* By now we’re familiar with seeing President Barack Obama drop in on “The View” or a popular podcast or a late-night, comedian-hosted talk show. But in Cuba? Much was made in Havana about the president appearing on Cuba’s most popular comedy show, “Deja Que Yo Te Cuente” (“Let Me Tell You”) that features the high-profile comedian Luis Silva in the character of “Epifanio Pánfilo.” Actually, the president appeared twice.
Before his visit, the president was seen–from his White House desk–in a “Direct From the White House” appearance commenting about his upcoming visit to Cuba. While in Havana, he then dropped in for a game-of-dominoes skit with Pánfilo and two friends. Neither was a cameo, and the president worked in more than serviceable Spanish during the exchanges.
Obama, who is notably good at this kind of stuff, did it for the same reason he appears on certain American TV shows: To reach a demographic that traditional political outlets don’t. And, in this case, to be seen as an avatar of openness and accessibility–the antithesis of the Cuban government’s MO.
“The natural and easy way Obama has chosen to mingle with Cubans contrasts stridently with the distant and hardbound historical leaders and their claque,” pointed out prominent Cuban blogger Miriam Celaya. “It is known that autocrats not only remain isolated in a world that is unattainable for the ordinary Cuban, but that they also don’t know how to smile.”
In short, the juxtaposition of Obama and Raul Castro, couldn’t have been more revealing and starkly confirming.
* Fidel Castro, 89, was nowhere to be seen during President Obama’s visit. Just as well. He is now an historical artifact, an icon largely in the abstract. But he did comment after the fact for public consumption, if not 2016 relevance. “We don’t need the Empire to give us anything,” sniffed Castro, in a commentary in Granma, the government newspaper.
* Gov. Rick Scott’s recent presidential cheap-shot hit a new, repellent low. “Following the gruesome terrorist attacks in Brussels earlier this week, President Obama chose to continue gallivanting across the communist country with the Castros,” stated Scott. “Now, he is dancing the tango in Argentina.”
As Scott and the usual partisan partisans well know, Obama travels with all the technological and staffing help necessary to conduct Oval Office business anywhere in the world. He called his Belgian counterpart. He checked it with NATO and other European allies. He condemned the attacks and offered assistance and solace to Belgium before his formal speech in Havana. His secretary of state was with him.
And he assured the new president of Argentina, Mauricio Macri, that he would keep his appointed meeting–and show the American flag in an important Latin American country that values our friendship.
Because networks utilized a split screen to show Brussels carnage while Obama spent three innings at a baseball game, Scott and the usual suspects jumped at the opportune optics. As if the president’s priorities were profanely skewed. As if the rest of us didn’t know that by furthering the momentum between the U.S. and Cuba, the president would be upgrading America’s geopolitical reputation in its own hemisphere, helping the Cuban people and making the case for tearing down the embargo wall–which will help no state more than Florida.
How ironic. How clueless. How insufferable. How Scott.
Plus this: The con-jobs governor even had the cojones to ask the president to leave Cuba and fly to–not Washington or Brussels–but Florida to assuage tourists’ fears about traveling to Europe. Put another way: To ease Europeans’ fears about round-trip visits to Florida. Hijo de puta.
* Amid all the VIPs who were part of the historic presidential visit to Cuba, none were classier than Rachel Robinson, the widow of Jackie Robinson. Still elegant and eloquent, as was evident in an ESPN interview. She has had, to be sure, her share of racial crucibles, but the years have been kind in other ways to the 93-year-old former assistant professor at the Yale School of Nursing and Director of Nursing at the Connecticut Mental Health Center.