You could stick an intercontinental ballistic missile between those front teeth. I was raised with a respect for proper dental care and hygiene. Nikita's smile was scarier than any thought of nuclear war. This strutting, cigar-chomping commie dictator's beard was, and still is, way out of line. A trim now and then and a shampoo would help.
Image is everything in today's world.
If Fidel had a neatly-groomed beard, he would present a more positive image to the world, and the naive people who think Cuba is a bastion of freedom would gladly check themselves into his prison cells. If our economic embargo of Cuba has deprived the barber of clippers and scissors, perhaps he could fashion some from the many 1953 Chevrolets still cruising Cuba's roads. I dived under the couch when I first saw these smiling, perky, fresh-scrubbed young people on the tube. Here we were in the middle of the Cold War facing nuclear winter, the threat of being sliced to pieces by trillions of shards of nuclear bomb-propelled glass and the prospect of a Russian diet of dehydrated beets, and they were singing happy songs. Ma and Pa were never that happy, neither were brother nor sis, auntie nor uncle nor anyone in the neighborhood.