Charo Covers Rihanna At Jerry Lewis’ Telethon

Charo (née María Rosario Pilar Martínez Molina Moquiere de les Esperades Santa Ana Romanguera y de la Najosa Rasten) is, for the uninitiated, the original diva. She is either 58 or 68 years old, depending on whether you believe her Spanish birth certificate or her word, and she brought us the term “cuchi, cuchi.”

She’s something of a paradox - a successful entertainer and female entrepreneur who rose to fame partially because of her talent in singing and dancing, but also because she upheld certain stereotypes about Hispanics:

Charo’s first US TV appearance was on The Today Show in the mid-1960s. She later appeared on Laugh-In in 1968. She would appear on short chatfests of a few minutes near the end of the show with Dan Rowan and Dick Martin. Her almost complete lack of fluency in the English language was played as a comic focus, and she would have the two hosts laughing at her mangled English. This is also the time that the “cuchi cuchi’ line passed into the public arena.

But perhaps all this can be forgiven because Charo has brought us this - her rendition of Rihanna’s “Don’t Stop the Music,” performed at the 2009 Jerry Lewis Telethon. Of course:

So. What do you think of Charo’s place in mainstream pop culture? And how uncomfortable does it make you to watch her hump the air while cooing “cuchi, cuchi?”