…penned these lines:
As shoppers in Havana mobbed electronic stores looking for DVD players, writer and independent journalist Normando Hernandez Gonzalez was quietly returned to Kilo 7 prison in Camaguey, Cuba.
In a column today, Ana Menendez presents the continuing imprisonment for “dangerousness” of a very ill Normando Hernandez Gonzalez to illustrate what we all know- the repression continues. Perhaps, now that she’s leaving she feels freer. But before you get too excited, she does finish off with a flourish:
If change on the island is to be meaningful and lasting, it cannot be defined by narrow ideological goals. For decades, Fidel Castro enjoyed the blinkered support of many progressives while delighting in the enmity of conservatives. Normando Hernandez Gonzalez is in jail to remind everyone that those old dualities no longer explain the world we inherited.
Until both sides in this tired, dusty battle join to condemn his imprisonment and that of other dissident writers, Cuba’s reforms will remain a dollar deep.
Thank you, Ana, for bringing attention to Normando’s plight. What was it Johnny Carson as “Carnac the Magnificent” used to say, “May the bird of paradise visit upon you” or some such. Read the column here.
I know – I was absolutely flabbergasted.
What the hell is going on here?
Still her overall argument is asinine. There’s no right or wrong. She confers equal blame to those who have historically denounced the dictatorship and those who are apologists for it. That’s a distorted view that betrays her own biases and an inability to completely say that her compatriots on the left have their heads up their culos.
You see folks, if Ana chose a side, lets say the pro democracy anti communist side she would never get the book deals, the trendy friends, the jobs at the NYT or Herald, the invitations as a panelist, cocktail party hookups, the trips to India or Afganistan, she would never get the Fulbrights and all those things. She’s not stupid and she knows how the world works to get ahead – since she is not stupid I really think that she knows the reality of Cuba like we do – she is aware of the tyranny – but she keeps it inside as a choice because she knows that for her the material things are more important than conscience and besides her MSM liberal friends will break being pals with her if she spoke out too much on Castro repression. She’s not a boba.
Mandingo,
If your theory is right and she is not a boba then she is much worse. She is a whore.
Henry . . . . he’s right on the money.
As are you.