Jay and Bey, America’s Cultural and Educational Ambassadors
Obama’s Assistant Treasury Secretary for Legislative Affairs, Alastair Fitzpayne, wrote to Ros-Lehtinen and Diaz-Balbart, saying, “It is our understanding that the travelers in question traveled to Cuba pursuant to an educational exchange trip organized by a group authorized by OFAC to sponsor and organize programs to promote people-to-people contact in Cuba.”
“People-to-people contact?” To shield herself from fans and paparazzi, Beyoncé had taxpayer-funded Secret Service protect her while emerging from a Japanese restaurant.
Fitzpayne, who served as a senior policy advisor to Chicago’s bastion of honesty, Rahm Emanuel, mentioned that the OFAC “does not request the identities of the travelers on each trip.” Then Fitzpayne noted that“ organizations holding people-to-people licenses must certify in writing to OFAC that any travel that they conduct will consist of a full-time schedule of educational activities that will result in meaningful interaction between the travelers and individuals in Cuba.”
Beyoncé Knowles an educational diplomat? Talk show host Wendy Williams once said that when she talks, “Beyoncé sounds like she has a fifth grade education.” In England, Beyoncé remarked, “Y’all are so cute and y’all talk so proper over here. I love England.” So now salsa dancing in a Cuban nightclub has officially been renamed “educational activity?”
On behalf of Michelle, Beyoncé may be teaching los Cubanos how to use locally grown organic produce in their diet, and reminding them that paddling an “Esperanza” from Cuba to Florida, although great exercise, is not a substitute for “Move Your Body.”
To usher in the birth of Blue Ivy, Beyoncé spent $1,700 a night on a round-the-clock, one-on-one nursing care executive maternity suite at Manhattan’s Lenox Hill Hospital. Quality healthcare experiences like that are fertile topics of discussion for Beyoncé and Castrocare mommies.
Thankfully, high school dropout and “people-to-people” person Jay-Z is not communist-averse, Cuban or otherwise. After all, he did contemplate rapping with communist co-majority owner of the New Jersey Nets, Russian tycoon Mikhail Prokhorov, at the Barclay Center. Prokhorov could have taught Shawn how 350 bottles of $300-a-bottle Armand de Brignac Brut Gold can be stacked to create an impressive tower, a perfect educational lesson for Cuban “island prisoners.”
Ros-Lehtinen continues to maintain that if the “king and queen of Cuba’s” vacation is “classified as an educational exchange trip, then … the Obama Administration is not serious about denying the Castro regime an economic lifeline that US tourism will extend to it.” Ya’ think? Ros-Lehtinen also observed that she didn’t see “any evidence of how this scam endeavor will help… human rights activists [who] engage in hunger strikes …to become independent of the regime.”
That’s because human rights and independence from oppressive regimes is not what this trip was about. The purpose of the “educational exchange trip” was to have Beyoncé teach Cuban women how “Sasha Fierce” they can look in designer sunglasses, and for Fedora-wearing Shawn Carter to prove to Cuban men that it’s possible to smoke a Cuban cigar and walk at the same time.
Image: Flickr as Hello hubbie!; author idrewuk; Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.
Jeannie DeAngelis, born in Brooklyn, New York and raised on Long Island, is a wife, mother and grandmother to three grandsons. She has written for politically-themed articles for conservative websites like American Thinker and Breitbart, emphasizing current events as well as the full range of liberal hypocrisy in politics and Hollywood, and pro-life issues. Jeannie publishes a blog atwww.jeannie-ology.com.
