Yesterday, I took a crack at explaining what was objectionable about Conan O’Brien’s recent visit to Cuba. The funnyman went down to the island to film his show.
Doing much, much better than I is Carmen Pelaez, a Cuban-American filmmaker, writer, etc. I don’t label anything “must read.” Virtually nothing is must-read. If you must read something, make it the Ten Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount.
But this brief article is something approaching must-read — especially if you’re wondering, “What’s the harm in going down to Cuba and having a good time?”
I will do a little quoting from Pelaez. “Foreigners enjoy Cuba while Cubans endure the regime.” Yes. Foreigners think the “ruins” are cute. Cubans have to live in them.
Conan apparently dreads the day when American capitalism arrives in Cuba — Foot Locker, the Gap, and all that. But “why shouldn’t Cubans benefit from capitalism the same way Conan does?”
I noticed something about the Left, way back when I was a kid in Ann Arbor. I’ve seen it all my life. They’d like the Third World to remain a kind of museum, which they can drop in on now and then, to soak up the “charm” (while they stay in the best hotels). Then they scurry back to the comforts of the First World, with its sinful capitalism.
Carmen Pelaez watched clips of Conan’s show. By the time she got to the end, “I felt I had watched a very friendly stranger go to a party on the third floor of my family’s house, while my family was being held captive in the basement, desperate to escape.” She would love to have seen Conan “connect with all the floors in that house.”
Yes, that’s it. Anyway, enough of my quoting. I recommend this piece.
And I’d like to close with something that Vladimir Bukovsky said. I’ve cited him many times, over the years. The great Russian dissident once had some advice for Western policymakers — more like a plea. It might apply to celebrity tourists as well.
He said (something like), “As you go about your business, pause once in a while to consider, ‘How will it look to the boys in the camps? How will my actions look to the zeks,’” the prisoners in the Gulag?
Sure, go down to Cuba, live it up, film your shows. But ask, if only in the recesses of your conscience, “How is this looking to the men and women in the cells?” Often, they find out. For one thing, their guards and torturers tell them.
Maybe the worst thing a celebrity can do is convey the impression that a country under dictatorship is normal. That’s the impression — the lie — the dictatorship wants to convey. It has always been true, and no doubt always will be.