MAKING LIGHT OF THE STRONGMAN (2024)

And while the former Panamanian strongman was on the lam, the station operated a "Noriega sightings" line. The phone rang off the hook, says Morning Zoo star John "Footy" Kross. One caller had spotted Noriega working at a Shell station on 125th Street.

There is nothing like a fallen dictator to get things started in Miami.

No sooner had Manuel Antonio Noriega settled into his prison cell than the creative sparks began to fly in a place too familiar with the fallout of banana republic politics.

At another FM pop station, Power 96, morning deejay Mark Moseley recorded a plaintive parody of Barry Manilow's "Mandy." He calls it "Manny." Program director Bill Tanner says it's one of the station's five most-requested songs:

"The reason you gave up, they say,

"Is because you ran out of Retin-A ...

"Oh, Manny, you take and you take without giving,

"But we took you away, oh Manny,

"We came in and you started shaking,

"But we got you today, ooooooh Manny."

Spanish-language Super Q, WQBA-FM, has its own Manny hit, an exclusive "interview" with Noriega.

The interviewer, music director Alberto Rodriguez, asks: "General, how do you feel within the four walls of your cell?"

Noriega responds in the romantic voice of Julio Iglesias: "I'm a lonely man, so very lonely."

For other questions, he snaps back in salsa lyrics.

The surrender and arrival of Noriega in the wake of a U.S. invasion moved Perrine car dealer Jack Tkac to flash two special computerized messages on his 40-foot-wide electric billboard.

"Now Manuel, Next Fidel," the sign at his Southern Auto Outlet beams toward U.S. 1 traffic. "Welcome to Miami, Manny."

Drivers honk and occasionally pull over and say, "I love it, I love it, I love it!" says Tkac, who recently spotted a bumper sticker with a competing message: "Today Noriega, Tomorrow Ortega."

One of the most visible examples of Manny mania has been the sight of street-corner vendors hawking Noriega T-shirts. University of Miami student Drew Chulock has done a brisk business peddling $10 T-shirts depicting Noriega behind bars. "Miami: See It Like a Dictator," they say.

Indeed, Miami needed a fallen dictator.

The last dictator to make such a splash was Nicaragua's Anastasio Somoza. But he was dead when he got here. His funeral procession in 1980 filled the streets of Little Havana. His remains are buried at Woodlawn Cemetery on SW Eighth Street.

And, 20 years before that, there was a visit from an aspiring Cuban dictator, who swung through town on a fund-raising trip. Fidel Castro has been inspiring satire ever since. In fact, his 30-year rule has provided surprising material to keep a string of Little Havana vaudeville-type theaters in business for countless seasons.

But even Fidel humor has gotten old, especially when he seems to be staying indoors a lot lately.

Noriega has taken his place -- for now -- on the Cuban exile comedy circuit.

Noriega's plight has inspired Cuban exile satirist Alberto Gonzalez, whose AM radio show was recently yanked off the air because he bashed too many exiled power brokers.

The satirist, who often writes scripts for Little Havana theaters, offers this suggestion for Noriega's security:

"They should send him to the Miami office of the Democratic Party. No one ever goes there.

"Frankly, I shouldn't talk about Noriega. I hate him," says Gonzalez, in an informal script. "I've been playing his prisoner number every day on the Florida lottery and I have yet to win."

He is not alone.

Florida Lottery spokesman Ed George says 12,139 people played Noriega's prisoner ID on Jan. 5, the day the headline "U.S. Prisoner 41568" was stripped across the front page of the Miami Herald.

Lottery operators were stunned by the recurrence of the number 1-4-5-6-8, Noriega's prisoner number in numerical order.

"The computer people couldn't figure out what was going on," says George.

If the number had been drawn in the Fantasy Five contest, 12,139 winners would have split small change. So either way, Noriega was not good luck.