The left allows itself any number of rhetorical excesses about Donald Trump
notes
George Neumayr at the American Spectator.
He is a “fascist,” a dangerous “strongman,” a
“tyrant” in waiting, and so forth. But when an actual tyrant dies such
as Fidel Castro the left quickly adopts more measured rhetoric. Its
hysterical editorialists suddenly turn sedate. They urge people to see a
reviled figure in perspective. Castro’s legacy is “divisive,” as the New Yorker hesitantly put it. “Cuba today is a dilapidated country, but its social and economic indicators are the envy of many of its neighbors.”
Casting about for a circumspect word to describe a mass murderer,
Barack Obama hit upon “singular.” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau
offered the slightly more daring description “remarkable.” Pope Francis
called him a “deceased dignitary,” in a telegram that the Vatican
normally doesn’t send (it typically only sends telegrams for leaders who
die while still in office, according to the Catholic press).
Careful not to mourn his death too obviously, the press peppered its
stories with similarly evasive and hedging language: Castro was a
“controversial” and “charismatic” figure who, in the laughably neutral
words of the New York Times, “transformed Cuba.” Many
newspapers made reference to his repression but didn’t want their
readers to forget his “achievements” either, as if “free” access to
crumbling hospitals balanced out his slaughtering of tens of thousands
of people and displacing more than a million people. Under Castro, said
the BBC, “Cuba registered some impressive domestic achievements. Good
medical care was freely available for all, and Cuba’s infant mortality
rates compared favorably with the most sophisticated societies on
earth.”
The nods to his monstrous crimes by leftist pols, to the extent any
came, were quick and breezy. British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn
deserves first prize in this category: “For all his flaws, Castro’s
support for Angola played a crucial role in bringing an end to Apartheid
in South Africa and he will be remembered both as an internationalist
and a champion of social justice.” In that “for all his flaws” lie how
many murders?
Naturally, Donald Trump’s honest reaction to Castro’s death generated criticism for its “tone.” In the Washington Post,
former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers called it “highly
problematic.” This, of course, comes from the same media that now openly
congratulates itself for its lack of balance in covering Trump. The
other day, CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour was pleading with her
fellow journalists to abandon the sham pretense of objectivity and adopt
the “Edward R. Murrow standard” for Trump. She believes in “being
truthful, not neutral.” She will not stand idle during this
“post-truth,” “post-values” age. She will “fight against normalization
of the unacceptable.”
She conceives of journalism as a high priesthood that defines good and
evil for the unenlightened masses. But not long after cheering her
comments, journalists returned to their keyboards to normalize the evil
of Castro with evasive pieces on his passing. Even Amanpour got into the
act, interviewing international figures about the “unclear” legacy of
Castro. She can find nuance in Castro but not in Trump.
Journalists who wouldn’t have survived a day in Castro’s Cuba treat
Trump as an enemy of press freedom (for such grave offenses as not
informing his press pool that he was going out to dinner). They gasp at
Trump’s health care plans, while praising Castro’s hospitals. They freak
out over Trump’s “Muslim ban,” while minimizing Castro’s suppression of
religious freedom. They couldn’t have voted in Castro’s Cuba but demand
a recount in America (Jill Stein called Castro a “symbol of the
struggle for justice”).
After Trump won, the New Yorker’s David Remnick nearly
fainted from fear. It was a “sickening event,” a “tragedy for the
American republic,” and a victory for “authoritarianism” at home and
abroad, he wrote.
But Castro never elicited such breathless denunciations from his
magazine. Castro was merely a “controversial” figure. His
totalitarianism generated less outrage from it than Trump’s tweets.
Now the media, never too worried about the jingoism of Castro, is
harrumphing over Trump’s flag-burning comments. It can forgive
nationalism in foreign leaders but not its own.
Meanwhile, the press continues to push the storyline that Trump’s
coming administration is causing the great and good of the world to
tremble, a claim to which the American people rightly shrug, especially
since many of these international luminaries appalled by Trump’s
inauguration will soon turn up at Castro’s funeral.
