fidel castro, blogger wannabe?

castro’s ranting away about the absurd Posada Carriles case. With barely disguised contempt, the Associated Press notes that he spent four hours making a fool of himself on Cuban national television yesterday:

The result is remarkably like a televised version of an Internet blog – references to outside news sources tightly wrapped in personal commentary.

The bearded ogre sounds as though he’s desperate to join the blogging revolution but doesn’t quite have what it takes to do it. Hence, his henchmen block Babalu blog. And hope his read-a-blog will function as a substitute. Computer screens must crack when he gets in front of them.

So, the AP story continues, castro on television then whips out his copy of The Newspaper That Made Him … urrrh … The New York Times … a paper he’ll never stop being grateful to, and …. reads the thing, long articles that interest him, to the Cuban people, for hours, over the air. Like some senile foof on the steps of the stoop reading the paper and ranting about events of the world! That’s what he offers Cuban people! He picks the articles of course, and reads them aloud. Then goes and reads the rest by himself.

The AP concludes its article with the exact proper perspective on what the real meaning of this is:

Castro spent more than an hour reading from one New York Times story. He spent most of two nights reading and commenting on newly declassified CIA and FBI documents.

The readings from American, Latin American and European newspapers, as well as documents from the Internet, offers Cubans an unusual, if very personalized window on the world. The government allows relatively few Cubans to have unfettered access to foreign newspapers, magazines, broadcasts or the Internet.

The AP got it right.