One of the most disturbing, nauseating, unprofessional, unseemly and unethical interviews ever aired on American television was conducted by Barbara Walters in May 1977, when she visited Fidel in his kingdom of Castrogonia.
Fawning over the murderous tyrant, flirting aggressively with him, plying him with softball questions, Barbara Walters made Fidel look like a jovial, charming, benevolent, and good-hearted guy to millions of Americans. Fidel did his utmost to look sexy.
Two of her toughest questions were: 1. Will you ever shave your beard? (Reply: “Yes, if the U.S. lifts the embargo”); 2. Are you married? (Reply: “Not in the bourgeois sense.”)
Ever the narcissistic greedy sociopath, Fidel asked Walters to pay him for the interview afterwards, off camera.
Barbara’s criminal performance as a propagandist for the Castro dictatorship was, of course, hailed by most of her peers in the American news media and is still remembered and praised as some sort of landmark achievement in journalism. Cuban exiles complained of the extreme bias displayed in the interview, only to be dismissed and reviled as troglodytes for daring to criticize Walters and for failing to admire Fidel.
How could anyone not like this charming hunk? So, what if he was a dictator? Unlike North Americans, all Latin Americans need dictators of some kind, and Fidel is a cute and cuddly one.
Awwww. Maybe now Fifo and Baba Waba can take their flirting to another level in the afterlife. And when Dan Rather joins them, what a winsome threesome they will make. Absolutely revolting, come to think of it.
As one might expect, tributes to Walters began to flood the airways and the internet in the U.S. as soon as her death was announced. Yeah. Of course.