is Latina. We're the help."

Bingo. The only Latinos who routinely show up in prime time are housekeepers, hoodlums and hedge-trimmers. A network executive living in Bel-Air might personally interact with a half-dozen Latinos before lunch and never get beyond maids, gardeners, cooks and valets.

Lopez himself has been offered his share of drug-dealer roles. He turned them down rather than abet those who traffic in the offensive.

Now, after 13 years of working the club circuit, Lopez's standup career is going gangbusters. He packs arenas that hold thousands. He has a new comedy CD in stores, and a book coming out soon from a major publishing house. He gets handed movie scripts.

And, oh yeah, there's the show. The "George Lopez" show, which begins its third season Friday, is a bona fide hit for ABC. It's the third-most-watched comedy on the network, and one of the most popular on television.

The show gets respectable ratings, last season attracting an average viewing audience of more than 10 million. Just as vital for a Latino comedy, it gets respect.

And how does it do that? Why, by no longer being thought of as a Latino comedy. Only in "Hollyweird" does an ethnic project get to be successful by not projecting ethnic. Eschewing the familiar gags, the show is about a family dealing with issues that confront other American families -- with lots of laughs along the way.

That didn't happen by accident. Lopez is a producer for the show and approves every script.

Avoiding the low road has yielded high returns. "George Lopez" enjoys what is euphemistically known as crossover appeal. In plain English, that means white people watch it. In fact, according to an ABC spokesman, research indicates that whites account for three-fourths of the show's audience. Latinos make up only 11 percent.

For those of us who have known George for a while (and in my case, "a while" is about eight years), the irony is delicious. You see, back when Lopez was feeling frustrated and -- if you must know -- more than a bit angry about how good things were happening to other comics but not to him, a lot of the frustration and anger came from his assumption that his ethnicity was working against him.

As you may recall, it wasn't always hip to be Hispanic. As recently as the mid-1990s, Lopez seemed to be hitting his head against a glass ceiling. He was making a decent living, earning about $3,000 a week doing standup. But he couldn't get a CD distributed, didn't get booked into the larger venues and wasn't getting book deals.

The problem, Lopez convinced himself, was that he wasn't on television. He had to have drawn some comfort from the fact that he was hardly alone. It was an unwritten rule that Tinseltown wasn't prepared to produce more than one Latino television star per decade. In the 1960s, Desi Arnaz loved Lucy. In the `70s, Freddie Prinze was Chico playing second banana to the Man. And in the `80s, Paul Rodriguez flopped in the ill-conceived "a.k.a. Pablo." Remember the bit where Rodriguez clenched a knife in his teeth and called it the "Mexican Express Card"?

You won't see garbage like that on "George Lopez." Not if the star can help it.

"If this show tanks next week, it's already proved to people that it can be done," Lopez said. "That you can have a Latino comedy that is fun and real without being offensive. And that the future looks bright."

My old friend is more than just a successful comedian and television star. He's a crusader. Just one more reason why, regardless of what shows win the battle for ratings, George Lopez is winning the war.

Ruben Navarrette's e-mail address is rnavarrette@dallasnews.com.