Viva la cigarlución
Viva la cigarlución
Friday, February 6, 2009
The future appears grim for us cigar enthusiasts, who have in recent years seen our civil liberties erode like the wrapper on a hot, fast-burning Java wafe. Our new president has voted to increase the cap on cigar taxes through SCHIP legislation and advocates increased nationwide smoking bans. Yet there appears to be a glimmer of hope even for our persecuted bunch, as the Hoover Digest, Foreign Policy magazine and legions of Cuban-Americans plead once more with the federal government: End the embargo.
There was a time when even aficionados considered the embargo a worthwhile foreign policy endeavor. President Kennedy narrowly averted apocalyptic nuclear war and sought to strip a crazy, communist dictator of funds that he would inevitably use on crazy, communist schemes by prohibiting all trade with Cuba (though only after he had purchased 1,000 Petite H. Upmann cigars for himself!). Yet in this era of change and supposed hope, how can we allow an antiquated and unnecessarily cruel vestige of the Cold War to persist? How can we continue to smoke disgusting Honduran cigars when a bounty of delicious Cubans lie a mere 90 miles away?
I speak on behalf of all downtrodden cigar smokers when I say this: Mr. President, if you seek prosperity, if you seek liberalization, hear our raspy, smoky cries! Mr. President, tear down this embargo!
Review: Davidoff 3000
Strength: Mild
Shape: Panatela
Cost: ~$13
Ever since he ended his long but troubled partnership with Cubatabaco in 1991, Zino Davidoff has served as the unparalleled leader of the non-Cuban cigar market. Though his cigars, now made with Dominican tobacco, have little in common with their Cuban predecessors, aficionados continue to count them among the best available in the world. The Davidoff 3000 challenges its smoker to find a proper way to describe it. Go-to words like earthy and woody fail to capture its true flavor.
During the first third of this long, thin smoke, I was tempted to draw parallels to the feeling of approaching spring, but this suggests that the cigar possesses a sense of welcoming that it simply lacks. It tastes, instead, of the first hints of autumn in rural Vermont, insomuch as its mildness gives its smoker a sense of comfort and ease. The bouquet contains an unexpected amount of spice that balances its lack of potency and allows even a seasoned smoker to enjoy its complex flavor. Nice roll, albeit a bit veiny, similar shape to the Cohiba Lancero and a perfect burn. All in all, a fine daytime smoke. B+
Comments
None 2 years, 9 months ago
Dear Mr. Roosevelt,
Your historical argument has major problems, in that it makes the following seriously flawed assertions:
1) The idea that Gorbachev instituted liberalizing reforms in the USSR thanks to coercion by some nebulous Western democratizing force;
2) The idea that it was perestroika, not glasnost, that really helped bring about the collapse of the Soviet Union (glasnost, you'll remember, concerned freedom of information, not trade);
and 3) The idea that China's oppressive nature and violations of human rights have somehow ended, or seriously abated, since they stopped being quite so protectionist.
Just because this kind of factual sloppiness was so useful in starting the Spanish-American War is no reason to press it on us all nowadays.
None 3 years, 3 months ago
I apologize for ruining the enjoyment of some to forget life's nasty realities while puffing on a cigar rolled by a slave, but I have this peculiar thing that is called a conscience. Just like I could not enjoy a piece of bread stolen from a starving homeless child so that I can have something to spread butter on while I wait for my steak dinner, I cannot enjoy a product produced by slaves forced to work for their slave master.
I know what you're thinking: what do cigars have to do with oppression? On the surface, absolutely nothing. But when those cigars are produced by an oppressive, dictatorial regime that treats its people as slaves and sells their skills and labor to the highest bidder, than the two become inextricably attached.
It sucks, I know, but if you do not possess a conscience, then you really shouldn't worry about it. Continue enjoying your Cuban cigars and pay no mind to the tens of thousands of Cubans that have died at the hands of the regime you purchased that cigar from. Without a conscience, it is only a minor detail that is not even worth mentioning. Light up that Cohiba and please, be sure not to choke on it.
None 3 years, 3 months ago
Alberto, your comments are very impassioned and moving, but they ignore what history has taught us. How do we stop oppressive communist regimes? Do we simply turn a blind eye to them and hope that they'll just die off on their own?
No. We impel Mikhail Gorbachev to institute perestroika in Soviet Russia. We sit down at the table and tear open the protectionist policies of Maoist China. In short, you don't end oppressive communism by ignoring it.
You end oppressive communism by forcing liberal capitalism upon it. You do not allow Cubatabaco to remain the largest industry in Cuba in terms of exports, but rather you install a McDonald's in the middle of Havana.
Human rights violations have never stopped us from trading, but they have instead only further encouraged us to.
None 3 years, 3 months ago
Ted, I am not ignoring what history has shown us--on the contrary, I am basing my opinion on what history has shown us about the Castro regime. Except for the US, Cuba trades with practically every other capitalist country in this world. Cuba receives over 2-million tourists a year that are cash carrying, rum drinking, cigar smoking capitalists. The Cuban regime is involved in dozens of joint ventures with Spanish, Canadian, British, Italian, French, Brazilian, and countless other companies that operate in the capitalist realm within Cuba. Cuba has done this for the past twenty-odd years since they lost their sugar-daddy, the USSR.
Now tell me, Ted, what have all these capitalist ventures and capitalist tourists done to promote human rights for the average Cuban? I'll save you the time looking it up: absolutely nothing. Therefore, if we are going to look to history to see just how a policy of "engagement" works with the Castro monarchy, then there should be no doubt in anyone's mind that it does not work.
Your references to perestroika and America's engagement with Maoist China are actually the reason why engagement will never work with the Castro regime. You see, they, too, are students of history and the last thing they will allow is for the same thing to happen to them that happened to the USSR.
If we were to constructively engage the Cuban regime without conditions, then it would be the US that did not learn from history. Unfortunately, the Cuban people would be the ones repeating that tragic history. In the meantime, we will be sitting pretty enjoying Cuban cigars planted, harvested, and rolled by Cubans who will remain slaves of Castro, Inc.
None 3 years, 3 months ago
It is interesting how the author comes to the conclusion that the best way to alleviate the incursions on cigar smokers' rights is to allow the importation of cigars from a country whose totalitarian government does not allow its citizens to have any rights. The right of Cubans to live free and not be treated as chattel by the dictatorial regime is trumped by the author's need to enjoy cigars planted, picked, and rolled by slave labor.
Then again, they are only Cubans, and who really cares if they have to live in misery and squalor under the iron fist of murderous and vile regime; as long as they continue producing the world's finest cigars, it seems the author has no problem with that.
None 3 years, 3 months ago
Why does everything always have to be about oppression with you liberals? Here we are, smoking delicious cigars that allow us to temporarily forget the brevity of life, and you come along and ruin everything. It's like those Yale Sustainable Food Project fliers - maple syrup and slavery should have nothing to do with one another.
Also, Cuban cigars are no longer the best in the world, Nicaraguan cigars are.
None 3 years, 3 months ago
Great prose for the enjoyment of cigar smokers who a genuinely professional enjoyers!
Loved the analogy of the Vermont landscapes.
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