As supercouple Jay-Z and Beyoncé prep for World Humanitarian Day ("I'm doing something good," Mrs. Carter tweets, "somewhere, for someone else. Join me!"), they're also getting slammed by South Floridian members of Congress Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and Mario Diaz-Balart for helping to "fund the machinery of oppression."
How exactly? Spending all them tourist dollas in Castro's Cuba.
UPDATE #6 Pitbull has dropped a rap response to Jay-Z and Beyonce's Cuba visit, offering to pay for the trip.
UPDATE #7 Problem Kids have released "Useful Idiot" about Jay-Z: "The real cuba is not what he portrayed"
See also:
-Beyonce and Jay-Z Are In Cuba Right Now
-Cuba Using Beyonce to Distract From Dissident Yoani Sanchez's World Tour
From the moment Hova and Bey were spotted in Havana last week, it was inevitable that a Republican backlash was coming down.
A commie country, Cuba has been embargoed for six decades. And it is forbidden territory for American visitors, unless granted special permission from the U.S. government.
So as our sister blog Riptide pointed out: "No one is really sure how legal [Jay-Z and Beyoncé's] trip is. The embargo forbids Americans from traveling to Cuba for tourism reasons, but exceptions are made for people traveling for academic, journalistic, religious and cultural reasons."
Of course, though, the Carters are quite cozy with the Obamas. (As Barack says, "We've got a little bond there.") So presumably, their Cuba request could've been hella fast-tracked.
But Ros-Lehtinen and Diaz-Balart want proof.
"Cuba's tourism industry is wholly state-controlled," the pair writes in a letter to the Prez and the U.S. Treasury Department, questioning the legality of Hova and Bey's anniversary vacay on the island.
"U.S. dollars spent on Cuban tourism," the members of Congress bluntly state, "directly fund the machinery of oppression that brutally represses the Cuban people."
Now... Who's ready for World Humanitarian Day?
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