You can't call this unexpected. When Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen was suspended five games by his team for proclaiming his love and admiration for Fidel Castro in a town full of Cuban exiles, the ardent radicals at the Daily Kos would object.
In an article titled "Ozzie Got Screwed," The writer going by the handle "Agnostic" of "The Church of Ineffable Stupidity" threw his "WTF" hat into the air:
On prior occasions, he admitted that he thought he was courageous, that he stood up to everyone in the world, and that he succeeded where his enemies had failed.
Now what the f--k is wrong with that? [Dashes mine.]
Absolutely nothing. Castro did not wipe out millions of his own people. Castro did not start world wars. For all his faults, and there were many of them, Castro managed to confound and outlive a super power which faces his shores, despite the fact that that super power has never, not once, since 1918 had a year in which we did not use our military for one reason or another. We even invaded several of his neighbors, and succeeded in deposing those nearby rulers who managed to anger us. Especially if they won democratic elections. And still he survived. And still he managed to raise his country's literacy rate from 65-70% to 98%.
The ineffable stupidity is there. Here comes the "literacy" junk. He sounds like Barbara Walters, who once said on ABC "“For Castro, freedom starts with education. And if literacy alone were the yardstick, Cuba would rank as one of the freest nations on Earth. The literacy rate is 96 percent.”
Somehow, "Agnostic" doesn't think Castro's Cuba helped in deposing nearby rulers like say, Nicaragua's Somoza, so Soviet-friendly Marxists who didn't like elections could be installed. He unloaded the old ring of baloney that Castro outlasted many presidents, as if it were an achievement to put your opponents in prison, unlike American presidents:
Castro survived Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush, despite every one of them stating it was in America's best interests to have a Castro free Carib.
Besides, doesn't christianity teach people to love thy neighbors, to turn the other cheek, and to love their enemies? It just strikes me that those people most upset about what Ozzie said just happen to be christian conservative GOP voters, which seems par for the course. Ignorance of the facts has never stopped them before. It certainly won't stop them now.
But a five game suspension for Ozzie? Now, simply for speaking his mind, that is Ineffably Stupid.
Another Kosmonaut cited The New York Times, which editorialized that Castro's reign was "violent and destructive" and then insisted this suspension of Guillen was a free-speech outrage: "The Marlins may be within their legal rights, but they should have thought harder before succumbing to the cries of a mob and punishing a political statement for business reasons." Of course, the Times said suspending a player for saying something racist-sounding isn't a freedom-of-speech outrage.
[Hat tip: Tommy Harper Bat]
