Fidel: like a grandfather "who just doesn’t know when to stop talking"

The New Yorker's Jon Lee Anderson, who had the indignity of watching his superb essay on life in post-millenial Cuba become suddenly redundant, avers in a Q&A that Cubans are aware that their supreme leader is in his dotage, evincing crowd restlessness during one of Fidel's classic six-hour tirades:

Everybody was moving and restless and talking and sleeping openly, things like that, except for the people right around him. The noise level was huge. And I was shocked. I certainly don’t remember seeing anything like that before. People would have sat in respectful silence for a long time. And it made me think of Ceausescu’s last appearance in Romania, when he appeared in the Republican Square and suddenly part of the crowd started yelling. It was like in the film Network, when Peter Finch sticks his head out the window and says, “I’m not going to take it anymore.” You saw Ceausescu’s face turn from confusion to anger, and, finally, to fear. And he flees, and then we see the helicopter leave, and suddenly the revolution is on.