Che Guevara – an icon for morons

Following in the footsteps of (among many other flower-children) Stephen Stills, Bonnie Raitt, Chrissie Hynde, Jimmy Buffet, and Carole King (who in 2002 serenaded Fidel Castro with a personal “You’ve Got a Friend”) guitar legend Jimmy Page made the pilgrimage to Fidel Castro’s fiefdom this week.

To Led Zeppelin’s former guitarist the visit probably seemed, not only fitting, but long overdue. Cuba was, after all, the first nation ruled by bearded long-hairs. Jean Paul Sartre, after all, hailed Cuba’s Stalinist rulers as “les Enfants au Pouvoir” (the children in power). Fidel Castro, after all, spoke at Harvard in 1959 on the same bill as pioneer beatnik Allen Ginsberg.

Remove the wispy beard and beret from the (late, thanks to Fidel Castro) revolutionary icon on those posters and t-shirts and you’ve got Jim Morrison of The Doors. Remove the cowboy hat from the (late, thanks to Fidel Castro) Revolutionary icon Camilo Cienfuegos and you’ve got Grateful Dead’s Gerry Garcia. Circa 1959, Raul Castro with his blond shoulder-length locks was a ringer for Joe Walsh circa Hotel California. These Cuban Stalinists were on the cutting edge of fashion. They pre-empted the Haight Ashbury look by a decade.

Castro’s captive (literally!) media, reports that Jimmy Page’s visit: “included tours of historic sites, and purchases of souvenirs such as the famous photograph of Che Guevara.” (more…)

Today, Scribner sent along this timely excerpt from “Without Fidel: A Death Foretold in Miami, Havana and Washington,” a new book by award-winning journalist Ann Louise Bardach. For those of you who don’t know, today, on behalf of Vanity Fair, Sean Penn’s in Cuba hoping to secure an interview with Fidel Castro. As you’ll read below, this is not Penn’s first trip and he’s pretty chummy with the Castro brothers. And don’t miss the short excerpt at the very end — an amusing anecdote revealing how visiting stars like Leo and Jack Nicholson are put under constant surveillance in Uncle Fidel’s Cuba. As long as it’s not Dick Cheney, right?

Without Fidel
by Ann Louise Bardach

Chapter 12 – Raul’s Reign: The Grave Yard Shift

In October 2008, Raul Castro granted his first interview as president of Cuba – and one of the very few he has ever given. The lucky recipient was not one of the dozen accredited reporters based in Havana. Nor was it a journalist who has covered the Miami/Havana beat, nor one of the hundreds of requests from representatives from media organizations and academia who have filed requests with the Foreign Ministry. Rather, Raul Castro’s first interlocutor would be the actor/director, Sean Penn, who periodically weighs in on politics.

Penn had just winged in on a Venezuelan military jet from Isla Margarita, the picturesque island near Caracas, having had spent two days with a convivial Hugo Chavez. With him were the writer Christopher Hitchens and historian Douglas Brinkley, whom Penn had invited to accompany him, presumably to lend gravitas to his efforts. The three had hoped to reprise their luck with Raul Castro and, according to Penn, seemed to have been promised as much. (more…)

If you didn’t know any better, you would almost think that Sean Penn wants to make it extremely easy for conservatives to criticize Hollywood for being overly liberal. He’s flown to Cuba to interview his hero Fidel Castro:

Oscar-winning actor and political activist Sean Penn flew to Cuba hoping to interview its revolutionary icon Fidel Castro, entertainment news website TMZ reported Sunday.

“Sean (Penn) is going to the land of Fidel as a journalist, writing a story for Vanity Fair (magazine) about how the (Barack) Obama administration has affected Cuba,” TMZ reported…

“Barclays sources say Sean and Diana are going to meet (Fidel) Castro — presumably because that’s what Diana told them,” the website reported. Penn’s representative also told TMZ a meeting was possible.

(more…)