The rogues on television

By Alejandro Armengol

From El Nuevo Herald

A multimillion-dollar industry exists in Spain, a segment of the trashy media: television programs devoted to commenting on the lives of the famous.

It doesn’t matter if the subject is a singer, an artist, or someone who, by marrying Fulano or being the son of Mengano, has acquired a well-known name. It makes no difference when the event occurred or how old the participants were. The celebrity, turned into merchandise, sets the norm.

Any act is made meritorious by the singular power of a medium capable of converting a street corner comment into the focus of attention for millions of people.

These programs make a fortune for a few and help many to get through the night. The producers are so proud of their work that the competition for getting “an exclusive” requires a letter of introduction.

All you need to do is press a button and not worry about paying attention. Weeks, months, years go by and every night the same topics are paraded. This kind of television constitutes the most vulgar vision of current eternity. Some, maybe many, find it amusing.

Here in Miami, a format similar to the Spanish programs has evolved. Except that the trash is represented by politics. The rest is the same: frivolity, repetition and sensationalism. A captive audience every night, people who sit down, watch and listen with amazement and enthusiasm to events that are well known, banal commentary, news that happened years ago.

Such lack of memory should indicate the transitory importance of what they watch. The offering, however, requires a flamboyant presentation: it invites you to participate in a unique event, advises you that history is being made, stresses the singularity of the happening.

The same words, over and over, night after night.

This degradation of information, turned into a spectacle, should surprise no one in a city that transforms any tragedy into a farce.

From the long-ago plans of the CIA to exterminate Fidel Castro and his regime in the 1960s, the same scheme has been used repeatedly in this city, a scheme hard to understand outside Miami: the use of ample resources and million-dollar funds for the purpose of achieving nothing.

In this sense, once can draw a curve that goes from the alleged anti-Castro militancy, violent and radical, to the description of alleged military operations, privileges, abuses and as much intimate detail as is known or can be invented about the regime in Havana.

Displaying a roguishness typical of the Golden Age in Spain, there are people who come to this city and, without shaking off their Castro dust, after asking about the best places to dine and sleep, appear on any radio or TV station to tell what they say they saw or heard, without stinting on tales of terror and unfounded warnings.

They are merchants of fear, who soon learn how to sell any exaggeration. They are phonies who claim they know secret plans – which generally they themselves cooked up on the road – that are only a trick to pick up a few dollars.

What generally is shown on the small screen is only the passing of time. What emerged as part of a violent effort and went through a stage (that still partly exists) of providing inadequate funds to help the dissidents, is increasingly concentrated in the sensationalist revelation, the book of memoirs filled with secrets, and the “discovery” of the latest plot of Castro-sponsored espionage in Miami.

It is the passage from deeds to gossip and, even if the old sums of money are no longer there, someone always finds a way to make a living from story-telling.

From an industry financed by the state, this “anti-Castro” variant is becoming a personal industry, a showman’s trick, almost the work of a TV evangelist.

The model, which went through several stages – the link between politics and the economy has always been close – and for years demonstrated an enviable effectiveness both for immigrants and residents of the island, is exhausted in its entrepreneurial variant but survives as an individual endeavor.

For the past several years, Washington has felt that anti-Castroism is reaching a dead end, and Democratic and Republican presidents have bet on a transfer of power on the island that might guarantee the necessary and indispensable stability to prevent a massive exodus.

In this sense, the trail of the money for the anti-Castro industry is drifting away from Miami, although it hasn’t completely left the city.

To replace it – even if partly – another industry has flourished, where the ability to assimilate boredom serves to measure the power of ignorance, the profitability of complacency, the benefits of exploiting ordinariness and the inexhaustible vein of stupidity.

To a degree, it could be argued that this industry is less harmful. Still, it reflects the situation that affects an audience of exiles who find nothing better to cope with a decades-long frustration than seeking refuge in puerility.

aarmengol@herald.com