Useful site Useful Stooges catches the New York Times in the act of being itself, presenting a ludicrous and disgusting obituary for Cuban mass murderer Fidel Castro. Writes the U.S.:
“When Fidel Castro first came on the scene more than half a century ago, the New York Times famously disgraced itself by serving as his chief PR tool. When he died a few hours ago, the Times again brought shame upon itself with a jaw-droppingly fawning obituary headlined ‘Fidel Castro, Cuban Leader who Defied U.S., Dies at 90.’
“Let’s make this clear: Castro wasn’t a 'leader’; he was a totalitarian dictator. But the Times, alas, has plainly never gotten over its schoolgirl crush on him. The first paragraphs of its obit, which carried the byline of Anthony DePalma, were studded with the kind of words customarily used to eulogize heroes and saints. Castro was a 'fiery apostle of revolution.’ He was 'a towering international figure.’ He was a man who 'dominated his country with strength and symbolism from the day he triumphantly entered Havana on Jan. 8, 1959, and completed his overthrow of Fulgencio Batista by delivering his first major speech in the capital before tens of thousands of admirers at the vanquished dictator’s military headquarters.'”
Way back in 2003, quasi-communist playwright Arthur Miller had a chance to visit Castro’s golden isle and chat with the Maximum Leader. Miller wrote a fascinating account of their conversation, amusing both for its revelations and its ass-coverings. The collapse of communism, plus the fact that Fidel’s habit of oppressing not only unimportant people like peasants but also important ones, like, you know, artists, had become widely publicized made it impossible, or at least, “incorrect,” for Miller to ignore the horrifying poverty of the Cuban people and the disgusting privilege of its leaders.1 Writes Miller of the Man himself, “my quick impression was that had he not been a revolutionary politician he might well have been a movie star. He had that utterly total self-involvement, that need for love and agreement and the overwhelming thirst for the power that comes with total approval.”2 The only difference was, Castro was a movie star who could murder people. And he did.
Afterwords
What’s the deal with NYT obituaries? They seem to be a haven for both right- and left-wing crap. I earlier expressed rage over an obit that “explained” how the hapless B-1 bomber “won” the Cold War.
UPDATE
On the Times editorial page, Roger Cohen fills us in on the real Fidel Castro and gives President Obama’s mealy-mouthed evasion on this “singular figure” a deserved poke, though the neocon moral Roger attempts to draw from Obama’s painfully “correct” statement is waaaay off-base. Well, no one’s right all the time,
- Miller went to Cuba with his wife, photographer Inge Morath. When the Millers went to see Castro, Morath was carrying her camera, an expensive Leica. A guard demanded that she surrender it, and when she did so, the man deliberately dropped it on a hard stone floor—one reason why Miller is (sometimes) sharply critical of what he saw in Fidel’s island paradise ↩︎
- He doesn’t sound at all like Donald Trump, does he? ↩︎
