Picture of the Day Award

Goes to RafaelMartel.com for this entry.

For those of you who might have missed the story. Code Pink came to town in Miami, or should I say to the symbolic heart of the Cuban exile/Cuban American community- the Versailles- to protest what they termed the harboring of a terrorist. The combined Cuban community begged to differ, as they see Posada Carriles as a freedom fighter, whether or not they agree with whatever methods he has employed. The crowd of two hundred irate Cubans was waiting for the six gatos or, more accurately, gatas and the more aggressive stripped their pinkmobile of assorted flounces, essentially running them out of town on a rail.

There has been much discussion as to whether this was the appropriate move. I am reminded of one of my all time favorite movies, the rather shlocky The Wind and the Lion. In it, Sheik Mohammed El Rasuli (Sean Connery) has kidnapped an American missionary(Candice Bergen) raising the ire of Teddy Roosevelt (Brian Keith) who dispatches the marines, forcing El Rasulito flee for his life.

The last scene features two riders in silhoutte by the seashore. The shorter one says, "El Rasuli, we have lost everything!" Then comes the voice of El Rasuli in its luxuriant Scottish tones saying something like "Ah, but Hadjii is there nothing in your life that was worth losing everything?"

So it is that there is a certain satisfaction in stopping the "ladies" in mid antic. Theirs was an act of sheer provocation, somewhat tantamount to demanding Mandela be kept in jail as a terrorist in the Soweto township of old. You don't taunt an aggreived people. As Henry Gomez has pointed out, they should more logically have protested at the places where the decisions were actually made. I don't think that much damage was done to the perception of Cubans. The numbers were too small; and the Pinkers, too freaky. As a matter of fact, a Code Pink attack is perhaps the only thing the Cuban American community and Hillary Clinton have in common.

However, the point is well taken. We do have to be careful. Our passion and zeal can be off-putting to the American Public. A better response would perhaps have been something like the one in the picture. Maybe, we should have a rapid response team. We could show up in costume with the cubichemobile. We could even blast some music, turn it into a party.... Naw, we are too respectable...and we work for a living.