Remember that video where Mitt Romney joked he’d have a better chance of becoming president if he were Latino. Well, actress Rosie Pérez has a message (and life lessons) for him.
In the first video of the "Actually…" series Pérez explains why it will take more than being Latino for Romney to win the election.
"The truth is the reason why Latinos aren’t voting for you is because your policies suck," Pérez says in the video. "Being Latino wouldn’t win you the election, but saying jokingly that you wish you were might actually lose it for you."
Pérez, born in Bushwick, Brooklyn to Puerto Rican parents, also touched on Romney’s now infamous Univision super-tan fiasco before going on to jokingly tell Romney he’d have an easier time becoming president if he were "a gay Latina."
According to the more recent survey of Latino voters, Obama enjoys the backing of 70% of likely Latino voters. The CNN/ORC International survey also points out that number is slightly higher than the 67% of Latinos who voted for him in 2008.
Perez’s video published on Actually.org on Sunday is a collaboration between American Bridge 21st Century and the Jewish Council for Education and Research (JCER.) The founders of Actually.org say they plan to work with other comedians to make sure lies don’t go unchecked in politics.
"At the heart of it, this really gets to the Romney campaign’s effort to use racial resentment as a tool to move voters," Mik Moore from JCER told Chris Matthews last week.
"The lie here is that it’d be much easier if [Romney] were Latino — this is the same kind of racial resentment you have when he says the poor are taken care of, or when he goes after lies about welfare reform — it’s all one-of-a-kind, where he is using these lies and exaggerations to turn up racial resentment in an effort to get votes," Moore went on to say.
"We think this is a good way of putting a spotlight on this issue," Moore said..
Colorlines.com favorites W. Kamau Bell and Jay Smooth are also slated to star in their own "Actually…" series videos.