MSNBC’s slogan is “Lean Forward,” but the oppressed in dictatorships apparently need not apply. On Saturday, Newsbusters’ Mark Finkelstein captured this charming moment from Melissa Harris-Perry, in which she frets that the deluge of American tourists — a “plague,” as she calls it — will change Cuba by raising their standard of living and making the country into a “high-tourist econom[y].”

I’m sure the prospect of that is keeping Cuban workers awake at night. Oh wait, that’s hunger:

MELISSA HARRIS-PERRY: On the one hand, it is great to reopen these relationships. On the other hand, I worry about American tourists and the ways we can sometimes be a plague on the rest of the world, particularly in these nations that become high-tourist economies. And I’m wondering if there’s a downside to our economic ties opening up with Cuba, for Cuba!

JOHN GUTIERREZ: For me, let me take the opposite position here, which is that I think we have to stop fetishizing the Cuba of old cars and run down architecture. Cubans are entitled to a good standard of living. That may mean having a home Depot in Cuba. And I think we need to respect that. So before we worry so much about whether or not the arrival of American capitalism changes something in Cuba, I think we need to recognize that Cubans have for 50 years been denied many of the basics of modern life.

HARRIS-PERRY: I hear you, I do, but there’s still this kind of cultural hegemony clash that can exist.

A “cultural hegemony clash,” eh? Yes, much better to leave Cubans poor and oppressed than have that.

Gutierrez pokes huge holes in Harris-Perry’s argument, which is akin to shooting fish in a rain barrel, but the rebuttal misses another point, too. Cuba already has a high-tourist economy, thanks to the rest of the world. The US is alone or nearly so in preventing its citizens from spending its money there, as the hard currency brought by tourists ends up in the hands of the Castros while the workers get near-worthless Cuban pesos. The tourists get to enjoy the “fetish” of 1950s Havana because the Castros keep making it impossible for the Cubans to raise their standard of living.

Having Americans in Havana won’t change anything for the Cubans as long as the Castros keep running their scam and locking the Cuban people in poverty. All that will change will be the hard currency that the Castro regime can hoard, along with the increased legitimacy of having the US participating in the scam. So Melissa Harris-Perry has nothing to worry about after all; normalizing relations under these conditions means that she’ll be able to enjoy the “purity” of Cuban poverty for many years to come.

Apparently, that’s what “lean forward” means.