Ozzie Guillen, the first year manager of the Miami (formerly Florida) Marlins and former manager of the Chicago White Sox, was suspended for 5 games, without pay, for being foolish enough to think that the "Freedom of Speech" guaranteed and protected in the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, really exists. It doesn't, at least, not without "consequences". Guillen said he respected Fidel Castro's skill as a survivor, that with all the assassination plots against him, he managed to stay alive and in power for over half a century. At least, that was clearly the meaning of what he said: "I respect Fidel Castro. You know why? A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the last 60 years, but that fucker is still here". He is reported to have said "I love Fidel Castro", in that same context, and not sleeping well since an online Time Magazine article quoted him as saying that. He obviously didn't mean he loved Castro in the sense that the right wing says it "loves" Ronald Reagan or in the way Democrats and progressives say they love John Kennedy; that is, they like their policies and admire them as political leaders. Guillen simply meant, as he said in his 'contrite' speech at the new Miami ballpark, saying of Fidel "(h)e has done a lot of bad things, that's why I am surprised he has stayed in power so long." The intent of his comments were clear to any rational person, but those who have chosen to exile themselves from Cuba over the Castro government's policies, or have been forcibly exiled by the Castro government, have never been rational where the Castro brothers are concerned.
Ozzie gets contrite
Guillen has always been outspoken, even once using what the Politically Correct crowd like to call a "homophobic slur" against former Chicago Sun-Times reporter (and ESPN "Around The Horn" TV show participant) Jay Mariotti (he called Mariotti, who now has a lot of legal trouble of his own, "a fag", which in England would be calling him a cigarette) and for which the White Sox made him go to 'sensitivity training'; ("you've come a long way baby" but not as far as reactionary Cubans). Guillen had the balls to never back down and never apologize for it--he apologized to homosexuals for saying "fag" but did not apologize to Mariotti. Not this time, when the rage began in "Little Havana" (officially a section of Miami, where the new baseball park was built for half a billion dollars on the site of the Orange Bowl, but it's really what Miami now is) where about a million former Cubans and people of Cuban descent live, Guillen folded like a cheap lawn chair. He left his team in Philadelphia on a road trip to do a "mea culpa" in front of the media and fans, what few there were before this, and gave a lame explanation about his Spanish thoughts not translating to English well. Guillen, a native of Venezuela, also took the opportunity to slam the president of his former country, Hugo Chavez, to make brownie points with the local Cubans. You'd think they'd show a little love for a guy who says he'd rather be dead than vote for a man who's done a great to deal to help the people of Venezuela and stand up to foreign corporate interests that want to rape the assests of Venezuela like they've done to so many other Latin American countries, but has been demonized in the right-wing/corporate press in the U.S. like FOX News Channel (or as I like to call them, FAUX "News" Channel) and TIME. Nope, they were calling him a "communist rat" and calling for a boycott of the Marlins. And that, boys and girls, gets to the real heart of the matter.
Freedom of Speech? It's all about the Benjamins.
Miami, Dade and Broward Counties, and south Florida in general have a become a Cuban enclave, and the corporations (and politicians) know it and want to take advantage of it. The Marlins owner Jeff Loria, made a deliberate choice of where to put the ballpark, and they wanted to Cubans to be their fan base. Loria was once the majority owner of the Montreal Expos (now the Washington Nationals) and wanted to build a new luxurious baseball stadium to replace Olympic Stadium, but, for reasons not explained in this article the deal never went through. He sold his interest in the Expos in 2002 and bought the (Florida) Marlins, who won the 2003 World Series, then dismantled due to payroll costs just as they did after winning the series in 1997 with an all-star roster put together for just that purpose, win and then dismantle. Loria views this $515 million dollar stadium as a monument to himself: "This ballpark is going to have to stand as an important milestone in my life. It's an accomplishment," (then adds, almost as an afterthought) "that is, for the city." He also said in the same article "(t)here will always be activists in a community who don't know what they're talking about. They have their own agendas. There are people who do not understand [that] we didn't take one dime away from anybody's (sic) public services in this city" (makes one wonder how much 'coke' money went into it then, owners don't lay out half a billion dollars of their own dough, and even the fee Sun Life paid for naming rights didn't cover a fraction of it). So apparently there were people that didn't want this stadium, built on the site of the old Orange Bowl. And now their brand new manager for their newly renamed (Miami instead of Florida) team in their brand new "work of art" stadium has the Cubans they wanted as a fan base calling for a boycott. And with some in the media (both English and Spanish speaking) calling for him to be fired. Instead they forced him to make this humiliating speech and suspended him 5 games.
Media overreaction
One of the most gawd-awful programs on ESPN (after First Take, formerly called Cold Pizza--what marketing genius came up with that one?--and Around The Horn) is Mike and Mike In The Morning. This has two airheads, Mike Greenberg and former NFL player Mike Golic, pontificating on various sports subjects. I realize this isn't supposed to be serious journalism, it's not even serious sports journalism, the E in ESPN stands for Entertainment, (if ESPN was serious about that they'd start talking about all the blown calls, questionable plays, point shaving and rigged games in professional and college sports, but they don't because that would hurt the economic 'bottom line' of sports, their bread and butter), but they hit a new low on the Ozzie Guillen story. Greenberg said, correctly, that you're supposed to be able to say whatever you want in this country, and Golic agreed and then said "but you have to be prepared for the consequences". They then went on about how there are "consequences" for saying what you think and seemed to agree that there should be, that it's just fine for some entity to punish an employee for speaking his mind, and for speaking the truth (see Rashard Mendenhall). I've read the constitution (more than once) and read the First Amendment many times, nowhere in it does it guarantee the right for someone or some entity to subject someone to "consequences" for saying what they think. It also doesn't prohibit any corporate or private, or even public, entity from punishing someone for saying or writing (or "tweeting") something it doesn't like; and anything that hurts the financial picture is something they don't like. That's one of the many evils of a capitalist system, it allows "conditions of employment", one of which is the abrogation of your constitutionally protected rights--but so does the military. On the MSNBC (or as I prefer to call it, "BSNBC") program that passes for a news program, Morning Joe (which in my view should be called Morning Joke), co-host Joe Scarborough, a right-wing Republican former 3-1/4 term Congressman originally from Florida (or is it Alabama, he seems to have as many "home states" as George H.W. Bush) who constantly pimps for capitalism (the real religion of Republicans), weighed in saying how you just can't say anything that can be construed as good about Fidel Castro in a heavily "conservative" (a euphemism for reactionary) area like south Florida with all the "Cuban exiles". I thought co-host Mika Brzezinski was on there just as eye candy when I first watched this show, but it quickly became apparent that she and fellow panelist Willie Geist are the only regular members of the program with a triple digit IQ (though they sometimes have intelligent guests like Harold Ford). She sits with a pained expression while Scarborough rants, interrupts people and talks over them. Mika Brzezinski, by the way, is the daughter of Rockefeller stooge/front man and globo-fascist Zbigniew Brzezinski (who co-founded the Trilateral Commission in 1973 with David Rockefeller); not surprisingly he is a weekly guest on the show. Scarborough rakes Guillen over the coals for saying he admired the way Castro could survive six decades of murder plots (mostly by the CIA) against him, but says nothing about the terrorism committed by Cuban "exiles" against Cuba and within the United States (or the globalist fascism espoused by Zbigniew Brzezinski in his 1997 book "The Grand Chessboard").
And then there's clowns like this guy, Ken Rosenthal, who calls for a one month suspension, yet refers to Guillen as "extremist" and applauds the idea of corporations and companies disciplining people for exercising what is supposed to be a constitutionally protected right. But then again he works for FAUX Sports, so consider the source.
And finally there are tools like this guy from the Chicago Sun-Times, Rick Telander, maybe he's pals with Jay Marrioti, I don't know, who repeats Scarborough's chant of 'how dare you say anything not condemnatory of Fidel Castro in Miami':
"You don’t say nice things about Cuban dictator Fidel Castro in Miami and walk away.
Ozzie gets contrite
Guillen has always been outspoken, even once using what the Politically Correct crowd like to call a "homophobic slur" against former Chicago Sun-Times reporter (and ESPN "Around The Horn" TV show participant) Jay Mariotti (he called Mariotti, who now has a lot of legal trouble of his own, "a fag", which in England would be calling him a cigarette) and for which the White Sox made him go to 'sensitivity training'; ("you've come a long way baby" but not as far as reactionary Cubans). Guillen had the balls to never back down and never apologize for it--he apologized to homosexuals for saying "fag" but did not apologize to Mariotti. Not this time, when the rage began in "Little Havana" (officially a section of Miami, where the new baseball park was built for half a billion dollars on the site of the Orange Bowl, but it's really what Miami now is) where about a million former Cubans and people of Cuban descent live, Guillen folded like a cheap lawn chair. He left his team in Philadelphia on a road trip to do a "mea culpa" in front of the media and fans, what few there were before this, and gave a lame explanation about his Spanish thoughts not translating to English well. Guillen, a native of Venezuela, also took the opportunity to slam the president of his former country, Hugo Chavez, to make brownie points with the local Cubans. You'd think they'd show a little love for a guy who says he'd rather be dead than vote for a man who's done a great to deal to help the people of Venezuela and stand up to foreign corporate interests that want to rape the assests of Venezuela like they've done to so many other Latin American countries, but has been demonized in the right-wing/corporate press in the U.S. like FOX News Channel (or as I like to call them, FAUX "News" Channel) and TIME. Nope, they were calling him a "communist rat" and calling for a boycott of the Marlins. And that, boys and girls, gets to the real heart of the matter.
Freedom of Speech? It's all about the Benjamins.
Miami, Dade and Broward Counties, and south Florida in general have a become a Cuban enclave, and the corporations (and politicians) know it and want to take advantage of it. The Marlins owner Jeff Loria, made a deliberate choice of where to put the ballpark, and they wanted to Cubans to be their fan base. Loria was once the majority owner of the Montreal Expos (now the Washington Nationals) and wanted to build a new luxurious baseball stadium to replace Olympic Stadium, but, for reasons not explained in this article the deal never went through. He sold his interest in the Expos in 2002 and bought the (Florida) Marlins, who won the 2003 World Series, then dismantled due to payroll costs just as they did after winning the series in 1997 with an all-star roster put together for just that purpose, win and then dismantle. Loria views this $515 million dollar stadium as a monument to himself: "This ballpark is going to have to stand as an important milestone in my life. It's an accomplishment," (then adds, almost as an afterthought) "that is, for the city." He also said in the same article "(t)here will always be activists in a community who don't know what they're talking about. They have their own agendas. There are people who do not understand [that] we didn't take one dime away from anybody's (sic) public services in this city" (makes one wonder how much 'coke' money went into it then, owners don't lay out half a billion dollars of their own dough, and even the fee Sun Life paid for naming rights didn't cover a fraction of it). So apparently there were people that didn't want this stadium, built on the site of the old Orange Bowl. And now their brand new manager for their newly renamed (Miami instead of Florida) team in their brand new "work of art" stadium has the Cubans they wanted as a fan base calling for a boycott. And with some in the media (both English and Spanish speaking) calling for him to be fired. Instead they forced him to make this humiliating speech and suspended him 5 games.
Media overreaction
One of the most gawd-awful programs on ESPN (after First Take, formerly called Cold Pizza--what marketing genius came up with that one?--and Around The Horn) is Mike and Mike In The Morning. This has two airheads, Mike Greenberg and former NFL player Mike Golic, pontificating on various sports subjects. I realize this isn't supposed to be serious journalism, it's not even serious sports journalism, the E in ESPN stands for Entertainment, (if ESPN was serious about that they'd start talking about all the blown calls, questionable plays, point shaving and rigged games in professional and college sports, but they don't because that would hurt the economic 'bottom line' of sports, their bread and butter), but they hit a new low on the Ozzie Guillen story. Greenberg said, correctly, that you're supposed to be able to say whatever you want in this country, and Golic agreed and then said "but you have to be prepared for the consequences". They then went on about how there are "consequences" for saying what you think and seemed to agree that there should be, that it's just fine for some entity to punish an employee for speaking his mind, and for speaking the truth (see Rashard Mendenhall). I've read the constitution (more than once) and read the First Amendment many times, nowhere in it does it guarantee the right for someone or some entity to subject someone to "consequences" for saying what they think. It also doesn't prohibit any corporate or private, or even public, entity from punishing someone for saying or writing (or "tweeting") something it doesn't like; and anything that hurts the financial picture is something they don't like. That's one of the many evils of a capitalist system, it allows "conditions of employment", one of which is the abrogation of your constitutionally protected rights--but so does the military. On the MSNBC (or as I prefer to call it, "BSNBC") program that passes for a news program, Morning Joe (which in my view should be called Morning Joke), co-host Joe Scarborough, a right-wing Republican former 3-1/4 term Congressman originally from Florida (or is it Alabama, he seems to have as many "home states" as George H.W. Bush) who constantly pimps for capitalism (the real religion of Republicans), weighed in saying how you just can't say anything that can be construed as good about Fidel Castro in a heavily "conservative" (a euphemism for reactionary) area like south Florida with all the "Cuban exiles". I thought co-host Mika Brzezinski was on there just as eye candy when I first watched this show, but it quickly became apparent that she and fellow panelist Willie Geist are the only regular members of the program with a triple digit IQ (though they sometimes have intelligent guests like Harold Ford). She sits with a pained expression while Scarborough rants, interrupts people and talks over them. Mika Brzezinski, by the way, is the daughter of Rockefeller stooge/front man and globo-fascist Zbigniew Brzezinski (who co-founded the Trilateral Commission in 1973 with David Rockefeller); not surprisingly he is a weekly guest on the show. Scarborough rakes Guillen over the coals for saying he admired the way Castro could survive six decades of murder plots (mostly by the CIA) against him, but says nothing about the terrorism committed by Cuban "exiles" against Cuba and within the United States (or the globalist fascism espoused by Zbigniew Brzezinski in his 1997 book "The Grand Chessboard").
And then there's clowns like this guy, Ken Rosenthal, who calls for a one month suspension, yet refers to Guillen as "extremist" and applauds the idea of corporations and companies disciplining people for exercising what is supposed to be a constitutionally protected right. But then again he works for FAUX Sports, so consider the source.
And finally there are tools like this guy from the Chicago Sun-Times, Rick Telander, maybe he's pals with Jay Marrioti, I don't know, who repeats Scarborough's chant of 'how dare you say anything not condemnatory of Fidel Castro in Miami':
"You don’t say nice things about Cuban dictator Fidel Castro in Miami and walk away.
"No, no, no.
"Many readers have not been to the Miami area in the last few decades. Let me tell you this: It is full of American citizens of Cuban heritage who fled the repression of Castro’s regime. They came on fishing boats. They floated across the Gulf Stream in homemade rafts and inner tubes. During the Mariel boat lift of 1980, they took anything that didn’t sink and made their way across the treacherous 90 miles of ocean from Havana to Key West. Castro saluted the hated United States by opening his prisons and sending over as many criminals as he could. Maybe you remember Tony Montana washing ashore in 'Scarface'?
"When president John F. Kennedy backed the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, supporting Cuban expatriate fighters returning to Cuba, the point was to assassinate Castro.
"You don’t joke about the bearded one in South Florida, folks."
Telander is criticizing Castro for sending criminals out in the "Mariel boat lift" to the country that had been trying to murder him for years, yet applauds murder attempts against Castro, and whines that Guillen offended people. By the way, JFK inherited that idiotic Bay of Pigs plan, the CIA assured JFK that the the Cuban people would rise up against the Castro government (they were lying or stupid, it's hard to tell the difference with the CIA, but the Cuban people were completely behind Fidel) and also that they, the CIA, would assassinate Castro in conjunction with their mafia bedfellows (yeah, right) so U.S. corporations could once again take over land that Castro had re-distributed to landless peasants and the CIA's partner, the mafia, could re-install their casinos (and launder money in Havana). But I don't suppose history is Telander's strong suit. At least he admits a lot of criminals came here in the "Mariel boat lift", a farce that gets treated as if it was the second Dunkirk.
It's all "Castro = bad, whatever was before Castro = good". NOT!
It's all "Castro = bad, whatever was before Castro = good". NOT!
Cuba Before Castro
Idiots like the ESPN "Mike and Mike" crew, Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, Rick Telander and most Americans today have probably never heard of Fulgencio Batista (I'll give Scarborough the benefit of the doubt on that one, then again he actually thinks The Beatles were a great band and better than The Rolling Stones, so maybe I shouldn't) unless they watched a couple of movies like Godfather II or Havana, and if they have what they've heard is what a great leader and "friend of America" he was. It's bullshit, but that's what has been taught since Castro's 26 July Movement forced Batista to run away and hide in the Dominican Republic (which was run then by another fascist dictator named Rafael Trujillo) just like his supporters and enablers. But then these bozos have likely never heard of Trujillo either. They need to read up and learn about Batista (that's asking a lot of the corporate media these days though). Batista was a fascist dictator that had a lot of blood on his hands, who was a tool of American corporations (such as United Fruit, now Chiquita Brands, which the Dulles brothers were heavily involved with in Guatemala and Cuba) which owned 75% of the arable land in Cuba, and of the organized crime syndicate (i.e. the mafia) and lined his pockets by doing their bidding. He was in bed with murderous mobsters like Meyer Lansky and Santo Trafficante (the mafia boss of Florida). First Truman and then the Republican Eisenhower recognized and backed Batista's dictatorship. Long before he took power in a coup d'etat in 1952 he'd been the power behind a succession of puppet presidents like Carlos Mendieta, Jose A. Barnet, Miguel Mariano Gomez and Federuco Laredo Bru'. Whenever you hear or read the term "American interests", remember that it means "corporate interests", it's not the interest of the American people. The U.S. government and corporations had been calling the shots through a series of dictators in Cuba since 1898, the U.S. had it's eye Cuba since John Adam's presidency and had been intervening militarily there in support of American corporate interests nearly as long. General Smedley D. Butler, USMC, wrote a book in 1935 about his military experiences in these "banana wars", called "War Is A Racket", in which he said:
"I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street, and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents."
Brown Brothers became Brown Brothers, Harriman, the patron of Prescott Bush and his descendents.
Cuba under Batista was a bloody dictatorship of a one party state, where American companies owned most things and other foreign companies owned the rest. Elections were promised but never held, dissent was crushed and opposition leaders murdered. There was no health care for the poor or in rural areas, illiteracy was rampant, and a foreign organized crime syndicate ran hotels and casinos in Havana that the Cuban people paid for. Some of these things the Castro government has been accused of (after the CIA, the legalized hit squad for Wall Street, began trying to murder Fidel), and Cuba did become a communist, one party dictatorship (thanks to the CIA). But it also got free medical clinics and hospitals all over the island, arable land distributed to landless peasants, Cuban ownership of industries, agriculture and business, a high literacy rate and end to corruption and an end to unpunished abuses by foreigners. Even Castro's predecessor as a revolutionary for Cuban independence, Maximo Gomez, wrote in his diary: "The American government's attitude toward the heroic Cuban people at this history making time is, in my opinion, one of big business. The situation is dangerous for the country..." You won't hear any of that from the right-wing reactionaries who are crucifying Ozzie Guillen.
Speak no evil? Speak no good...if it's about a socialist government
Ozzie Guillen's only 'crime' in this whole non-matter is that he said something that reactionaries construed as being complimentary about a socialist leader in an area dominated by a group of rabid reactionaries. In all the praise of "Cuban exiles" and their story, no mention is made of the known complicity of "anti-Castro" Cubans in terrorist groups like Alpha 66 and Omega 7, which committed many acts of terrorism and sabotage against Cuba such as shelling hotels, burning sugar cane fields, etc. under the guidance of the Central Intelligence Agency (which introduced swine flu to Cuba). They continued attacks on Cuba even during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. Reactionary anti-Castro Cubans carried out the September 21, 1976 murder of Chilean diplomat and anti-fascist Orlando Letelier, who was an opponent of the fascist puppet of the CIA (Augusto Pinochet, who ordered the murder) who carried out the overthrow and murder of Chilean president Salvadore Allende (on September 11, 1973, Omega 7 was formed on September 11, 1974). They were involved in airline terrorism in the bombing of Cubana Airlines Flight 455 organized by Luis Posada Carriles. Felix Rodriguez, another CIA asset "anti-Castro" Cuban, was heavily involved in Iran-Contra. The Watergate burglars were made up of "anti-Castro" Cubans (or Cuban born). And let's not forget the involvement of "anti-Castro" Cubans in the murder of the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy They didn't kill JFK alone (the CIA killed him) but they were involved.
And yet it's Ozzie Guillen (and Fidel Castro) who are the villains in this? Only among capitalists and reactionaries. Guillen's 'sin' was saying something that hurt the Marlin's owner's "bottom line". Being foolish enough to think the myth of Freedom of Speech really exists can get you suspended or fired. And hurting capitalism can get you killed. Ask Salvadore Allende; and Fidel Castro.
Speak no evil? Speak no good...if it's about a socialist government
Ozzie Guillen's only 'crime' in this whole non-matter is that he said something that reactionaries construed as being complimentary about a socialist leader in an area dominated by a group of rabid reactionaries. In all the praise of "Cuban exiles" and their story, no mention is made of the known complicity of "anti-Castro" Cubans in terrorist groups like Alpha 66 and Omega 7, which committed many acts of terrorism and sabotage against Cuba such as shelling hotels, burning sugar cane fields, etc. under the guidance of the Central Intelligence Agency (which introduced swine flu to Cuba). They continued attacks on Cuba even during the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. Reactionary anti-Castro Cubans carried out the September 21, 1976 murder of Chilean diplomat and anti-fascist Orlando Letelier, who was an opponent of the fascist puppet of the CIA (Augusto Pinochet, who ordered the murder) who carried out the overthrow and murder of Chilean president Salvadore Allende (on September 11, 1973, Omega 7 was formed on September 11, 1974). They were involved in airline terrorism in the bombing of Cubana Airlines Flight 455 organized by Luis Posada Carriles. Felix Rodriguez, another CIA asset "anti-Castro" Cuban, was heavily involved in Iran-Contra. The Watergate burglars were made up of "anti-Castro" Cubans (or Cuban born). And let's not forget the involvement of "anti-Castro" Cubans in the murder of the 35th President of the United States, John F. Kennedy They didn't kill JFK alone (the CIA killed him) but they were involved.
And yet it's Ozzie Guillen (and Fidel Castro) who are the villains in this? Only among capitalists and reactionaries. Guillen's 'sin' was saying something that hurt the Marlin's owner's "bottom line". Being foolish enough to think the myth of Freedom of Speech really exists can get you suspended or fired. And hurting capitalism can get you killed. Ask Salvadore Allende; and Fidel Castro.
