Poor Ozzie Guillen. Baseball season just got started and already the Miami Marlins skipper has inserted his foot in his mouth.
The controversial Venezuelan born manager had the audacity to praise Cuban dictator Fidel Castro in an upcoming issue of Time magazine and all hell has broken loose in Miami's hardline exile community. Joe Martinez, the Miami-Dade County Commission chairman running for mayor, engaged in not-so-subtle demagoguery by demanding Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria fire Guillen. That prompted his opponent and sitting mayor, Carlos Gimenez, to call on Loria "to take decisive steps" to "bring the community together," forgetting that's his job. And Vigila Mambisa, the thuggish Cuban exile activist group from the Paleozoic era is going to protest Guillen at Marlins Park today.
So we wanted to help Ozzie get back in the good graces of El Exilio when he takes the podium later this afternoon. Here are five Cubans Guillen should praise when he apologizes for saying he loves and respects El Barbudo:
5. Pepe Billete
Pipo, showing you're down with this muñeco will give you instant street cred on Flagler Street.
4. Desi Arnaz
The most pimpatasical Cuban to flee from Fulgencio Batista, Arnaz conquered Hollywood and married one of the most famous white women in America, Lucille Ball.
3. Alvarez Guedes
Here's a dude who is just like Ozzie. This raunchy Cuban comedian doesn't give a shit who he offends. El se caga en la boca de tu madre.
2. Tony Montana
Okay, we know he's not a real person, but Scarface embodies everything about the Cuban spirit overcoming a dictatorship, arriving in Miami, and taking over South Florida one kilo at a time.
1. Luis Posada Carriles. Nothing will get you back in the good graces of El Exilio like heaping praise on this CIA-sponsored terror -- er, ahem -- "freedom fighter."
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