Andrew Zimmern

Your humble correspondent is a huge fan of the Travel Channel's  Bizarre Foods hosted by Andrew Zimmern. Some episodes I have even watched several times over in repeats. However, I was a bit concerned when I heard that Zimmern would be visiting Cuba in the first episode of his new Bizarre World show. Would he show the brutal truth of the harsh life led by the people on that island or would he gloss over the facts and present a happy face view of reality there such as happened when Lucia Newman was relaying propaganda for the Castro dictatorship for CNN when she was reporting from Havana?

My friends over at the Babalu Blog seem to have concluded that Zimmern presented a way too rosy picture of life for the average Cuban:

Travel Channel host Andrew Zimmerman [note: the name is Zimmern] made a name for himself by traveling the world and eating bull penises and drinking donkey milk (among other assorted repulsive items) on his show Bizarre Foods. Now he has a new show titled "Bizarre World," where he travels the world looking for the most bizarre places to entertain an audience that prefers to stay home and watch his shenanigans.

His destination on last night's show happened to be Cuba and when you think about it, the island holds plenty of potential for strangeness since it is hard to get more bizarre than the upside-down world Cubans must survive in where every day is a challenge to find food and shelter while avoiding arrest by the totalitarian regime's enforcers. But Zimmerman apparently missed this fine opportunity to chronicle the daily struggle of Cubans in this surreal 21st century slave plantation and instead decided to take the official island tour provided by the slave masters, complete with salsa music, antique cars, and Santeria rituals.