Idols of the Left
May 24, 2005
... Carlos Santana at the Academy Awards, proudly showing off his Che Guevara T-shirt. As he entered the ceremony, Carlos stopped for the photographers, smiled deliriously and swung his jacket open. TA-DA! There it was: Carlos' elegantly embroidered Che Guevara t-shirt. Carlos' face as the flashbulbs popped said it all. "I'm so COOL!" he beamed. "I'm so HIP! I'm so CHEEKY! So SHARP! So TUNED IN!"
Tune into this, Carlos: in the mid 1960's, Fidel and your charming t-shirt icon set up concentration camps in Cuba for, among many others, "anti-social elements" and "delinquents." Besides Bohemians and homosexuals, these camps were crammed with "roqueros," who qualified in Che and Fidel's eyes as useless "delinquents." A "roquero" was a hapless youth who tried to listen to Yankee-Imperialist rock music in Cuba. So here's Santana, grinning widely – and OH-SO-hiply! – while proudly displaying the symbol of a regime that MADE IT A CRIMINAL OFFENSE TO LISTEN TO CARLOS SANTANA MUSIC.
It's odd to see the generous beneficiaries of freedom promote tyrants. But hey, as long as you're anti-American, your sins are forgiven.
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