“I just spent the last four days shooting my show all around the city of Havana. I made countless friends and had one of the best experiences of my life. Many laughs, but that could also be the rum.”
Conan
“None of them seemed to mind sliding around in the feces and choking in the smoke. They were determined not to miss the opportunity of watching a foreigner make a fool of himself.”
Tahir Shah
When I heard about talk show comedian Conan O’Brien going to do a “show” in Cuba, my first instinct was to ignore it. My thoughts were mixed. After all what is funny about a country that lives oppressed, in poverty, and has been ruled by “thugs” for the last 56 years? Then reality struck. This is the same nation that our president Obama gave an economic lifeline without getting anything in return, and that has become like an “in” place to visit by the multiple “morons” that make their livelihood in Hollywood and academics. As I realized that the attraction, other than being part of their “elite” way of thinking was to being shown the nightclubs, buildings, and automobiles, that existed before Castro took over, as a perverse thrill of looking at a past that was destroyed, my bile started to flow. Even after putting my intestinal enzymes to good use when ingesting a “caldo gallego”, I was unable to resist reading excerpts of Conan’s trip as related in the Miami Herald by Mimi Whitefield. Dressed with an outfit that stereotypes Hispanics, and has not been worn for decades, trying to be funny while attempting to follow the rhythm of our dancers, and making “jokes”, that were delivered in a drunken state, all in all the endeavor was a huge flop. Calling Cuba before Castro the “Las Vegas of the Caribbean”, demonstrated his total ignorance of the past of the place he was visiting. One statement did concur with reality. It was when he said that he wanted them “to laugh at my idiocy”. The suffering Cuban people did laugh, but I suggest his show would have earned the highest honors if he would have asked and/or done “my top ten suggestions”;
#10; I want to be assured that we will be able to transmit direct, and uncensored to my station.
#9; I want to live with the people, in a building in center Havana that is in decay, where I can be with the regular folks.
#8; My expenses are to be paid in pesos, not dollars or convertibles the same as the population that is not sustained by the Miami “worms”.
#7; I will like to buy my needs where the people buy, not minding the lines and adjusting my needs to what it’s offered.
#6; I would like to receive newspapers from the US, like the NY Times and Wall Street Journal.
#5; I would like to have access to Wi-Fi, internet and be able to tweet and post my thoughts freely.
#4; I would like to meet and video my talk with opponents of the Castro regime, without reprisals for them.
#3; I don’t want to ride in a remodeled ‘59 Chevy, I will use public transportation.
#2; If becoming ill I want to be taken to the same hospitals where the majority of Cubans go, not the ones that the “elite” uses and Michael Moore was taken.
And #1;
When visiting La Cabaña fortress, I will ask the government security, posing as tourist guides, that I want to look out of the window that Che Guevara used when he was enjoying the firing squads when they were murdering the Cuban youth, for the simple fact of their wanting freedom and opposing the tyrants that had taken over.
We are sure that Conan’s show if executed as I have suggested will win the highest ratings, and will also be followed by the sequel “What happened to Conan O’Brien? The mystery following his disappearance after his trip to Cuba”.
Fernando J Milanes MD
