He's the first American late-night television host to broadcast his program from Cuba in more than 50 years -- and its communist regime wasted little time in reminding Conan O'Brien that he was no longer in America.
O'Brien's entire TBS show last night was devoted to his Cuban jaunt, which included a stop in what he described as a typical market.
Apparently it was an unscripted detour and O'Brien was told to stop filming out of fear that what could be seen -- full shelves but only a few different products -- might prove embarrassing to socialist sensibilities --
O'BRIEN (outside store, pointing at sign): This is a mercado, or market here in Cuba, pretty typical. Let's take a look. Look at this, you just don't see this anywhere else -- a whole row of just one product. One brand, that's it.
Unseen anywhere else -- aside from North Korea. Then again, their shelves would be empty, except in stores set aside for exclusive use by regime bureaucrats and courtiers while the rest of the country starves.
O'BRIEN: I don't know what this is (pointing to opposite shelf holding hundreds of similarly-labeled bottles), vino seco, sweet wine (or is that dry wine?) el mundo, it just (sweeping his arm the length of the shelf) goes and goes and goes.
O'Brien was then told through his translator (/government handler?) by another man whose face was pixilated that he needed permission to take footage inside the store --
O'BRIEN: We cannot film here.
TRANSLATOR: Not without authorization. (No need to state whose).
O'BRIEN: I think we, I mean, it's OK, I don't need to. I was just wondering if you had any, uh (pauses for effect), I'm just, vino seco el mundo, do you have that? (man who told them to leave points toward shelves full of only that product).
O'BRIEN (feigning surprise): Oh! You do it, OK. (laughter and applause from television audience).
Kudos to O'Brien for going where the Cubans clearly didn't want him, and airing what he saw.
O'Brien's visit on Presidents' Day came three months after President Obama announced that the United States and Cuba would re-establish diplomatic relations while he seeks to persuade Congress to end the half century-long American economic embargo.
Earlier in the program, O'Brien mentioned the embargo and obliquely cited Cuba's "complicated" problems. That the island nation's brutal communist junta may have caused them went diplomatically unmentioned.
(In case you're wondering, Jack Paar of The Tonight Show was the last American late-night talk show host to broadcast from Cuba, prior to O'Brien's visit, when he interviewed Fidel Castro in 1959).
