Fernando Mendes, the fat man who is Portugal
1. Fernando Mendes completed 40 years of career a few months ago and deserves all the applause and tributes.
In a losing RTP he keeps the audiences.
It remains popular and when the people embrace it, they genuinely embrace it.
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I do not know him.
I never exchanged a single word with him.
But of all people, as the most popular figures, as the closest to the people, as the closest to the people, as the most popular, they speak to their audience as they expose themselves, as their audience embraces and lives with and for them.
2. Whenever I go to the Right Price, I stay a while.
I do it out of respect for what it is and represents for so many people and for so many years. Humble people who are treated there without artificialism, paternalism or other “isms” that are the rule in the communication game.
This happens because Fernando Mendes is not in front of the cameras what he is not, he does not try to represent – or at least he does not appear to be.
He naturally places himself on the same level as people, he is curious about them, he does not enjoy them, he plays with what they are in the same way he plays with himself, one among equals, a cousin of all, a visiting cousin.
3. Fernando Mendes is a great popular figure, perhaps the greatest.
Curiously, unlike so many who were not half as important, he never had any decoration. Never a President of the Republic or awarded a medal or a commendation, but he has embraced every day for 40 years the Portuguese who have had the fewest hugs throughout their lives, the humblest of the humble, the most remote villages, those who they celebrate him, hug him and ask him or answer him as if Fernando Mendes were family.
Because he’s family.
No shit.
Not wanting to be what you’re not.
Without standing on tiptoe.
No complexes for being fat or for not recognizing and treating with the respect they bear others with half their audiences.
Fernando Mendes is a little bit of Portugal.
And I don’t think it leaves anyone behind.
And that’s very beautiful.
Forty more years to come.
And that continues to teach me the respect we owe everyone.
From the kindness of a hug.
From the tenderness of being able to give ourselves to others, of being able to take and expect the best from others.