The National Association of Recording Merchandisers has announced it will honor singer Bonnie Raitt with its Harry Chapin Memorial Humanitarian Award for, among other things, her work “for the rights of women and Native Americans.” That will no doubt come as a shock to Cuban women living under the boot of dictator Fidel Castro, who hosted Raitt and others in 1999. Recent Locke Foundation luncheon guest, author Humberto Fontova, writes in his new book, Fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant:
“Bonnie Raitt visited in March 1999 and stopped hyperventilating just long enough to compose a song in Castro’s honor, “Cuba is Way Too Cool!” Among the lyrics: “It’s just a happy little island!”
Happy? Fontova continues on page 60 to explain that Cuban women are “the most suicidal in the world, making death by suicide the primary cause of death for Cubans aged fifteen to forty-eight. The statistics got so embarrassing that the Cuban government ceased publishing them; they are now state secrets.”
No doubt this tragic and inconvenient fact will be ignored by the Hollywood left, like Raitt, who love Cuba and Castro — as long, of course, as they can hop on their jets and leave the “happy little island” and aren’t subject to the pitiful conditions and food rationing imposed by Castro on his people. Three cheers for Raitt and her support of this Communist state where women would rather die than continue to live in such oppression.
