Springtime for Castro

National Review Online, May 30 2001

It was amiable chitchat, a piece of fluff for last Sunday's New York Times. Just how do you get hold of tickets for The Producers, Broadway's hottest show, a musical about a musical devoted to Hitler? The newspaper ran through the alternatives: sleazy scalpers, cunning concierges, even a crafty charitable contribution or two, and then fell back on that most effective of Manhattan ruses, "It's whom you get to know." For, as the Times explained, every night the "house" hangs on to tickets for distribution to a favored few. Readers were told that Rocco Landesman, the show's lead producer, has 18 to hand out. "If you're Bill Clinton, we've got tickets," he told the Times. Such generosity is not extended to everyone. There will, Mr. Landesman warned, be no such tickets for George W. Bush. Well, of course not, Mr. Landesman, we understand. The man is a monster, a fanatic in cowboy boots. Who would give tickets to Arsenic Boy? Not Rocco Landesman, that is to be sure. He would rather extend his invitation to someone else, someone, presumably, far more deserving. He would give, he said, tickets to Fidel Castro.

Yes, that's right, Fidel Castro. Rocco Landesman would be glad to play host to a tyrant.

It was a revealing moment, a joke, maybe (memo to Rocco: Jokes about living dictators are a lot trickier than those about their dead counterparts), but more likely a glimpse into the contemporary liberal psyche. Characteristically, the New York Times chose not to examine it. Maybe the paper's writers were embarrassed for their interviewee. There is, after all, something more than a little nauseating about the spectacle of some self-important showbiz hustler, a hawker of grease paint and someone else's tunes, taking it upon himself to "snub" the president of the United States by withholding tickets for a night at the theater.

Perhaps, though, the awkwardness lay elsewhere. What do you say, after all, to a man who, in the course of a light-hearted interview, has, in effect, just blurted out his admiration for one of the nastier rulers of the last century, and, by implication, compared him favorably with the current incumbent of the White House? Well, what the Times should have done is called him on it. If "the paper of record" was doing its job, its journalist should have taken Mr. Landesman at his word and asked him just what it was he admired so much about Fidel.

One can only speculate. Was it, perhaps, the crushing of the Cuban trade unions, and the arrest of leaders such as David Salvador of the sugar workers? After long years of having to deal with the irritating folks at Actors' Equity, was it the thought of trade unionist Mr. Salvador spending twelve years in jail that Mr. Landesman found so inspiring, so worthy of those tickets?

It could just be a matter of culture. The Broadway promoter doubtless sees himself as an artistic individual, so maybe he was impressed by the twenty-year imprisonment of the poet Jorge Valls? Clearly Castro is a man who takes culture very seriously, so unlike that barbarian Dubya. Armando Valladares, another poet, also survived for more than two decades behind bars. Reduced to a wheelchair by years of mistreatment, he was not spared the attention of his jailers. The beatings continued with steel cable and rifle butt, while, for variety, buckets of urine and excrement were thrown in his face. Well, said the literary Mr. Castro, Valladares "was no poet." Now that, as Rocco will appreciate, is criticism, far more rigorous than anything that can be found in the pages of Playbill. We should not be surprised. Under Castro, as we are always told, literacy rates have increased exponentially: Cuba is an island of learning.

Maybe it was the Cuban justice system that Rocco wanted to honor, so much more effective than anything to be found in George W's Texas, the torture in the Villa Marista, perhaps, or the interrogation rooms in Pinar Del Rio. But why single out these centers for special praise? Over the years, Castro has run so many prisons, each of them distinguished in their own particular way, and not just because of the quality of their inmates, those impudent critics (yes, Rocco, don't you hate that word) of the Caribbean gulag. There is La Cabana of the "rat holes," for example, or Boniato with its typhus and rapes, and let us not pass over those little cages at Tres Macios del Oriente, always so handy for keeping order.

Some people (there's always somebody) did not appreciate everything that was being done for them. After enjoying ten years of Castro's compulsory hospitality and the benefits of that famed Cuban healthcare (both his legs had had to be amputated as a result of the beatings he had endured), an ungrateful former student leader by the name of Pedro Luis Boitel went on hunger strike. He died, which was just as well. Castro had already said that Boitel had to be "liquidated" so that he would not "f*** up any more." Unfortunately, Rocco Landesman has not yet given us his views on whether such a fate was deserved. We can only guess.

Maybe there was something else. Mr. Landesman is, we need to remember, a man currently making money, albeit indirectly, out of the Third Reich. Did Castro's camps strike a chord, El Manbu, perhaps, or was it the forced labor on the Isle of Pines that caught his attention? In that context, how interesting to note that, just like the Fuhrer, Castro has had no time for those awkward gays, the people he once so charmingly described as "limp-wristed, shameless creatures." Surely Mr. Landesman would not have spoken out on Castro without taking the trouble to do some research beforehand, so we can only assume that he knows that the Cuban caudillo put a good number of such "social deviants" behind barbed wire, something that Rocco may wish to reflect upon before he invites Castro to the next Landesman production of Angels in America.

Responsible government must also focus on the vulnerable. In particular, Mr. Landesman, a good liberal, is bound to be worried about "The Children." When it comes to Cuba, he can, again, find satisfaction. Castro cares too. Indeed, Il Lider Maximo was, in the past, reportedly kind enough to organize an internment camp especially for tots under ten. Unlike that hypocrite Bush, Fidel is a man who really will leave no child behind. Just ask Elian.

Finally, and maybe this is the key, as a Broadway professional, Mr. Landesman must always be interested in the grosses, and if there's one thing that is big about Castro, it is the numbers. Over the years, they have, it is estimated, been spectacular, particularly given the size of his small home market. Two million exiles! One hundred thousand jailed! Fifteen thousand executions! And what a run it has been. With no pesky free elections to spoil the show, Castro's performance has been playing for more than forty years. That's longer than Cats.

Ah yes, that must be it. No wonder Rocco is so impressed.