Senator Demands Probe into Beyoncé and Jay-Z's Cuban Anniversary
Excuse me, miss: did you really engage in cultural exchange with the Cuban people? Florida Senator Marco Rubio is ringing the alarm over Beyoncé and Jay-Z's fifth-anniversary trip to Cuba last week, which he claims was "seized on for propaganda purposes" by the Castro regime. The brief vacation was apparently given the green light by the Treasury Department, which licenses trips to Cuba for "educational exchange activities that will result in meaningful interaction"; according to the New York Times, the crazy-in-love couple "visited the children's theater group La Colmenita, where Beyoncé danced with little girls dressed as bumblebees," and Beyoncé, apparently feelin' it, "half-danced" during a performance by the Cuban Contemporary Dance Company on Friday, which would seem to qualify (if she were a boy she might have, as her husband did, enjoy "a Cuban cigar on the balcony of their government-owned hotel, the Saratoga"). According to Academic Arrangements Abroad, which planned and arranged the trip, the officials that run this town (well really, who run the world of Cuba) had no foreknowledge of the vacation and "struggled to provide adequate security" (What? Who? we imagine them saying), but worked it out—and got Beyoncé bodies to protect her—in the end. "If interested in what life really like in #Cuba @S_C_," Rubio tweeted, "should have visited persecuted rapper #AngelYunierRemon #99problems&dictatorsareone." Listen, Marco: I know you have sweet dreams of showing Jay-Z and his naughty girl what you got, and I get that it's a hard knock life for politicians representing Cuban exiles—can't knock the hustle for Florida Senators—but surely you can work it out without resorting to bad puns based on Jay-Z and Beyoncé tracks? It's like you're making the songs cry. Move on to the next one. [Reuters | TPM | NYT]