MEXICO CITY — The host of Mexico's hottest morning TV news show makes silly faces while interviewing important people. He uses shockingly vulgar language in his commentaries. He punctuates each news bite, however serious, with rooster crows, tambourine-banging and fake but amplified belches.
He wears more makeup than Katie Couric, Matt Lauer and Diane Sawyer put together. But unlike him, they are not known for treating viewers to an on-air ambush of politicians caught on secretly recorded videos receiving suitcases full of suspected bribe money.
Well, say buenos dias to Brozo, the unshaven, green-haired clown who gives many Mexicans their breakfast-time taste of the day's news.
In what could be described as a mating of "Good Morning America" with the "Simpsons' " Krusty the Klown, Brozo and his sidekicks give issues a raucous, irreverent spin for a growing audience -- at least among Mexicans tired of drab newscasts by people in Armani suits.
While the focus of "El Mananero" may include a dose of sarcasm about President Bush and Iraq, or a Brozo tirade about disputes between politicians he calls "macho little goats," the show is seen by many as a perfectly Mexican treatment of the country's troubled times, and maybe the wider world's too.
Many Mexicans complain that their country appears adrift in a sea of spectacular scandals and political theater, with politicians neglecting urgent problems as they try to embarrass each other in the run-up to the 2006 presidential election.
Brozo likes to think of his show as the antidote, rather than another symptom.
"We coincide with the moment through which Mexico is passing," says Victor Trujillo, the man beneath Brozo's wig. "Generally, what is solemn is taken as serious, what is solemn is formal, and so what is solemn could be true. But we want to break that myth, so that laughs don't take away from the truth."
While some other news shows get more viewers, Brozo has become nearly a cultural icon in Mexico, with his face on billboards and newspaper ads throughout the capital and his show attracting increasing attention.
In March, Brozo caused an uproar when he surprised the leader of Mexico City's legislature, Rene Bejarano, with a secretly filmed videotape of the politician taking a "contribution" from a city contractor.
