A word from the Gleaner

Every so often I come across something interesting in the Jamaica Cleaner, the latest of which takes a swipe at the US’s nonsensical policy toward Castro’s Cuba.

The writer, a rasta looking Melville Cooke, starts out: “…while the obsessed (and I believe at least slightly demented) in the U.S. who see a fabricated world only through television lenses (one way, to boot) have salivated over the thought of Castro dying since he overthrew Uncle Sam's stooge Fulgencio Batista in January 1959, they seem to not have thought that, just maybe, they have been totting up a few dead presidents themselves.”

A tortured sentence, but you sure get the drift. He goes through the five dead presidents who had dealings with Castro, from Eisenhower on. Then takes a delightful swipe at the incumbent: … Bush the dumbest (he must be; there can't be another person in the family who would do something sillier than wave to Stevie Wonder elected by thievery in 2001 and subsequently re-elected by terrorising the electorate about terrorism, is slated to leave office by 2009.

He does balance the score sheet with a similar list of Russian leaders, but that somehow lacks the bite of the US job, which speculated on Castro surviving till 2009: that would make double figures of dead Presidents he has outlasted and, if he quits at nine, with four dead, that is a darned good scoresheet.

The US Cuba policy has always sounded a trivial, historical idiocy to me; perhaps justified on the basis that America always needs an enemy ‘so we’ll just keep Cuba tucked away for a rainy day’.

Though I’m inclined to think it’s more about an embarrassment that just won’t go away. Besides outlasting a bunch of presidents, Castro has also managed to outsmart most of them at one time or another.