Printer FriendlyOn Tuesday Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen apologized for saying that he loves and respects Fidel Castro. His team has suspended him for five games, but Cuban immigrants in Florida are not satisfied. Anger at Guillen is so widespread and so passionate that the team is under pressure to fire him.
Poor Guillen has a rhetorical tightrope to walk now. If he tries to placate Cuban-Americans by saying anything negative about Castro, he’ll probably face just as much rage from liberals in Massachusetts and California (and just about every college faculty in the nation) as he currently faces in Florida.
While people who have had actual experience with Communism loath and fear it, sheltered liberals find it fashionable to praise Communism and Communists.
Left wingers in the US are just full of love and respect for Fidel. Among movie stars he’s practically a demigod. Lloyd Billingsly wrote a Front Page Magazine article about Hollywood stars who love Fidel Castro, and its full of amusing quotes. Here’s an excerpt:
Thus, Steven Spielberg described his meeting with Castro as “the most important eight hours of my life.” Oliver Stone called Castro “very selfless and moral” and “one of the world’s wisest men.” Jack Nicholson dubbed him “a genius.” Says Harry Belafonte, who has never met a left wing tyrant he didn’t like, “If you believe in freedom, if you believe in justice, if you believe in democracy, you have no choice but to support Fidel Castro!” Chevy Chase’s opinion is that “Socialism works. I think Cuba might prove that.” But the Castro suck-up Oscar should go to Godfather impresario Francis Ford Coppola: “Fidel, I love you. We both have the same initials. We both have beards. We both have power and want to use it for good purposes.”
Liberals all around the nation proudly wear T-shirts with pictures of Che Gueverra, who did most of Castro’s killing for him when they were consolidating Castro’s power over the Cuban people back in the 1950’s and 60’s. Some of the more liberal Congressional Democrats used to travel down to Cuba to meet with Castro, when he was in better health, and would always come back to praise him to the American press as a great humanitarian.
Perhaps Ozzie Guillen should reverse field again, and go back to talking about his love and respect for the cigar-chomping Cuban butcher. He could manage the Boston Red Sox or the San Francisco Giants, or the baseball team at just about any American university, and be appreciated for his progressive views.
Castro is not a great leader, but he’s not the worst. There are a lot of countries I’d less want to live than Cuba. Most Cubans are better off than they were before Fidel took power. While I would rather live in the United States by far, Cuba is not so bad. If we are taking a stand against dictators there are plenty who ought to be on the list before Fidel. Al-Assad is butchering his populace right now; that’s more important to deal with if we are going to meddle, which I would rather we not meddle anyway.
The whole issue will not go away. Major league baseball (notice that there are no longer two leagues and hence no Major Leagues) only is interested in expanding in Latin America and they feel that they can do it with the help of Mr. Guillen. The feelings of Cuban Americans is not important to MLB.