The American Spectator

At Large

(Page 2 of 2)

Miami Vice , where undercover cop Sonny Crockett spends an idyllic night in Cuba while seducing a beautiful Chinese woman with connections to a drug cartel. The movie retains an appropriately somber tone throughout most of its run time, but for me the idyll in Cuba conjured images of Grease -era John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John warbling their way through "Summer Nights." This is what those two crazy kids might have done with a better cinematographer and a thirst for life at the dark end of the street.

It's not just Cuban exiles who despise Castro and his cult of personality. In a July 24 story headlined "Cuban regime feeling heat from Czechs," Miami Herald reporter Pablo Bachelet summarized the current climate this way: "Once a subservient member of the Soviet bloc, the Czech Republic is now one of Fidel Castro's top foreign tormentors, providing material and moral support to dissidents, leading efforts to condemn the island's human-rights record in U.N. bodies and pushing a reluctant European Union to take a tougher stance on Castro." Czech support for Cuban dissidents goes beyond badgering the United Nations and funding clandestine radio broadcasts. This detail could have come straight from a pitch meeting for a movie of the week, but it really happened: "Czech supermodel Helena Houdova slipped into the island and took photos of Cuban slums. Police detained her for 11 hours, but she managed to smuggle out the camera's memory card in her bra -- creating a media stir in Prague and later displaying the photos in an exhibit."

''The revolution's watchmen rose up because I was taking pictures of something they do not like,'' the 1999 Miss Czech Republic told journalists.

Helena had it right, as almost any Cuban in Miami could tell you. Sadly, in the tonier parts of New York and Los Angeles, it's still as though Ricky Ricardo had more 'splainin' to do than his red-haired wife.

topics:
Trade, Health Care, Hollywood, United Nations, European Union, Communism