I see the wonderful Maria Conchita Alonso ran into Sean Penn in LAX and attempted to edify him on the ways of Hugo Chávez and those other leftist dictators that Penn keeps praising.
Long before she was on Drudge, I was among those smitten by the feisty anticommunist when she spoke at an event for Latino Republicans, earning some pokes from Kathryn. Among the highlights from that event:
Alonso noted that Chavez’ “blonde ex-wife was constantly black and blue.”
“Even as a teenager, I wondered why John Lennon wore a Mao jacket,” she said, lamenting that Che is a popular t-shirt icon today. She suggested it was a triumph of appearance over substance: “If this man looked like Al Bundy [from the old Fox sitcom Married With Children], would teenage girls still be wearing his t-shirt?”
“When celebrities visit Castro and do not speak out, he gains a great propaganda advantage,” she said. “I wonder if anyone told Robert Reford, ‘your films are all heavily edited on Cuban television.’ And we know all directors like to have the last cut.”
When a heckler stood up to contend that Chavez had been good for the poor of Venezuela, Alonso noted that the heckler enjoys rights to interrupt and speak freely here in America that she would not under Chavez’s rule.
Referring to the former President’s thumbs-up regarding the last “election,” she declared, “Jimmy Carter, who I respect, should stick to counting peanuts, not votes.”
Plus . . . ahem.