Journalists' and leftists' (but I repeat myself) misguided love for Cuba goes back decades. Y'know, free healthcare (cough), yada-yada.
Now that President Obama is unilaterally changing the relationship between the two nations, and as usual getting nothing in return, you'd think that they'd be happy. Heck no. It started several months ago when Fox News's Shepard Smith fretted about how a thaw in U.S.-Cuban relations might "ruin the place," and has been echoed in many quarters since then. Early today, CNN International went over the top, essentially communicating in one picture their concern that the changed situation will "ruin" what has already been ruined:
A related tweet (HT Twitchy) played the same sick tune:
I don't know how life can go on if that decrepit car doesn't survive in the "new" Cuba. The problem is, thanks to Obama, that it's likely that nothing really will get better, because Raul Castro has already rejected any kind of embrace of capitalism. So only a few ethically-compromised companies and investors and Cuban communist bigwigs will benefit.
Readers who are not yet ill and in need of that wondrous free Cuban healthcare only need to peruse the CNN writeup by James Williams and Daisy Carrington to finish the job (bold is mine):
Cuba is not like other places, or rather, not like anywhere that exists today.
To some outsiders, it looks firmly stuck in the 1950s. Vintage cars roam the streets, the landscape is absent of strip malls and global chains, and the buildings -- though crumbling -- hark back to a grander time.
It is these throwbacks that lend Havana, the country's capital, an undeniable charm. A charm that, some worry, is in peril once the U.S. embargo lifts.
I really need to rewrite that second paragraph. Here goes: "Anyone who can see can tell that the country is firmly stuck in the 1950s. Junk cars roam the streets. The landscape is absent of strip malls and global chains, because no one has anything to buy or sell. The buildings -- though crumbling -- hark back to the grander time before murderous tyrant Fidel Castro and his communists ruined it for everyone except party apparatchiks and others in the ruling elite."
There. That's better.
Next time, before Williams and Carrington consider insulting our intelligence and embarrassing themselves further by composing such trash, they should look at old photos from places in East Germany and compare them to how they look now, thank to the end of communist rule and the Ronald Reagan-driven fall of the Berlin Wall.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
