The Elian metaphor

If we really cared about Cuban children, we'd end the embargo.

By Joe Conason

Apr 25, 2000 | Long before "Buena Vista Social Club" revived American interest in Cuban music, the biggest pop hit among Havana's disaffected teenagers was a tune called "Ese Hombre Es Loco" (That Man is Crazy). Though the video version featured images of Napoleon, Hitler and Ronald Reagan, the urban underground whispered that the true subject of the song's provocative lyrics was "El Jefe" -- dictator Fidel Castro.

Yet today, in the midst of international mania over a six-year-old boy, it seems that Castro isn't the only one driven mad by four decades of embargo, standoff and overheated rhetoric. The madness surrounding Elian Gonzalez -- so contagious that it has infected politicians and pundits of both parties -- provides an apt metaphor for the insanity of overall American policy toward Cuba.

For more than 40 years, the leaders of the exile community in Miami have believed that economic pressure and an occasional act of terrorism would eventually dethrone Castro. Most of them still cling to those beliefs, despite the indisputable truth that such tactics have failed and failed miserably. Accordingly, a loud claque of fanatics down in Little Havana have declared that little Elian Gonzalez is a messenger sent from heaven to uphold their cause. To them the boy is a miniature saint, sometimes accompanied by apparitions of the Virgin Mary in bathroom mirrors and swimming pools.

Caught up in their politico-religious frenzy, the exile leaders have attracted a motley variety of supporters. On the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan has asserted not only that a school of dolphins rescued Elian from the perils of the Florida Strait and "surrounded him like a contingent of angels," but that this alleged miracle should be seen "as possible evidence of the reasonable assumption that God's creatures had been commanded to protect one of God's children."

To cite such signs and portents is to suggest that anyone who thinks Elian belongs with his father -- such as the editorial writers at the equally conservative New York Post, and for that matter most Americans -- must be ungodly (and probably Castro-loving) pinkos.

The wackiness engendered by Elian's plight has also seized Vice President Al Gore, whose remarks about administration policy toward Elian have made him sound both discombobulated and disloyal. Nurturing the strange notion that he can somehow entice ultraconservative Cuban-Americans to vote for him against George W. Bush, the vice president has succeeded instead in alienating nearly every Democratic constituency in Florida and the other 49 states. Reiterating his pandering after the Miami raid served only to irritate all of these potential supporters once again. But he seems incapable of restraining himself on the subject.

Next Page: Enter Giuliani, Dowd and Safire, all crazy as loons

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