June 7, 2008 Saturday
WEST EDITION

'SNL' took note of Latino anchor's debate role

BYLINE: MERCEDES OLIVERA, molivera@dallasnews.com

SECTION: METRO; MERCEDES OLIVERA; Pg. 11B


He's one of the most recognizable faces in Spanish-language television, anchoring the most watched Spanish-language news program in the world.
Earlier this year, Jorge Ramos became known to a broader audience when Saturday Night Live did a parody of him asking questions of presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. Mr. Ramos anchors a TV news show on Univisión five days a week, carried locally by Channel 23.
It's a safe bet that millions more probably caught the skit on Youtube.com.
The only thing the SNL comedy writers didn't make fun of was his accent, Mr. Ramos told me recently by phone.
"And it's a thick one, too," he chuckled, recalling the skit.
All kidding aside, he found it profoundly gratifying: "If they make fun of you on SNL, it means you're part of America.
"What a great country this is, that an immigrant like myself could take part in a presidential debate."
After next week, Mr. Ramos may also be known for the role he plays off camera - as a father.
His eighth book, The Gift of Time: Letters From a Father, goes on sale Tuesday nationwide, shortly before Father's Day.
It is the result of two significant events in his life - turning 50 in March, and coming close to death in a near-accident.
"It shook me in ways I was not prepared," he said, recalling the day in Miami when a van came speeding toward his car after crossing the median and averted crashing into him at the last second.
Both vehicles were doing 60 mph at the time, he said, "and I know it would have been fatal for both of us."
Instead, it provided the catalyst that propelled him to write the book to his children, 21-year-old Paola and 10-year-old Nicolás, "so they could know me in ways that I never knew my own father," he said.
The elder Ramos was of a paternal generation that rarely showed feelings to their children, he said. He doesn't remember his father ever playing with him, even though he cared deeply for his children.
Mr. Ramos includes a letter to his father, too, in which he says goodbye. His father died at home in Mexico City, and his mother called him with the news shortly before he was to do a newscast in Miami.
It's one of the things immigrants in the United States fear the most, he said - a loved one dying back home while they're over here.
But certain moments of clarity have a way of soothing a grieving heart.
For Mr. Ramos, it came through a conversation with Chilean author Isabel Allende, who lost her 28-year-old daughter, Paula, in 1992.
"She said the people we love never truly die because we repeat them, imitate them, in life," he said. "I'm finding my father in myself, in my movements, the way I walk or sit down, in the color of my eyes.
"My son sneezes exactly like my father," he adds. "And he never met him."