Actress Maria Conchita Alonso won’t be appearing in The Vagina Monologues because she endorsed California Republican Tim Donnelly for governor in a campaign ad.
Conchita Alonso, an outspoken foe of the socialist dictatorships in Venezuela and Cuba, has 93 acting credits on IMDB and was a former Miss World/Venezuela. She was born in Cuba and was raised in Venezuela.
The somewhat awkward (presumably intentionally so) video features the actress providing a humorous Spanish-language spin to Donnelly’s presentation. “Politicians and big government are killing our prosperity, driving businesses out of our state, pushing welfare costs through the roof, and driving our schools into the ground.” Alonso’s take: “We’re screwed.”
Donnelly, a Tea Party favorite and a hawk on border security, goes on to say among other things that he wants to “create a Tsunami of jobs by unleashing California’s natural resources and shutting down bureaucratic overregulation.”
A state assemblyman who is a married to a woman of Filipino descent and with her has five sons, Donnelly has made other quirky, self-deprecating videos before. In an outtake tacked on to the end of this video, Alonso says “Oh Tim, I’m so glad you didn’t suck.” Donnelly’s candidacy has also received the endorsement of lifelong Democrat and SNL alum Rob “Duece Bigalow” Schneider because of his pro-business platform.
The video also contains a sequence where Alonso registers strong opposition to the candidate’s pro-hunting views, a note of disagreeement that is probably a first for a campaign commercial.
Donnelly also famously saved a choking woman’s life with the Heimlich maneuver during a campaign appearance.
Alonso, who apparently supports Donnelly’s anti-illegal immigration views, was scheduled to perform in a Spanish-language version of The Vagina Monologues in February at the Brava Theater Center in San Francisco’s Mission District, but a political backlash ended that for her. Apparently some of her vulgar language in the ad turned people off, too.
Producer Eliana Lopez told the local CBS New s affiliate that “We really cannot have her in the show, unfortunately. Of course she has the right to say whatever she wants. But we’re in the middle of the Mission. Doing what she is doing is against what we believe.” Added Jim Salinas, a local Democrat official: “We don’t act like that. First of all, that is not a typical Latina.” But prominent San Francisco Latino Republican Leo Lacayo countered that “It was a political ad, it was a funny ad. That anybody would lose employment over what their political leanings are is absurd.”
Alonso suggested on FNC that she dropped out because protests/boycotts in connection with her continued participation in the show would have been unfair to the other actors.
Alonso’s views on the immigration issue, Fox News Latino reported, were expressed in an email to the La Opinion newspaper: “I am among those who think that we should help illegal immigrants who are already in the country and who do not have a criminal background, who contribute and who are good people, but those who are not, we need to take out. I spoke with Tim about this issue and he agrees with me.”
Regardless of whether this particular campaign commercial is bad/tacky or not, much has been written about the reverse McCarthyism or a reverse blacklist in show business, i.e., how publicly differing with the Democrat Party agenda in overwhelmingly liberal Hollywood and elsewhere is a career-killer for those who lean conservative or libertarian in the entertainment industry both in front and behind the camera/stage. Actor James Woods , as one example, announced on his Twitter feed that he may not get any further gigs in the movies because of his outspoken Obama criticism.
As a slight digression, in a blog post about alleged gender discrimination against female movie directors, German-born former stuntwoman and now director Lexi Alexander wrote that “Women in Hollywood have no male allies. There are some who pretend to be on our side…but yeah, not really. They may say the right thing because after all, they’re liberals and that’s a public image they’d like to keep. Others may actually believe in gender equality, but are not willing to put up a fight for it that could sacrifice their own status or relationships.”
As far as the Alonso-Donnelly commercial is concerned, in our diverse, pluralistic society, it seems odd that any particular demographic group should be expected to hold a monolithic view on a particular political or social issue or that anybody would be denied a job based on their political leanings.
Maria Conchita Alonso talks more about her exit from The Vagina Monologues after endorsing Tim Donnelly for California governor in this FNC interview:
Added: Maria Conchita Alonso, with “Tequilla,” talks to Megyn Kelly about her exit from The Vagina Monlogues because of politics: