Castro’s decade-long exercise in brutality

I saw a headline at The Age decrying “Castro’s decade-long exercise in brutality,” and quietly gave thanks that his oppression of Cuban people is finally being recognised by a mainstream media more likely to lionise Castro and Che than recognise their inhumanity.  But even as I clicked the link, I was wondering why it was talking about “decade-long”…

Of course, it wasn’t talking about Fidel Castro’s decades-long imprisonment of the Cuban people, but the decade-long imprisonment by his near-namesake of three women (now released) in his Cleveland, Ohio, basement.

The facts of the latter case are indeed horrific, and horrific on a scale that’s easy to grasp and report. Three women locked since their teenage years in the basement of a monster. Perhaps that’s why the media are all over this horror, one they can easily understand and deplore, whereas the Castro family locking the entire population of Cuba in the basement of their broken dreams has barely warranted a mainstream media mention for years. *

The much larger-scale horror going on in Cuba just continues to pass them by.

* * * *

* It’s even worse. The most recent mainstream mention of the Cuban Castro clan was a puff piece in the newspaper of record about “Mariela Castro, the daughter of President Raúl Castro and Cuba’s premier sexologist,” visiting the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. The report doesn’t mention whether the crack in the Liberty Bell got bigger.