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Keeping  it real with Robert Bianco

Actor and comedian George Lopez wants to punch Robert Bianco.

Bianco, 64, now retired, worked as a television critic for USA Today where he wasn’t afraid to speak his mind.

But first Bianco earned a law degree from the University of Virginia, and practiced law for six years. Although as an undergrad at the University of Michigan, Bianco worked for the student newspaper “The Michigan Daily,” Bianco didn’t think he could be a journalist. “I thought it would be too hard to be honest. Because back in those days… when Ann [Oldenburg, a former colleague at USA Today] and I went to school you started at a small paper and if you were lucky you got picked up by a mid-size paper, and you worked your way up. So I went to law school.”

Bianco’s contagious energy and critical nature pushed him away from the law and toward the riskier pursuit of his passion. Bianco’s law career ended when he in preparation for a party he was throwing, was caught dancing on top of his desk to Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” by his boss, who told him, “‘Robert this might not be the right career for you”. Funny story aside, the end of Bianco’s law career meant that he could let go of his fear of pursuing the precarious career as a journalist.

When asked to compose a restaurant guide of Pittsburgh (where he resided at the time) for a friend, Bianco’s friend was so impressed that they submitted it to the Pittsburgh Press, where he worked as a critic from 1986-1992, until he got a job with USA Today, where he worked as a TV critic until he retired in 2017.

But being a TV critic wasn’t all bubblegum and rainbows. One of the downsides of being a critic, is that you are criticizing real people, who take their craft very seriously. After his harsh reviews, “I had actors who went on TV and complained about me. George Lopez tried to find me at a party so he could punch me. Luckily my friends still liked me so they didn’t point me out.”

How can Bianco review TV so strongly that he can elicit responses like Lopez’s? “I think the first thing I try to figure out is: what is the artist trying to say and who is he trying to say it to? Because there’s no sense in holding Shakespearean standards to someone who’s making ‘Blue’s Clues.’” The next step is to write what he feels. But even that isn’t as simple as it seems.

Just because Bianco supported a show’s message, didn’t mean that he wouldn’t critique it. “I don’t think it is your job as a critic to support shows that are terrible, that aren’t well done, just because you think the message is good. As a gay man there were gay comedies on that I would like to be able to say ‘this is a great message watch it,’ but if it’s not funny and it’s not well done you lose whatever trust you have in your readership.”

However, if a show had a message Bianco found reprehensible–like Criminal Minds, a show he said “existed solely to exploit violence against women,” he felt the responsibility to call it out. In a review of the first season of Criminal Minds, Bianco said that “You can choose for yourself what’s most revolting about Criminal Minds… Perhaps it’s the signature scene: a caged woman, duct tape on her eyes, crying, screaming, struggling, as the killer clips her already bloody nails to stop her from scratching at her blindfold. Or perhaps it’s the plot itself, which plays like a how-to guide for sexual predators.”

Bianco can serve as inspiration for young journalists looking to critique any kind of art. He maintained his witty and authentic nature while still keeping an open mind, something people should always strive for when assuming a critical nature.

So what did Bianco say to make Lopez want to punch him?

 

“I said something along the lines that comedy acting involves more than opening your mouth and bugging out your eyes. And he took offense to that, strangely. And he said that I was making fun of his protruding eyes, and I was like, no anyone can bug out their eyes–like I can do that.”

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