There Is Always Fidel

There Is Always Fidel
By Emmett Tyrrell
12/30/2010







WASHINGTON -- Next week marks the 52nd anniversary of Fidel Castro's arrival to his Cuban throne. I cannot wait to see how it will be solemnized. Will little children appear before Fidel throwing flowers? They'd better not throw them too hard. He is pretty frail. Will there be a military parade? If there is, where will they come up with the gasoline? There is hardly enough in the country for the Communist Party's leaders' limousines. What will they be celebrating? By now, everyone knows that the revolution was a stupendous bust starting about 51 years ago.

Perhaps Steven Spielberg will be there. He dined with Fidel back in 2002. Upon leaving Fidel's presence, Spielberg enthused that he had just spent "the eight most important hours" of his life. Fidel is no fast-food enthusiast. He has long repasts and two, possibly three, desserts. He also has long and luxurious confabs. After a three-hour visit with Fidel in 1998, Jack Nicholson called him a "genius." He added, "We spoke about everything" -- which probably makes Nicholson a genius, too. I wonder whether they talked about the plight of political prisoners in Fidel's jails. Actually, I wonder whether they talked about how Fidel was presiding over one of the last communist dictatorships left on earth -- and, naturally enough, an impoverished one.

Something there is about a communist dictator that brings out the stunning vacuity of idiots like Spielberg and Nicholson and all the rest of the Hollywoodians. Remember when filmmaker Saul Landau complimented Fidel for having "brought a greater equality in terms of wealth distribution (to Cuba) than ... any country in the world today"? Fidel accomplished this feat by simply stealing all of Cuba's wealth and leaving everyone poor except him and his cronies. Would Landau and his fellows admire such confiscations if practiced here in America? Who would have enough money to go to the movies?

One of Fidel's most fabulous claims has to do with the health care system he has imposed on his people. No one there suffers Michelle Obama's dread obesity, except for the occasional Communist Party functionary. In fact, everyone is in the pink. I recently heard of the marvels of the communist system, and I did not even have to turn to Fidel's state-owned radio to hear it. It was broadcast on our own state-owned broadcast system, on PBS' "NewsHour." There, in a three-part series, one Ray Suarez sang of Cuba's accomplishments. There was not a word about how he was covering health care in a police state, just chatter about a country where doctors abound and everyone is checked regularly for the good of public health. According to Suarez, the key to the Cuban people's rubicund good health is "aggressive preventive medicine." He went on, "Homes are investigated, water quality checked, electrical plugs checked."

Frankly, I was a little surprised by all Suarez's guff. The generals of Myanmar would not get off so easily. Gratefully, the vigilant Mary Anastasia O'Grady of The Wall Street Journal, who specializes in Latin America, also was in Suarez's audience. She points out that "the series was taped in Cuba with government 'cooperation' so there is no surprise that it went heavy on the party line." You can say that again. And O'Grady refutes Suarez with a memoir from Vicente Botin, a Spanish Television correspondent who spent four years in the Cuban hellhole.

Among other points he makes, Botin claims that Cuban homes have no regular running water or steady electricity, even in the capital. Botin says that in Havana, 75.5 percent of the water pipes are "unusable" and that the government "recognized that 60 percent of pumped water was lost before it made it to consumers." To alleviate the problem, O'Grady writes, "the city began providing water in each neighborhood only on certain days. Havana water is also notoriously contaminated. Foreigners drink only the bottled stuff, which Cubans can't afford." It is curious that a country that cannot even provide water to its people can boast of a superb health system.

Yet we now have it from PBS' Suarez that the public health care system provided by Fidel is superb. Cuba -- a country that cannot provide clean water to its citizenry, to say nothing of electricity -- is a land of vigorous good health. Homes are investigated, Suarez says, and "electrical plugs checked." Possibly that is because in Cuba, doctors double as secret police, or is it the other way round? At any rate, it is reassuring to know that in Cuba, house calls are made.