If Sean Penn Interviewed Fidel Castro …
For several months I’ve been running to the magazine section of my local bookstore to browse Vanity Fair. And each month I find that what I’m looking for in that publication is missing.
You see, Sean Penn, the gifted actor and not so gifted journalist, reportedly flew to Cuba last October to interview Fidel Castro on behalf of the magazine. It’s unclear whether Penn actually got to see the communist dictator. Castro has met with very few visitors since taking ill in 2006, and the handful of exceptions have been foreign government officials. The veil of secrecy around Castro’s health continues to be quite opaque. But let’s assume that Penn got the access that none of the foreign media outlets based in Havana have gotten despite their Faustian bargains with the regime. It’s quite easy to predict what Penn’s work would look like.
First of all, Penn would report that Castro is in “excellent” physical health. Undoubtedly, we would read about how “bright-eyed” Penn found the octogenarian despot. Castro’s stamina would be “impressive” and his posture would certainly be quite “upright” in Penn’s eyes. Penn would tell us how “alert” Castro is and how “encyclopedic” his memory is.
What we wouldn’t learn is what caused Castro to ostensibly step down from power to begin with. That’s a state secret, of course. Imagine if President Obama had a health concern and the White House instantly moved toward a complete media blackout of the story.
The inquisitive Penn would ask the “maximum leader” about the state of U.S./Cuba relations, and Castro’s response would be that Cuba is a country that has been under siege from its imperialist neighbor to the north for the last 50 years. The word “blockade” would definitely appear in Penn’s article, for it is the disingenuous term Cuba’s communists have always used for America’s commercial trade embargo.
But Penn would omit the true origins and intent of the embargo. He would also neglect to tell Vanity Fair’s audience that Fidel himself rejected commercial relations with the U.S. while Cuba was a client state of the Soviet Union. The fact that the United States is Cuba’s leading food supplier despite the “blockade” would also be missing from Penn’s reportage. It’s too much of an inconvenient truth for those like Penn who have an agenda of appeasing left-wing tyrants.
Penn would lament the business that U.S. firms are missing out on because of our “barbaric” economic policy toward Cuba. He would not discuss, however, how the Castro brothers are deadbeats who borrow and borrow and never pay back a cent. Countries from around the world are lining up to try to collect with no luck. And surely Penn would omit the fact that “opening up” trade with Cuba would open the door to taxpayer-funded credit from institutions like the Export-Import Bank of the United States, which according to its mission statement “assume[s] credit and country risks that the private sector is unable or unwilling to accept.” The reason Penn wouldn’t mention this is because even in the era of bailouts, it’s still not politically correct to bail out foreign dictatorships.
Of the current American president, Castro would certainly be quoted by Penn as saying that Mr. Obama’s intentions of establishing a dialogue between the two countries is a welcome change in comparison to the “imperialistic” George W. Bush, but that Obama has not shown the determination to stand up to the Cuban-American “mafia” that “controls U.S. foreign policy” with regards to Cuba. Penn wouldn’t discuss the fact that the true conflict is not between the Cuban and U.S. governments, but instead between the Castro regime and the Cuban people. He also wouldn’t write about how the regime continues to deny that it represses, abuses, and imprisons dissenters despite the fact that groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch continue to denounce it for precisely these reasons.
It’s likely that Penn would mention the plight of the “Cuban Five” currently in U.S. federal prison who Castro would refer to as “anti-terrorism fighters,” but the details about how these convicted spies were part of a large espionage ring that was, among other things, responsible for the downing of two American civilian aircraft over the Florida straits, killing four people, would not be published in his article. And certainly there would be no mention of Kendall and Gwen Myers, a couple of longtime State Department employees who recently pled guilty to spying on behalf of Cuba for 30 years.
No, we don’t need to be psychics to predict what the media and sympathizers like Sean Penn would say about Castro and Cuba. We just need to pay closer attention — because it’s the same whitewash they have been repeating ever since Herbert Matthews of the New York Times became Fidel’s unofficial publicist in 1958.
The ‘leading food supplier’ link is broken
Who cares what Sean Penn does. The sanctions on Cuba are a joke. This country is no threat to USA. Drop the santions and enjoy cuba and all it has to offer.
Mr. Penn, in writing the article based on his reportage, would also almost certainly omit to mention the jailed dissident who just died from a hunger strike in a Cuban prison.
Sean Penn and Danny Glover are American jokes. don’t go see their work.
What minnesotaman really means to say is that he thinks a country ruled by an unelected, authoritarian, Marxist tyrant is a good thing because it benefits him as an American. For example, he gets cheap whores, two for $20, often women trained as medical doctors or engineers looking to add meat to their privation diets, women who would touch him with a ten foot pole if they weren’t the only means of support for an extended family of ten. Speaking of food, minnesotaman gets to eat luxury meals in fine hotels for next to nothing; sure it should make him uncomfortable to see all those poor Cubans standing around salivating (and carrying home his scraps) as he eats, but he loves the people, and is there to benefit them; besides, minnesotaman is incapable of shame (except when America is mentioned). Like the enlightened Europeans he pals around with on the island, minnesotaman is sneeringly contemptuous of the foreign policy of the United States, and spend a lot of time saying so while drinking Cuba libres over the dead body of Orlando Zapata; who could fail to see that this was paradise? Next year, minnesoatman is going to a fantastic condo in Caracas, courtesy of the merchant who spoke out against Hugo Chavez’s plan to demand he lower prices and take a loss. You’re a king, minnesotaman, and you should always live like one; hey, I hear Robert Mugabe is selling the possessions of opposition farmers for next to nothing (in Zimbabwean currency), you should get over there quick.
Ah yes, the convicted spies were part of a large espionage ring that was, responsible for blowing up 2 American civilian aircraft over the Florida straits, killing 4 people. These are the type the Left makes into Heroes. Alsp would Penn have his riches if he moved to Cuba?
Penn’s interview with Raul Castro in thenation.com was a disgrace. Penn is a conceited, self-regarding little flower, directly sustained by a society that generates vast amounts of wealth for discretionary spending and places an iron shield around freedom of expression. Then this vain, navel-gazing, sanctimonious twit cosies up to grubs like the Castro brothers, who lock up writers in deplorable conditions and betray every principle that people like Penn profess to support.
There is hardly a better example of the moral vanity and rank hypocrisy of the left than Sean Penn.
USEFUL IDIOT:THY NAME IS SEAN PENN!
#2MINNESOTA”man”What Cuba has to offer? Concentration camps,police-state repression, hunger,desperation abd oppression? What astalinist piece of filth you are!
A “Nation” staffer told me at the time that Penn’s Cuba screed for that magazine arrived as a long, tiresome mess — and that Penn demanded that it be printed in its entirety. Even they were appalled….
In Pre-Fidel Cuba, Americans owned 70 % of the arable land, 1% of the population controlled 46 % of the wealth, 50 % of the population lived in Bohio shacks, and 40 % of the population was illiterate. In Cuba before Fidel, Batista’s mafia backed state killed 20,000 fellow Cubans. However, this is the Cuba that little Henry longs for, but that his pasty white @$s never even saw.
Batista’s goons would leave dead bodies hanging in the streets as a warning sign while the SIM (Military Intelligence Service) BRAC (Buro for the Repression of Communist Activities) and Tigres de Mansferrer (Mansferrer Tigers) made up a repressive machinery which tortured and killed thousands.
Batista’s dictatorship operated blindly against teenagers, who would be picked-up, tortured through beatings, their eyes plucked out, their finger nails removed with forceps and females would have hot metal instruments introduced into their v@gina. These fascist crimes of Batista cannot be denied by crosses along every highway in Cuba (which I’ve been to many times).
Many of these men with blood on their hands can still be found living out their last days on Calle Ocho in Little Havana (South Florida) where they support admitted terrorists like Luis Posada Carilles & Orlando Bosch who hijack airliners ala Al Qaeda. Go to Versailles restaurant where I’ve been and you’ll see them.
Gee, Jorge, where did you get the figures that state 50% of the population lived in bohios? You must have read the history books published by the present Cuban government. Teenagers had their eyes plucked? That’s barbarian and I wonder where you gathered that information. Too bad you have been duped.
Jorge @ 11
Think, man. Maybe you’re right. But how does that justify the Castro brorthers’ thuggery?
How do the revolting excesses of the Batista regime sanitize what is done in Cuba 50 years later?
Does my revulsion at the grubs who now run Cuba mean that I support Batista?
In future, Jorge, engage brain before putting mouth into gear.
BLOCKADE! BLOCKADE!!! BLOCKADE!!!! Give it up already Henry!
In Pre-Fidel Cuba, Americans owned 70 % of the arable land, 1% of the population controlled 46 % of the wealth, 50 % of the population lived in Bohio shack
Now everything 100% of the arable lands are owned by the Castros. Also looka at the http://www.therealcuba.com. Specially the part about health care. That is the health care for common Cubans.
Aask him also how many Blacks are ministers or generals in
Racist Southin 1900,South Africa under the apartheid, Socialist Cuba. Batista was half Blacks.Last but not least cross check his statistics (NOT at wikipedia). My guess is that he has read them in the Granma.
Jorge, your numbers are nothing but garbage; just lazy propaganda trotted out by the Castro “scholars”. The Batista regime, for all of its crimes, was still far preferable to Castro, and, as a previous poster noted, why would you give Castro a pass because his predecessor was deplorable? It’s like the apologists for Stalin because the Czarist regime was violent. In both cases, the Marxist regime that followed was far worse, more insidious, more violent, and more tyrannical than the autocratic one (Jeanne Kirkpatrick was largely right about this). BTW, the myth of a post-racial Cuba after Marxism was just that, nonsense; Cuba remains largely run and controlled by pansy white asses just like Henry.
Oh, and 1% of the US controls close to half the wealth in this country, too (and pays almost all of the meaningful taxes); that’s usually the way things sift out in a liberal economy. Now, in Cuba, 1/2% controls 99% of all the wealth in the country (what pitiful wealth remains), and people still live in shacks and squalor.
uburoisc, all I wanted was a good cuban cigar. You have no idea how stupid your rant sounds.
Munnesotamann,
Your ignorance about Cuba is amazing. Cuba has little left to offer after a half century of murderous dictatorship where people are literally dying to leave.
Want to know about Castro’s murderous “refugee policies”? Read Mercenary’s Tale: Fighting Fidel Castro, a true story of American Marines recruited to rescue Cuban refugees in the early sixties after Playa Jiron that exposes Castro for a mass murderer.
Also, those interested in the history of Cuba’s tempestuous relationship with the United States will be interested in the truth about Castro’s supporters in the United States and how powerful US politicians courted Fidel and saved his revolution.
Fifty years of murder is not something people should “enjoy”.
Bill Heuisler
Fidel WON
Gusanos LOST
end of story
You forgot the part where Penn would start the inteview only after he was done performing felatio on El Presidente.
For those who don’t understand Spanish Gusanos means “Worms”. Says a loooooot about fidelofascists.
What minnesotaman really means to say is that he thinks a country ruled by an unelected, authoritarian, Marxist tyrant is a good thing because it benefits him as an American. For example, he gets cheap whores, two for $20, , often women trained as medical doctors or engineers looking to add meat to their privation diets, women who would touch him with a ten foot pole if they weren’t the only means of support for an extended family of ten
Often not women trained as medical doctors but underaged girls.
Minnesotaman, you can get a good cigar in lots of places, and there has never been anything stupid about refusing to finance a sadistic, Marxist tyrant and his Potemkin village. Actually, I have seen guys like you throughout Latin America; venal, corrupt, narcissistic; simple bargain-basement hedonists looking for a cheap thrill, kind of like the people who used to pour into Cuba back in the 1920′s. You just wanted a good cigar, well, that about sums your infantile worldview up, doesn’t it?
Enrique, Stalin won, Kulaks lost, end of story. Hitler won, bloodsucking Jews lost, end of story, Mao won, enemies of the people lost, end of story, Japanese Generals won, Chinese and Philippino subhumans lost, end of story, etc, etc
#11 JORGE: Suopposing everything you said about Bataista’s Cuba were true(NONE of it is),please explain how turning Cuba into a tropical GULAG,led by a psychotic criminal made it a better place to live? I realize that pathetic, mental cripples need the Marxist Utopian fantasy to sustain their miserable little lives,but really,don’t you think that 50+ years of police-state terror,murder, and starvation,constitute too high a price to pay for whatever sick satisfaction you derive from this fantasy?let me suggest that if you can’t live without supporting Stainist Terror,you consider assisted suicide.! VIVA CUBA LIBRE!
#19 ENRIQUE spewed:” Fidel won,gusanos lost,end of story”
Not quite: FIDEL WON ;THE CUBAN PEOPLE LOST! That’s the REAL story.
#19 ENRIQUE:”Fidel won,gusanos lost,end of story!” Yes cretin,he did.On the other hand, your mother got VD and gave birth to you,which explains your obsession with “gusanos”.BTW,they’re not in Miami,they’re in your brain, and the medical term is “spyrochetes”,and they are clearly winning!
Like the enlightened Europeans he pals around with on the island, minnesotaman is sneeringly contemptuous of the foreign policy of the United States, and spend a lot of time saying so while drinking Cuba libres over the dead body of Orlando Zapata; who could fail to see that this was paradise?