For many years at the 8 PM time slot, “The O’Reilly Factor” hosted by Bill O’Reilly has consistently been the ratings winner over MSNBC. It is widely recognized and understood that O’Reilly is a conservative commentator who embraces Republican ideologies. It is also well-understood that O’Reilly’s network, FOX News Network, is a conservative-leaning news agency.

It is that reason that we find a very interesting development that has arisen recently. For the first time, MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” show has been beating the “O’Reilly Factor” for the 25-54 year-old group, according to Nielsen Media Research, which tracks television viewership. The recent success of Olbermann at the 8 PM time slot has caught O’Reilly by surprise. In fact, O’Reilly is so upset at his recent ratings losses in the Nielsen ratings, that he has even made Nielsen Media Research a target of his daily rhetoric and, further, is calling for an unrealistic government investigation into Nielsen. (Nielsen’s President & CEO Susan Whiting made relatively small personal donations to Democrats).

Here is what I think is really happening. You have Lou Dobbs on CNN giving his conservative commentary. You have Bill O’Reilly giving his conservative commentary. You have Sean Hannity on MSNBC giving his conservative commentary. The fact of the matter is that the competition for conservative commentary has grown increasingly fierce. MSNBC made a calculated decision to promote “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” as a balancing act between Republican-leaning and Democratic-leaning news shows. The strategy appears to be working.

There may be a correlation between the recent successes of “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” over “The O’Reilly Factor” that could be linked to what may be a big victory for Democrats on Election Day. The sentiment around the nation is that the Republican strategy has not worked and is partly to blame for the recent economic crisis. Given that many of these voters know that they are not going to get unbiased opinions from the conservative commentators about Republican mistakes, they are switching channels to Keith Olbermann at the 8 PM time slot.

Olbermann and O’Reilly have a long-standing feud that has gotten very nasty at times. However, regardless of the winner when it comes to these two men, their news networks remains #2 and #3 in overall ratings respectively compared to CNN, which is at #1. CNN has seen record high viewership due to its unbiased coverage of the elections and the strength of “Larry King Live”, “Anderson Cooper 360″, and “Campbell Brown: No Bias, No Bull”.

I’m sure that CNN will be happy to see the feud continue between MSNBC’s “Countdown with Olbermann” and FOX’s “The O’Reilly Factor.”

So I read the news about New Jersey Homeboy Bruce Springsteen endorsing Senator Obama. Yawn.

Then I saw that Willie Colon endorsed Hillary Clinton. Aha! Now that struck a chord!

Let me just say right off the bat that I certainly don’t believe Latinos will be deciding who should occupy La Casa Blanca based on what entertainer is blasting a trombone or screaming a song at some dopey campaign rally.

But let me be quite frank here. No disrespect to the guy but I’ve heard enough Springsteen music at New Jersey political events to last me a lifetime. And, trust me, I’ve been to a lot of them.

New Jersey politicians and political wannabes just adore “The Boss.” Perhaps it’s a genetic thing or maybe they just think it’s mandatory that they love the guy whose albums include “Born to Run” and “Born in the U.S.A.”

Now I will admit that there’s a Springsteen tune or two that remind me of some fun times in my younger days when I joined my colleagues at the local bars after we filed our stories. After a few drinks, just about any song sounded good in the background as we trashed our editors.

But that so pales in comparison to my Willie Colon memories that go back to the days starting in college when I would drive into Manhattan with my friends Evelyn and Effie to go hear Willie and Hector and Tito and Celia. We’d go to places like El Corso where we’d dance away the night in our very high heels and then later hobble back to our car.

Quick story: One night, some guy brought Willie and Hector to our table. Not sure if they came to flirt with us or what. But I remember our reaction oh so very vividly: We froze. We didn’t know what to say. Oh my God! Hector and Willie want to talk to us and we have nothing to say.

Finally I was able to look up at them and blurt out: “I have your albums.”

Well, I guess they realized things were going absolutely nowhere with us, and they quickly took their leave and got back on the stage. And I know we giggled after they left us because that’s what young girls do.

I recently got together with Effie and her husband and he listened as she and I recalled the night that Hector and Willie came to our table. And as we sat in a Chinese restaurant in Manhattan, we giggled once again.

If you want to take a stroll down memory lane and hear and see Willie and Hector work their magic, check this out – and enjoy:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL9bW6YRoEg&feature=related

The following recipe is one that Frida Kahlo got from her mother’s cooking journal. I would like to thank Maggie Van Ostrand for allowing me to use this recipe from her article on Frida Kahlo, The Five Senses of Frida. The original recipe appeared in Frida’s Fiestas: Recipes and Reminiscences of Life With Frida Kahlo by Guadalupe Rivera Marin.

I have been to Mexico numerous times and love the regional variety of food. Thousands of dishes from moles to sopa de lima; in fact, one could probably have a different dish every day and never repeat the same meal. In honor of Frida Kahlo’s show at the Philadelphia Museum here is one of her favorite dishes. Like her, just a little spicy.

CHILES STUFFED WITH PICADILLO

* 16 poblano chiles, roasted, peeled, seeded, and deveined

* Flour

* 5 eggs, separated

* Corn oil or lard

* Tomato Broth

Stuff the chiles with the picadillo, then dust them with flour. Beat the egg whites until stuff. Beat the yolks lightly with a pinch of salt and gently fold together with the whites to make a batter. Dip the chiles into the batter and fry in hot oil until golden. Drain on brown paper. To serve, place the chiles in the tomato broth.

PICADILLO

* 3 pounds/1,500g ground pork

* 1 large onion, halved

* 3 garlic cloves, chopped

* Salt and pepper

* 6 tablespoons lard

* 1 small onion, finely chopped

* 1 pound/400g tomatoes, chopped

* 1 cup/75g shredded cabbage

* three quarters cup/100g blanched almonds, chopped

* half cup/60g raisins

Cook the pork with the onion halves, garlic, and salt and pepper to taste for about 20 minutes. Drain the liquid and discard onion. Heat the lard in another pan and sauté the chopped onion, carrots, and zucchini until the onion is translucent. Add the tomato, cabbage, almonds, raisins, pork and salt and pepper to taste. Simmer for about 20 minutes, or until the mixture has darkened and the tomato is cooked through.

The influx of people from Mexico to New Jersey means that all these ingredients are readily available in most towns with a Latino presence. Don’t be scared to make these as they are pretty simple to put together and if it’s good enough for Frida, it’s good enough for you!

My wife and I have been waiting such a long time for a Frida Kahlo exhibit to come to a local museum. This year we got our wish. The ads called to me like a siren’s song. They were well done in dramatic red for effect and the name Frida in yellow. I swear I heard a Mexican corrido! The whole band swooped in and played a special song dedicated to Frida. It went something like this:

Querida Frida te quiero admirar pero mi corazón se rompe
porque Diego te hizo mal.

El que te quiere te quiere ahogar. Con sus disimulos y pinches mujerzuelas te quiere matar.

Pinta Frida, pinta, no escondas tu dolor.

Explícame en colores tus disgustos y rencor.

Pinta Frida pinta, enséñame tu amor.

Amarás con tu roja cinta, tu negro pelo y esconde el alcohol.

Frida, Frida linda dale como puedas.

En tu silla o en tu cama, mientras Diego te la pega con tu propia hermana.

Frida, Frida hermosa no mires para atrás.

Frida, Frida hermosa quítate el puñal úsalo como brocha para tus amarguras derramar.

Anyway I digress. Where was I? Oh yeah. Finally, a Frida exhibit in the tri-state area all for me! I mean for me to take my family and Carmen a close friend. So I go online to the Philadelphia Museum’s website and order my tickets. Not cheap. For my daughter, wife, friend and it was over $85; add parking, gas, lunch, tolls and a must stop at the original’s Pats Cheese Steaks and there goes my paycheck. But that does not matter. We love Frida! More importantly, we wanted to expose our daughter Maya (named after the Mayan Indians of Mexico) to Frida’s artwork. Maya who is only eleven loves art, museums, music and life. Sometimes, I think she is my conscious. You know like on television, the devil on one side and angel on the other. Maya is definitely an angel. Papi, you can’t leave the water running while you brush! Papi, if we don’t recycle we kill the Earth. Papi, don’t use bad language! Anyway, I can’t take a long shower, toss my cigar wrapper on the floor or curse Newark-style anymore. Got to love your conscious.

We arrive at the museum at our scheduled time of 2:30 pm and, unlike their website claim, there is no available handicapped parking. The one perk of being paralyzed suddenly and unexpectedly ripped from under me. My God, why? Why is every space taken? Did I not recycle? Did I not take short showers? It took us 30 minutes to find a free space, which the kind security guard carved out of a loading zone.

Forty-two pieces of Frida’s works all in one place — close to a quarter of her 200 total portraits. There are portraits such as the Henry Ford Hospital (1932), The Broken Column (1944), Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird (1940) — all here. The exhibit also featured photos and personal effects of Frida and Diego Rivera, her husband and famous muralist. This exhibition marks the hundredth year of Frida’s birthday, which was 1907, although you may hear conflicting stories about her actual birthday since Frida would often state that she was born in 1910, the year of the Mexican Revolution. Frida and Diego were at one time or another members of the Communist Party and both believed strongly in workers’ rights and the right to unionize. Frida was a person who believed in the human rights of everyone and often identified herself with the working class. Her Tijuana dresses and servant outfits marked many of her paintings and photographs. She was never ashamed of wearing clothing that reflected her culture. In fact, she embraced it. At the age of six, Frida was stricken with polio, which caused her to have a limp. However, this is not the event that marked the duration of her life struggles. In 1925, a bus she was riding collided with a tramcar and her leg and pelvis were severely injured. This incident marred the rest of her life and is evident in many of her paintings including The Broken Column. She had over 30 operations many hospitalizations years of bed rest. She suffered constant pain, spent many months in the full-body cast and sometimes used a wheelchair.

Diego Rivera, the love of her life, also caused Frida anguish and desperation. His many affairs were indeed a source of anger for Frida especially the one which involved her sister Christina. Frida, of course, learned that the best way to get even was to have affairs of her own, some which included women. Many of the paintings at the Philadelphia Museum are samples of her struggles with love, life, and a lifelong disabling condition. They exhibit her appreciation for Mexican culture and her love of life notwithstanding her many challenges.

We picked up our tickets at the window and rushed off to the exhibit only to be confronted with a line 200-people-long. Luckily we were escorted to the front, as if Frida was saying step this way. We all received headsets with built-in voice tours. Basically, one pushes a number in the recorder that corresponds to a work of art and you hear a brief explanation of it in your headsets. I walked around slowly taking in all that Frida had to offer. I looked intently into her eyes and she stared back. She seemed angry and confused. As if asking, where am I? I took my eyes off of her and I looked around and it hit me. There was something missing in this great exhibit. What you ask? Latinos!

There were no Latinos to be seen for miles. One of the security guards kinda looked Latino but I wasn’t sure. Regardless he was paid to be there. Frida the socialist would not have been happy. She would not have been happy to see that her life and her work are now segregated and her own people are not there to see it. Her work had become a commercial success. Diego would be so proud. However, the line of people waiting to see her pain on canvas led everyone to a huge gift shop immediately outside her exhibit area; she was all the rage. It was truly sad for me who had waited so long to realize that many Latinos cannot afford the ticket price or could take a day off of work to come see Frida’s exhibit. What happened? Where are all the Latino children who are looking for inspiration and a role model? If they came they would see a person who struggled to never gave up. A woman who was one of the first to go to a university made up of men. Someone who learned from pain that life is worth living even when you think there’s nothing worth living for. Where were the Latinos from New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and, most importantly, Pennsylvania? I think Frida would be highly disappointed that her works have become a way for free institutions such as museums to make a buck. I understand that many of these pieces come from various other institutions and private collections. However, I cannot get past the fact that there are no Latinos there. Maybe that is too broad of a statement but it appeared to be the reality when I was there.

In all fairness, we must all look in the mirror as it relates to appreciating the culture and historical treasures which we have been left. It is easy to blame the Philadelphia Museum and other institutions of “historical learning” — they are an easy target especially if they did not perform due diligence in reaching out to the Latino community. However, the Latino community in general and more specifically parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents are responsible when Latino children are not present at these events. If the price of the ticket is too much money then use other venues to get the same point across.

What is that point? That Latinos as a people have made great contributions to our culture and others and our children should know what those contributions are. If you’re in Puerto Rico, then go to the Taino ceremonial parks. If you’re in Mexico, then visit the many pyramids that are there. Further south in Central and South America, more culture abounds with Mayan, Olmec and Aztec ruins. Visit the free museums in many of our countries, which feature Latino artists, culture and history. In today’s era of high-tech toys, flat screen TVs and cell phones, it is easy to program the digital babysitter to watch over our children. However, it is a crime against our culture and the sacrifices made by so many previous generations to allow Microsoft and Apple to erase our collective memory.

It is a beautiful thing when Anglo-American discovers Frida Kahlo and all that she offered the world. It is a tragedy when you ask a Latino child who Frida Kahlo was and they don’t know. Therefore, I challenge anyone reading this to take a few hours, pick up his or her kids and go see the Kahlo exhibit (http://www.philamuseum.org/). It will transform your relationship with art and make you love Frida. If you can’t do that before May 18^th, then visit El Museo Del Barrio in New York City (http://www.elmuseo.org/), or introduce your child to a book about famous Latinos. By the way, Christopher Columbus was Italian.

Exhausted after walking 40 blocks from the American Museum of Natural History to Midtown one Monday afternoon last September, my boyfriend Ted and I stopped to rest a block away from Columbus Circle. We were right across the street from Jazz at Lincoln Center, by the Columbus Circle shops, when we noticed a crowd forming. “I wonder what’s going on,” I said as we both observed photographers take pictures non-stop at some people going into the building. More interested in Starbucks than the swanky event, Ted said he would walk me across the street on one condition: we’d stop by and get coffee afterwards.

But once we crossed the street, Ted forgot all about the coffee. We had found out Jodie Foster and other stars had entered the building. The Brave One would be premiered that night. Taking out my Sony 8.1 mega pixel camera, I snapped a photo of Kirk Douglass as he stepped out of a limousine and waved at the crowd. After 20 minutes, the mass of people was thinning out, and we thought we’d had enough fun for the day.

My mother was waiting patiently for us to have dinner at home, so we started to leave. Just then, a 5’5” brunette wearing a white t-shirt and holding up 10 tickets and said, “Do you want to go to the premiere?”

As a 24-year-old Latina advocate and journalist, I could barely afford a movie ticket and a $10 popcorn and soda. “Are you serious?” I asked. Ted, a New Jersey corrections officer, had a huge smile on his face. To try and save money, we skimped on five-star restaurants and instead ate at diners. In fact, we were supposed to be vacationing in Miami Beach that Monday, but to save money, we opted for a day in the city.

The promoter smiled, handing me, Ted and a Fordham University sophomore tickets to The Brave One. Wearing a black Harley-Davidson cap, jeans and a black shirt, Ted blushed as we took the elevator with hordes of people dressed in suits and women in business attire and evening dresses. I felt underdressed in my black top and Chinese-inspired ankle-length skirt and flat black shoes. The usher directed me to the left hand side of the theatre, and escorted Ted to the other end of the movie theatre. Every row was filled, and we couldn’t get two seats together. I sat three rows away from the big screen, next to an architect named Luis. Ted sat near five teenagers who talked throughout the movie.

“I just saw Jodie Foster’s back. She’s wearing a pretty purple dress,” I called Ted to tell him. “Naveen Andrews is sitting four rows behind me,” said Ted, a fan of Andrews’ character, Sayid, on the television show Lost.

The actors sat amongst us as the lights began to dim and the previews popped up on screen. We cheered when Foster’s character, Erica Bain, transformed from victim to vigilante. A week before, I read an interview in Entertainment Weekly where Foster said she was against guns. I looked back and caught a glimpse of her watching herself on film. She was smiling.

After the movie, Ted and I were heading toward the exit when a woman waved two tickets at us. “Would you like to go to the after party?” she said, as we descended the escalator. I was speechless. It was our lucky day. “Thanks,” Ted said, taking the tickets, and my arm. The woman and her husband couldn’t go to the after party and asked that we give them away if we didn’t want to go.

“What do you think?” he asked. “We’re not dressed for it, and we already saw the movie. Let’s not push our luck,” I said.

“Honey, we’re on a roll, we might as well,” said Ted, as we went back up the stairs to the after party. Ted put his hand on my back, as if trying to muster up courage to enter the posh party. The first person who caught our eye was Richard Belzer, who plays Det. John Munch on Law & Order: SVU. “Excuse me, Mr. Belzer? Could we please take a picture with you?”

Sure, said the amicable man in his sixties. Though I get star struck by meeting politicians – I’ve met Rudy Guiliani and his wife, Sen. John Kerry and Christie Whitman, New Jersey’s first female governor – I was starting to get a little weak-kneed by meeting Belzer.

“I love watching you on Law & Order: SVU,” I said, a little nervous. “Thank you,” he smiled back, and then disappeared into the crowd.

Next we saw Robert Downey Jr. by the hors d’oeuvres. “Do you want a picture with him?” Ted whispered. “Naa,” I responded. I was busy looking for Jodie Foster. Grabbing a glass of Cabernet, I spotted Terrence Howard walk right in front of me, followed by a few admirers.

“I’m a fan of your work,” said a woman who squeezed in front of me. Knowing he was about to sit at his table, I made my way to the actor. He signed our programs and let us take pictures too.

“This was one of the best days of my life,” said Ted as we left the party an hour later.