WASHINGTON — Stop the presses! Finally, after half a century of
staunch disagreement with Dr. Fidel Castro, I see that the Cuban
dictator has rendered a judgment with which I heartily agree.
Responding to the Prophet Obama’s friendly conversation with his
brother Raul Castro at the Summit of the Americas in steamy
Port-of-Spain, Fidel, in the words of Associated Press, “blasted
the new U.S. President for showing signs of ‘superficiality.’”
After all the Hollywood stars Fidel has hosted on his island
paradise, you can rest assured that Fidel is a connoisseur of
superficiality.
Fidel apparently was angered by the Prophet’s response to
President Raul Castro’s offer of Cuban diplomats to convene with
their American counterparts and discuss todo. That is
Spanish for everything. Pardon my swanking, but while at
the Summit the Prophet did some swanking with his bilingualism
too. He called Hugo Chavez, another Latin American dictator, “mi
amigo” with near perfect accentuation.
President Castro had mentioned human rights, press freedoms, and
political prisoners as topics for discussion, and our President
in his innocence thought Castro was talking about…well, political
prisoners, for instance the prominent opposition leaders who were
imprisoned six years ago, many of whom still suffer in Cuba’s
ghastly hellholes. He also mentioned the Cuban government’s
larcenous policy of taxing the money that Cubans abroad send back
to their families. That really irked Fidel, whose denunciation of
our President could put him in bad odor with his Hollywood fans.
Sean Penn, Oliver Stone, Michael Moore, and the rest have had
warm relations with Fidel over the years. The political awareness
and activism of our actors and actresses goes back generations to
the selfless political engagement of the late John Wilkes Booth.
Always, our actors are passionate about their beliefs.
There is something curious about the frenetic pace of the 44th
president’s foreign trips this month. Not since the summer of
1998 has an American president made so many dashes abroad. Have
any of the sleuths in the Washington press corps checked on
President Obama’s relations with his interns? I josh, but his
energetic globetrotting is unusual, given his obligations at
home. Here we are struggling with recession and a sour banking
system. The Prophet adds to them the most colossal domestic
package since the New Deal, whereupon he hastens off to Europe,
the Middle East, the Caribbean and Mexico. Increasingly, it
appears that the Prophet Obama is not so much conducting a
presidency as a world tour. He left for London on April 2, hit
Strasbourg and Baden-Baden, Prague, Istanbul, and Iraq; and
returned early on April 8. Eight days later he went off to
Mexico, then Trinidad, returning to his empty White House on
April 19. What will be next for our restless president,
Disneyland?
As I mentioned last week, to hear this president run down
America, you would think it was a failed state until he was
transformed from junior senator of Illinois to president of the
United States. He has surpassed Jimmy Carter’s precedent of being
the first ex-president to criticize while on foreign soil a
sitting president. President Obama has become the first sitting
American president to criticize America while on foreign soil,
and he does it with the practiced zeal of a person who has been
feeding on anti-American myths for years.
During his visit with President Chavez, President Obama received
from his new amigo a copy of the virulently
anti-American book, Open Veins of Latin America: Five
Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent. As the book,
abounding with exaggeration and arrant falsehoods, appeared in
1971, I would not be surprised if the president already had a
copy. Doubtless he heard similar anti-American canards during his
pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright’s anti-American rants.
Certainly our president’s friend Bill Ayers, alumnus of the
Weather Underground, believes every word in Open Veins.
Its anti-Americanism was at the heart of the New Left back in the
days of the Cold War. Its thesis is that Europe and America have
exploited Latin America for centuries, leaving it impoverished
and governed by corrupt leaders.
Now, of course, Latin America has such democratic exemplars as
presidents Chavez and Castro. There are also Nicaragua’s
President Daniel Ortega and Bolivia’s Evo Morales. So maybe good
government is at hand for Latin America. Possibly it is only a
matter of time before these political geniuses return Latin
America to the glory of the Incas and the Aztecs. Perhaps
President Obama, too, can succeed in bringing civilization to
America. Meanwhile, think of all the frequent-flyer miles he is
accumulating.
