Liberal on Fidel Castro Ruiz

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

 Liberal on Fidel

www.metrotimes.com

 POLITICS & PREJUDICES
And the winner is ... Fidel!
by Jack Lessenberry
4/26/00

It's the world's longest- running political soap opera.



 Rod Serling doesn’t return my calls, perhaps because he is dead. But if 
it were 1960
and I could get the Rodster on my Princess trim-line rotary dial phone, 
I’d have a
"Twilight Zone" episode for him that would really knock everyone’s bobby 
socks off.

Ready for this? OK. Forty years ago, TV was black and white, computers were 
mostly
science-fiction, man hadn’t been to outer space yet, and gas-guzzling 
Detroit
dinosaurs weren’t the dominant car, they were, essentially, the only 
cars. So we go
back to that world, where we worried a lot about heavy petting, subliminal 
Soviet
propaganda, whether colored people should be able to eat at Woolworth’s 
lunch
counters, and how to make a really sumptuous, thick gravy. We find one of the 
best
minds in that world, some professor with a crew cut, a mustard-colored 
herringbone
jacket and a bow tie, and we say:

"We’re from the year 2000. The Soviet Union has disappeared, Americans 
have walked on
the moon, and a former Senate majority leader and candidate for president sells
erection pills on TV every night. We live in a world where there are what you 
would
call Negro senators and governors and astronauts, and where some prominent 
members of
society are openly what you would call homosexual, and proud of it.

"Virtually everyone will be able to communicate instantly with almost everyone
anywhere in the world from a magic box called a PC or Mac on the top of their 
desk,
and some can do it from their palm. Many women have a wireless telephone in 
their
purse, and the best-selling cars in America are often Japanese."

We then reach over and slap that Viceroy cigarette out of our genius’s 
trembling hand.
"So based on that data, Maynard, we want you to predict: A) which world leader 
and B)
what 1960 foreign relations problem will still be giving Washington fits in 
2000?"

Figured out the answer, haven’t you? Well, call Regis Philbin. But first 
* think about
the sheer, wonderful absurdity of it. A few years ago I looked at one of the 
most
famous relics in the history of television and politics: the Kennedy-Nixon 
debates.

Most of the time what the candidates talk about on those tapes seems so 
hopelessly out
of date they might as well have been discussing crossbow specifications, or how 
much
granite would be needed to complete the pyramids.

Except when they get to Cuba, where in language virtually identical to that
Republicans use today they bluster and moan about Fidel Castro and his 
imprisoned
island, as they put it, just 90 miles from our shores, carumba.

Matter of fact, President Kennedy launched an ill-fated, half-assed attempt to 
invade
Cuba, just a few months into his reign. Little did he know Fidel would still be 
in
place when the day came when most Americans had been born after JFK died. 
Virtually
every other notable politician of that day * Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, 
Dwight D.
Eisenhower, etc. * is long since into his final dirt nap. Back then there was 
some
point to being afraid of Fidel Castro; his alliance with our mortal enemy, 
which gave
the evil, scary bad Soviet Union a base on our turf.

So bugged by this were we that once we came * almost * to nuclear war over 
Cuba, yes,
precious, a long time ago. Nine presidents have come and eight have gone, and 
still
there sits Fidel, with iron-gray beard, but at 72, still spitting in our eye.

Why on earth we let him bother us still is beyond comprehension. Cuba is about 
half
the size of Michigan, with maybe a million more people than we have, poor, 
broke, and
without money, nukes or even modern cars.

What is our problem? We don’t exactly have to worry about Moscow anymore, 
do we? Yet
the Cubans in Miami holler, our rabid right hisses and spits, and Fidel solemnly
promises to protect his hombres from the evil Yanquis.

That’s the world’s longest-running political soap opera. Just in 
case you haven’t been
paying attention the last few weeks, here’s a recent recap. Fidel was 
thought to be
fading from view until one day last fall, when a cute little boy was plucked 
out of
the ocean after his mother had tried to flee to America with him.

She drowned, but her little son Elian survived. His daddy back in Cuba wanted 
his son.
But some cousins who fled Fidel said no, the boy must grow up free, and kept him
captive to make sure he’d do so. Frustrated, boxed in, an outgoing U.S. 
president’s
attorney general had the child ripped from his Miami relatives’ arms.

Now everyone is in some sort of uproar. George ("the stupid one") Bush has 
stayed
silent, unwilling to speak until he could find Cuba on the map. Al Gore pissed 
off the
president by calling for Elian to be kept here in a clumsy and cynical bid for
Cuban-American support.

And Fidel, looking cool and statesmanlike, outwitted the imperialist gringos 
again,
and hopefully probably bought himself a few more years in power. Truthfully, 
we’d be
lost without him. He thrilled us in ‘60; helped oust Jimmy Carter with 
the Mariel
boatlift in ‘80, and he’s back, better than ever, with the Elian 
Follies 2000. Salud,
Castro baby! Without you and Saddam, we might have to worry more about our real
problems. Venceremos nunca, and may all your sugar cane be sweet.