In Which I Take the Media to the Woodshed, Again

Unease has been my companion in the weeks leading to January this year. I knew that it was as inevitable as the night following the day that the 50th anniversary of the Revolution would unleash paeans to the totalitarian regime in the international media. True to form, the resident shills in Havana have pumped out screeds to the “Robolution,” as many Cubans have characterized it, blending the Spanish word for theft into the original. It’s hard to say whether the less than light-hearted word play is intended to convey the betrayal of purported ideals of the revolution as the Cuban populace understood them in 1959- the restoration of democracy chief among them- as in “Que robo,” or “What a beat”; or whether the reference is to the theft of every single scintilla of real property belonging to every single human being on the island and off, as in “I’ve been robbed.”

Whatever the case, even the veteran journalist apologists in Havana have had to tamp down their praise, as the regime has had to tamp down their “celebrations,” ostensibly because of the straitened circumstances as the result of the trio of hurricanes the island has endured. It is interesting to note that the major official celebration in Santiago was closed to ordinary Cubans, those upon whose backs and hopes and freedom the revolution has managed to maintain itself in power in an unending cycle of poverty and repression. Instead, the festivities were limited to 3,000 party apparatchiks. The event, aside from serving as a delicious metaphor for the present state of Cuba, for the gross inequality between the party and the population, lends itself the suggestion that perhaps there is not the will, political or popular, to celebrate the occasion. It seems probable that yet another factor is the hesitancy of the junta to bring together thousands of screaming Cubans to “celebrate” the unconscionable, perhaps more of a wild card to the powers that be than one would suspect.

Because true to form, the message was that there would be yet more struggle to come. There are those that posit that the embargo has maintained the regime, as opposed to Stalinist repression, say. However, it’s all semantics. Revolutions have a beginning and ending. The word revolution is a noun, not a verb. But this revolution is unending, ever exhorting more from its captive population, always on the brink of becoming. As long as it presents itself in this manner, a seemingly eternal struggle, it is not forced to acknowledge reality, namely that this cadre of leaders has dragged the island nation, once the Pearl of the Antilles, into the third world.

You will not pick up on this, the “greatest” achievement of the Castros, reading any of the media reports and editorials. Ignorance, compounded by bigotry, leads to the bruiting of the talking points of the revolution, namely literacy and healthcare. Never a mention that the regime inherited a population with a 70 percent literacy rate and more doctors per capita than in Britain, that Cubans were forced to trade in their freedom, their rights to self-determination, due process and a host of other civil liberties for a ration book. Comparisons are made to Haiti, as if Haiti would ever have been deemed a fit parallel in the 1950’s. Over and over, we are told that the Castroite regime has outlasted 10 US Presidents, as if it were an occasion for praise, instead of the result of lessons learned at the knee of Papa Stalin with pointers from the East German Stasi.

So here’s a little primer for those who pretend to inform the rest of us. There is no Cuban Revolution. It is over, done, finito. It died in 1960, or thereabouts, when Cubans awoke to the nightmare of a half century hangover. What is left is just one more tin pot dictatorship with an attitude and a very good public relations department. So spare me the historical milestone. It should occasion articles on the half century of misery, squalor and repression visited on the Cuban people and nothing else.

MSM: Some Change, More of the Same

It has become noticeable that there is a certain sea change in the coverage of Cuba by the mainstream news services. It is but a slight shift, but it is there. The new pattern to reports seems to be to begin with Cuban government pronouncements and fictions. In the past that would be end of story. Lately, the middle of the piece will turn to a noted dissident or anti government activist, the spokesman for one of the alphabet soup of organizations dedicated to change. So it is with this story.

A while back, I posted on the regime's revival of a program to bring some sweetness and light into Cuba's prisons, not humane treatment, but song and dance and architecture. Yesterday, the AP reported on singer Silvio Rodriguez's part in this program. In what has to be considered a sign of progress, the article cites an opposing point of view:

Human rights activist Elizardo Sanchez criticized the program as propaganda designed to whitewash the image of Cuban lockups abroad. Sanchez's Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation regularly describes the island's prison conditions as "subhuman."

Still, the AP missed a major part of the story. They neglected to mention that political prisoners who have refused to attend Rodriguez's appearances have been severely punished and now are whisked away beforehand to avoid the appearance of Cuban reality. You would think that news organizations would read the dispatches written by independent journalists from the island, non?

MSM Coverage of Cuba: A Study in Contradictions

Once in a while, little bits of truth make their way out of the blather that constitutes so much of what is reported from the island. Maybe the usual suspects get tired of spouting the party line or the tension between telling the truth and not upsetting their hosts shows. The result is coverage that is a study in contradiction, an uneasy blend of truth and fiction.

Take this article from the AP. The headline is just plain misleading: "Cuba Parliament Must Decide on Castro." This same inaccuracy is repeated later in the article:

Still unknown, however, is whether the assembly will choose Castro as council president when it convenes for the first time on Feb. 24, or whether the bearded revolutionary will step down after nearly 50 years at Cuba's helm.

Cuba's parliament has about as much say as to whether the coma andante stays in power as I do. So it would be more accurate to phrase it thus:

Still unknown, however, is whether the assembly will [be instructed]to choose Castro as council president.

Note also the diction in the article, Cubans are being "asked" to "back" a range of candidates that includes "musicians" and "athletes," instead of being "forced" to "rubber stamp" a "slate of party hacks." Oh, that's right, the article tells us that according to the government, you don't have to be a party member. Ah huh.

But even as the article would seem to lend countenance to the outright lies of the government, it deconstructs. To counter the implication that voting is voluntary, we have this sentence:

Many Cubans say they feel compelled to vote in a country where neighborhood leaders have a say in their chances to get jobs, housing and other official approvals.

Of course, it doesn't make clear the connection between the neighborhood snitches and jobs, etc... Still, it's a smattering of the truth.

And in direct opposition to all that implied power is the use of "rubber stamp" not once but twice to describe the activity of that less than august body, as in "the parliament that rubber stamps official party policy."

So which is it? We know, but unfortunately many don't. Most readers are not going to do an exegesis of the text. They will at best give it a cursory look and come away with the impression that the "Parliament" is going to decide whether fifo stays in power. It's a sad state of affairs when this represents progress.