During a promotion interview for her latest world tour and animated film, ABC asked Beyoncé Knowles for her reaction to the fallout from the Carter Missile Crisis.
The Carter's trip to Cuba was a massive miscalculation. Beyoncé is the most meticulous, detail-driven artist today. She had to have known that preening around Havana’s streets for a police-state-produced travel ad would get her and her husband a bad run. She made a huge bet that the Carters' combined force of personality would deter any criticism. She rolled snake eyes, though, and the result was an international disaster. Maybe she and Shawn were operating under flawed intel. Did George Tenet brief them before the trip?
Beyoncé's military division of handlers had to assume she'd get pressed on the Cuba trip upon her return. So, in the true diva spirit, Queen Bey just steamrolls over the question and simply plays up her maternal side. Stone-cold-blooded celebrity at work.
Queen Bey may play the natalist card now, but at the end of the day she’s a calculating mogul who's had America in a vice-like grip for more than 15 years. That’s why you see her stressing the Castro-owned Cuban child actors in her answer. Maybe I missed Elián in the background, I don't know.
Hiding behind children is a timeworn strategy Sasha Fierce uses to deflect criticism. After Beyoncé cut the power to the Super Dome less than a month after lip-syncing the National Anthem at the One's second inauguration, she began pandering by pulling up random young girls on stage.
Girls, plural, do not run the world. Beyoncé does.