CBS's Elian show: What a joke...

What a fraud. Just as I knew it would be. That lousy 60 Minutes "interview" with Elian Gonzalez was nothing more than a propaganda piece for castro's regime. You couldn't call it journalism.

I watched the piece and noted lots of little details that were quite opaque to CBS.

Number one, CBS just casually mentioned that Elian was filmed around Cuba by castro's personal cameraman - who just incidentally "helped" CBS on its programming of the Elian interview.

Helped? Helped?????

Play that back to me - since when does CBS take government help? Does it take U.S. government help? And did TASS and Novosti "help" CBS on its previous shows? If so, and probably so, they wouldn't want to say so publicly. But with castro's organs, they're just breezily out helping CBS get information to the U.S. public. castro's organs! Coercion? Wuzzat? Talk about dog and pony show! With that admission right there CBS should have mentioned that the producer of this special Elian segment was fidel castro Productions, Inc.

Meanwhile, it was clear the kid was coached, with his canned answers already put out in the press release. I would not be surprised if the whole thing was rehearsed. For one thing, the whole narrative left out Elian's feelings of excitement about leaving for 'La Yuma.' There was another child on Elian's boat named Estefani and she was NOT excited about leaving for La Yuma and for that reason, was taken back before the trip began. But none of that was mentioned in the report. In the 60 Minutes piece Elian only says that he was deceived by his mother and only thought they were visiting his uncles and going fishing. Not one word about the crying Estefani! Not one word about his own excitement going to La Yuma! It's something I know from reading Anne-Louise Bardach's very unconfidential book called 'Cuba Confidential.' Bardach is a leftwinger who writes for Vanity Fair but that is what she wrote when she investigated the issue. No one has to dig deep to get that info, especially since Bardach's book is right there. Somehow 60 Minutes' ace researchers missed that little detail.

And yeah, sure, according to this coached interview - Elian can just call up castro whenever he's got some problem. His 'I could' answer sounded as though the thought never occurred to him. Well, why not? Talk about not asking questions! Here's the reason it didn't occur to Elian: Elian can't, that's all there is to it. Why didn't the ace journos of 60 Minutes ask Elian if he had castro's phone number! Because the whole thing would have been exposed as a fraud.

But also - wouldn't a normal kid say that his dad was his dad? When I was Elian's age, I loved Nixon, but no way in heck would I ever think of him as my 'dad.' The "father" thing is nothing more than the castro propaganda machine seeking to make castro into a huggy father figure. When I saw that picture of castro touching Elian, I thought about his long horrific history as a mass murderer - and the sad reason Elizabet Brotons made the decision to set sail for freedom.

I noticed that CBS played soft-focus music when castro was sitting in an audience and rose up to greet Elian. Goebbels could not have made the Monster cuddlier. I wanted to retch.

Meanwhile, there was lots of unspoken propaganda about how "well" Elian lived at school (there were no home shots except for the exterior of his dad's new home). Left unspoken was that Elian goes to a special school for the party elite and that's why he was able to have that hair grease he wore to his interview, something he didn't have on in his ordinary school pictures . Even at the special school for the party elite that he goes to, did you notice Elian's fascination with the bottled water? Clearly that's a privilege and even that mundane thing fascinated him.

It got even weirder in the interview with Elian's father. He looked a lot fatter - he's now a member of castro's rubber-stamp National Assembly, so he eats regularly - but he had a scary deer-in-the-headlights expression in his eyes. It was nominally dewy-eyed but there was a creepy hardness to it, like he was a gangster under pressure. And he didn't have anything sentimental to say, his answers were all canned. I felt he looked like a man under pressure if he didn't perform just right. Most telling of all, it's notable that Elian never appeared in the same camera shot as the dad.

Lastly, there were the slams on the Miami Cubans. Always they were portrayed as crazy fanatics. When castro's "hundreds of thousands" of automatons, each bearing the same robotic stamped out sign (no grassroots effort there) were called "demonstrators," the Miami Cubans, who came to the streets truly spontaneously in far greater numbers were not identified by their numbers at all. And instead of being "demonstrators," CBS said they were mere 'protestors.' The jackbooted government thugs who ripped the child out of the Gonzalez home were portrayed as heroes.

This all goes to show that 60-Minutes' Elian show was nothing more than a propaganda effort for the castro regime. Some media will do anything, compromise any journalistic standard to get the interview. When the truth comes out about this, it'll be another blow to this news organization's already tattered reputation.

When Elian Gonzalez was returned to Cuba, it wasn't to his dad's arms that he went, but straight to castro's. The truth will out. That poor little kid.

Posted by Mora at October 2, 2005 11:24 PM

Comments

Posted by: j.scott barnard at October 3, 2005 12:07 AM

Posted by: A.M. Mora y Leon at October 3, 2005 12:39 AM

Posted by: Kathleen at October 3, 2005 02:09 AM

Posted by: A. Gonzalez at October 3, 2005 03:52 AM

Posted by: Candy at October 3, 2005 10:05 AM

Posted by: Sccott at October 3, 2005 02:30 PM

Posted by: Scott at October 3, 2005 02:33 PM

Posted by: ed at October 3, 2005 09:53 PM

Posted by: A.M. Mora y Leon at October 3, 2005 11:05 PM