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Cuban Contradictions

By Matt Cooper
Posted Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2000, at 5:11 PM ET

Hey,

RSS

I've got www.matthewcooper.com but haven't updated it in ages. You've inspired me to try. I kept updating it with the software of a certain major software manufacturer and I had a lot of problems which may be my fault rather than that of a certain major software manufacturer. Do you contract out? Can I be my own Webmaster or is that too autoerotic?

Yeah, this Cuban thing is wild. I haven't seen the Miami TV coverage, alas, but I can imagine they pander like the Miami Herald, which is known for that. My prediction still holds: The ex-patriots in Miami will take this kid underground before they hand him over to Daddy. We'll have an Underground Railroad in Little Havana--Harriet Tubman comes to South Beach--and enough MSNBC coverage to fill that void left in our lives but not having a big trial of the moment. Which leads one to think what will happen when Castro falls? Will the Cubans of South Florida return home or stay in the United States?

Are the conservatives hypocrites about Elian, as you said? I was just having this conversation with one of my colleagues. Of course, to some degree they are. As you said, they value the biological family as paramount and then subordinate it to their anti-communism. But if you think today's Cuba is a regime on a par with Pol Pot's Cambodia--something that strikes me as ludicrous--or Ceausescu's Romania (more plausible), then I could see the case for insisting that he stay even if you normally favor Dad's rights. Is that hypocrisy? I'm not so sure. What is hypocritical is the way we've got all these Cuban refugees languishing in U.S. prisons, without any rights whatsoever to a speedy trial, just because they came here in a less dramatic fashion than did young Elian. I don't see McCain and Bush, who've been sure to pander on Elian, speaking up for them. In any event, the kid's been so showered with gifts of Pokémon and bicycles and PlayStation that there's no way he's getting on the flight back to Havana.

All right, I'm gonna have a double espresso and sit through Bradley-Gore tonight. (More Peter Jennings! "Gentlemen, what would be your shhed-hule for introducing this so-called universal coverage?") I hope none of those goons we talked about earlier show up.

Catch you in the morning.
--Matt