Are you old enough to remember a time when there were no women on television or on the radio, except for actresses playing parts on shows or selling things in commercials? "No Women Need Apply,” used to be the norm, especially with respect to broadcast news. News was considered the purview of a male society, and an all white one at that. There were no Hispanic newscasters, no Blacks, Asians, and emphatically, no women. This was the status quo that nobody even bothered to question, until the mid to late 1970's (depending on what part of the country you lived in) when for the very first time equal opportunity employment standards, also known as "affirmative action quotas," were imposed to address gross inequality in hiring by broadcasters. The word "quota" took on a pejorative meaning. "Quota" translated as, "They're forcing me to hire incompetent and unqualified people simply because they are Black, Asian, whatever, or God forbid, female. Now the country is really going to go to hell in a hand basket." And that is how they felt.
It was somewhat startling to me to realize how "they" felt, and "they" were management. Management did not see itself as engaged in supporting an oppressive racial system and they certainly did not see themselves as perpetrating negative stereotypes of different cultures. So it behooved me early on to put in place what my therapist in college had called "the objective observer," which I understood to mean the ability to stand apart from your own point of view and see the other party's point of view and then adjust your actions accordingly so as not to offend anybody and to achieve the goal that you were after. The world of broadcasting was very Machiavellian to say the least. If you couldn't operate like Iago to some extent you were doomed.
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Television news had recently undergone a major cultural shift. The avuncular anchors of the '50's and early '60's, the "golden age" of television and television news, had given way, post Kennedy assassination to a new breed of television broadcaster, the telegenic commentator, as exemplified by Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and Peter Jennings. These three men were chosen for both good looks and gravitas, which is fine. It was when playing to the camera became at least as important if not more important than reporting the news -- that's when Pandora's box was opened and that's when the profession started to suffer. That's when you got characters like my former co-worker Mandy Vallejo appearing on your TV set. Mandy Vallejo was a beautiful woman hired to read news on the local CBS affiliate in Denver and she was so stupid that she couldn't even pronounce her own name -- or perhaps she was simply too inflexible to learn the Spanish pronunciation of her name to please her employers. Or too inculturated. Call the shot the way you see it. All I know is that Denverites were shrieking with laughter at the debacle which I'm about to describe.
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Let me give you some back story about Mandy and her name. Mandy was third generation Mexican. In an endeavor to assimilate, her grandfather began pronouncing the family name "Vuh-LEY-ho" with the two "l's" being sounded quite clearly. So Mandy grew up saying her name that way. Mandy was beautiful. Early on in life she had the distinction of always being the prettiest girl in class and later on the prettiest girl in school. Naturally she was a cheerleader, homecoming queen, all that. When I met her she was one of two quite beautiful and photogenic women in town that I knew personally. The other beautiful woman, Marilyn, ended up becoming a working television actress. Just like Marilyn was led to college theater by an ardent boyfriend who was convinced that Marilyn's looks could take her far, in similar fashion Mandy was plucked from the ranks of clerical support and recruited for television news. She had never taken a journalism class and had never even read the school newspaper, the one exception being the day she and her boyfriend were on the front page as homecoming royalty. Keep the image of her not knowing how to say her own name in mind because I am going to get to it.
It was 1978. Under the mandate of affirmative action, Denver broadcasters decided to get pro-active and look for minority candidates to put on the airwaves. An internal memo was circulated around the CBS affiliate in Denver (the existence of which was later vociferously denied) from the News Director saying, "We need to hire a Black cheerleader or a Mexican cheerleader, I don't care which. We've got to start somewhere so find me a cheerleader." Incidentally, hiring cheerleaders was nothing new. Every single woman but one working in public relations that I knew back in that era was a former cheerleader. Coincidence?
One night about a week after that directive was distributed, I was in a Mexican restaurant having two for one cocktails with co-worker Mandy and a few other radio station worker bees, and who should walk up but Mitch, a local TV sportscaster. I had never met Mitch before but had heard the news guys say that Mitch "was a legend in his own mind." Mitch beamed at Mandy and ignored the rest of us, which was fine with me because the guacamole had just arrived and I ordered another round of two fers. Mitch handed Mandy a business card and made some lame joke about how if she wanted him to autograph it she would have to let him buy her a drink. Mandy flashed her million dollar smile, Mitch's witty repartee already over her head and Mitch took that as his invitation to sit down, rather than what it really was: Mandy's catch-all coping mechanism, just smile dazzlingly at everyone and maybe they won't devour you.
Long story short, Mitch set Mandy up with an audition at the TV station. It goes without saying that everybody at the table thought that this was just a horrific move on Mitch's part to get Mandy into bed. But, no, it was a real thing and Mandy went to the TV station and stood in front of the cameras and they put makeup and lights on her and they hired her. She was exactly what they were looking for. Now her "reading" was a bit stilted because she was nervous -- their words. I was used to listening to what were called "air checks" which were tape recordings of actual newscasts that a newscaster had done and those would be sent out with a resume in a padded envelope and that was how people canvassed for more and better money at bigger and more prestigious stations. On a scale of one to ten I would have had to give Mandy's first reading a zero, truthfully. She had no ability to read aloud, let alone "announce," which is a specialized skill. She had never taken an acting or even a speech class and had no natural gift for mimicry. She was quite frankly, totally in over her head.
I was beginning to have a sense of foreboding about these proceedings. Again, I was trying to look at things dispassionately and I could see that this situation had the potential for embarrassment, as the very least. Little did I know. And it was hard to be objective about this situation because a television news job was the glamour job of the day, bar none. Remember the TV show, "Mork and Mindy?" The Mindy character played a TV newscaster, in Denver, even. Everybody wanted to be a TV newscaster, women especially. Tawny Little, who had just finished a year's reign as Miss America, announced that she was going into broadcast journalism. The frenzy was on and Mandy was dragging me off to shop for clothes with her at Neusteters, and her parents bought her a Porsche; and I, cast in the lady in waiting role to this newly crowned queen, stood there in my blue jeans with the keys to my Honda Civic in my pocket and wondered just how strange this would get.
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So allowances were made and steps were taken. She was given stand-up interviews to do, and they held off on the straight news reading, "until she got more experience." In a stand up interview if she could just ask one question (written by somebody else and prominently displayed on a cue card) into the microphone and then put the microphone in front of the other person's face and keep repeating that sequence, she didn't do too badly. She didn't do well, but she didn't do too badly. And she looked fabulous. And that's what counted.
So the News Director was getting hailed by the Station Manager for finding this perfect looking creature, and he in turn was getting kudos from the station CEO, who at that time owned interests in a number of stations. Two of his stations were in New Mexico and the CEO mentioned the new talent to some of the people down there. He was told that Mandy ought not to be using the white man's pronunciation of her name, but rather the real Spanish pronunciation. So the CEO conveyed that to the News Director and that led to instant local satire on the six o'clock news.
Mandy was asked to pronounce her name "Veye-HAY-ooo" which is the correct Spanish pronunciation. She could not remember it. She could not read it off of a cue card. She didn't speak a word of Spanish. The rest of us used to translate menus for her in Mexican restaurants. So, three nights successively when she did her "lock out" and said, "This is Mandy Vallejo, K-etc. News," she stumbled. She came up with a mangled untelligible mish mash. And it was her own name, for crying out loud. So on the third consecutive night of this farce , with laughing viewers telephoning the station and wanting to know if this was going to be on Saturday Night Live, the News Director blew his stack and said, "Enough!" They didn't fire her outright, they did something which I thought was worse. They exiled her to the Caspar, Wyoming CBS affiliate. I helped her move to Caspar and attempted to explain the concept of "big fish in a little pond," to her and how she was going to love Caspar.
I lost touch with Mandy over the years. But as fate would have it, several years later I was at a Hollywood wrap party for a low budget picture and ran into a television announcer from Denver. We had the standard dialogue of do you know this person, that person, and he knew Mandy. He shared with me that Mandy had given up news and become a "weather girl," and some wealthy viewer saw her rearranging plastic clouds and raindrops on the big board. He was love-struck at first sight and sent flowers and a limo to the TV station and Cinderella left broadcasting and married her prince and had three kids, last I knew.
I got on the air doing news in Denver, as well, but I was a mere radio announcer at a fraction of the money. I had never been a cheerleader. In school I was elected to student government and wrote for the school paper and acted in plays, what have you, but I was no beauty so the corridors of glamour were closed off to one such as I. But I never, ever envied Mandy, if you can believe that. Let me clarify -- yes, of course I envied the opportunities in life that her genetic inheritance or the grace of God, however you view these things entitled her to automatically. I envied the fact that her looks gave her an instant back stage pass to places that the rest of us had to squabble and scrape to be admitted into. Of course I did. But I certainly did not envy the fact that she was a walking joke in the media market and thankfully, mercifully, she was unaware of that fact.
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In many ways she was a character out of "Anchorman: The Story of Ron Burgundy." While watching that movie I kept waiting for the Hispanic twinkie or the Black twinkie, or even the Asian twinkie to show up. I was so disappointed that one never appeared on the screen, probably because a character like that would have been considered politically incorrect. Which just goes to prove my point, that the truth is stranger than fiction and that you can't make stuff like this up. Mandy was not the original nor the only twinkie; she did not create the stereotype. She did, alas, ratify and perpetuate it, however. And she was enabled to do so. I want to make that crystal clear. Her management overlords at what I call K-etc. could have kept looking for a black or brown lady with some education and ability and they did exist. I went to college with many of them. Management didn't want to bother. Management got a perverse pleasure out of elevating Mandy to local stardom and then ridiculing her behind her back. Management was what we would call "control freaks," and they actually liked Mandy because they could control her. A more intelligent or confidant woman would have fought back and possibly given them problems and they didn't want that. Frankly, I saw that sentiment displayed all over the market not just at this one TV station.
My friend Alan Berg, who was the top rated radio talk show host in the market, said that he also blamed management for Mandy's embarrassment, he didn't blame her. And he admonished me to cheer up, because he had just heard a new song that I would like and he played it for me. It was Carole King's "I Am Woman." Here are a few of the lyrics: "I am woman, hear me roar, in numbers too big to ignore, and I know too much to go back and pretend. But I'm still an embryo with a long long way to go, until I make my brother understand. Yes I am wise, but it's wisdom born of pain. Yes, I've paid the price -- but look how much I've gained. If I have to I can do anything; I am strong, I am invincible, I am woman."
Alan and I listened to the song laughing and cheering. Truly, women were at an embryonic stage, certainly where broadcasting was concerned, and there was a long long way to go. I started to feel much better about everything and I even thought about maybe driving up to Caspar to visit Mandy. While I was thinking that, Alan floored the pedal and the DeLorean leaped down Colfax. Just another day in Denver broadcasting and American culture, way back when.