You're probably familiar with Cracked.com, the epic listicle site that was popular a decade ago and now mainly exists to promote paid content. In their heyday, they made many of the standard "lol look at how evil North Korea is" articles, but what stood out more to me was this article, 6 Ugly Facts Of Life In Communist Cuba, which wasw ritten with input from some gusanos and reads like US state department propaganda.

Most of the article is literally anecdotes from these people, which are the standard "Castro bad" crap, but one is notably ridiculous:

One day, my sister came home and exclaimed, 'Fidel is better than Jesus!' In school they had asked the kindergartners to close their eyes and pray to Jesus for ice cream. When they opened their eyes -- nothing. Then they closed their eyes again and prayed to Fidel for ice cream, and ... surprise! Ice cream cups on their desks!

matt Wow, such a plausible story! How could Fidel deceive the children like this?

The few sections that are actually sourced aren't any better:

It's hard to say how many people Castro's new regime gunned down (evil dictators being notoriously spotty record-keepers), but the butcher's bill was probably around 30,000.

This links to the 1995-ass website of some rando Italian-American writer called Piero Scaruffi, who cites The Black Book of Communism among others. A very credible source, I'm sure.

He got lucky: Thanks to Operation Pedro Pan, a joint venture between the Swiss embassy and the Catholic Church to spirit children to America, he secured permission to leave ... alone. "So I came to the U.S. without my parents and lived in a refugee camp in Florida."

No criticism of Operation Pedro Pan? At all? Alright!

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[+] 89 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)
  • [–] [S] 72 points 2 years ago (3 children)
  • [–] 27 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    who we basically kept in a fucking closet

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  • [–] 63 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    Tbf, those children would not have had ice cream without Fidel. Particularly free ice cream. Getting ice cream to happen for everybody in Cuba was a huge endeavour for Castro, as he believed every person in Cuba deserved at least that luxury.

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  • [–] 33 points 2 years ago

    I think ice cream is just the nice little treat on top of something much more important. Making it accessible means widespread electrification and refrigeration. Two things absolutely critical for a modern society.

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  • [–] 55 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    Cracked.com more like Crackkker.com amarite fellas

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  • [+] 41 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)
  • [–] [S] 29 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (3 children)

    Wow, I never would've figured out that Jimi Hendrix's Star-Spangled Banner wasn't meant to be a straight-laced anthem! capitaldcolon Thanks for telling me about that hidden message, Cracked!

    edit: 99 Luftballons had a ”hidden message”, unless of course you were one of the millions of people who spoke German, in which case it wasn't hidden at all. Must've been a good gig getting paid to write this.

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  • [–] 54 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    One day, my sister came home and exclaimed, 'Fidel is better than Jesus!' In school they had asked the kindergartners to close their eyes and pray to Jesus for ice cream. When they opened their eyes -- nothing. Then they closed their eyes again and prayed to Fidel for ice cream, and ... surprise! Ice cream cups on their desks!

    Can't argue with those results

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  • [+] 48 points 2 years ago (5 children)
  • [–] 44 points 2 years ago* (6 children)

    The Quorators got a partnership with Cracked for like 3 months then got fired for supporting Palestine and clogging the Cracked office’s toilet

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  • [–] 30 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    You'd be surprised how many Cracked alumni show up in media.

    Soren Bowie writes for American Dad! now (which I think is actually the most tolerable Seth show, probably because it's currently just absurdist humour and not random jabs at minorities like Family Guy)

    Dan O'Brien writes for Last Week Tonight, which is lib but did help "radicalize" at least one person I know from radical centrism so I'll forgive the show for being lib

    Doctor Mister Cody Johnson has a show on Youtube about how bad feral boars are with Katy Stoll

    Robert Evans is now a famous fed

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  • [–] [S] 22 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    Cracked inexplicably fired all those people and shut down their video section, then the site pretty much died.

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  • [–] 39 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    Fidel is better than Jesus!

    Yes.

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    [–] 37 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    Ah Cracked, where Robert Fedvans cut his teeth before making it big as a podcaster grifting baby leftists.

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  • [–] 36 points 2 years ago

    Praying to Fidel works though, I prayed for him to persecute plantation owners and it came true

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  • [+] 33 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)
    [–] [S] 29 points 2 years ago

    There was already a post about this angery

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  • [–] 28 points 2 years ago

    I see Robert Fedvans is back

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  • [+] 20 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

    I remember seeing that Ice Cream thing in a really shitty anti communist PSA we watched on hextube lmao

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  • [+] 17 points 2 years ago* (last edited 1 month ago)
    [–] 16 points 2 years ago

    I never thought there'd be a Cracked article more obnoxious than their usual slop of "What if George Washington teamed up with freaking Batman!!!1 soypoint-1" but here we are

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  • [–] 15 points 2 years ago

    It works if you read it as 100% sarcasm

    Way to stand up for the integrity of comedy, Vivian's dad! By contrast, we once got a sternly worded letter from a brand of laundry detergent and rolled over like a well-trained dog.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago

    The fact that so many books still name the Beatles as "the greatest or most significant or most influential" rock band ever only tells you how far rock music still is from becoming a serious art. Jazz critics have long recognized that the greatest jazz musicians of all times are Duke Ellington and John Coltrane, who were not the most famous or richest or best sellers of their times, let alone of all times. Classical critics rank the highly controversial Beethoven over classical musicians who were highly popular in courts around Europe. Rock critics are still blinded by commercial success. The Beatles sold more than anyone else (not true, by the way), therefore they must have been the greatest. Jazz critics grow up listening to a lot of jazz music of the past, classical critics grow up listening to a lot of classical music of the past. Rock critics are often totally ignorant of the rock music of the past, they barely know the best sellers. No wonder they will think that the Beatles did anything worthy of being saved.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago

    Whoa, I remember this site and article, both

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  • [–] 4 points 2 years ago (1 child)
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