By Michael Gonzalez. Mr. Gonzalez is the deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal Europe's editorial page. The Wall Street Journal, April 20, 2000
An old Jewish joke has two old men sitting in a cafe, one reading a Zionist journal and the other one an anti-Semitic screed. The first Jew excoriates the second Jew, who replies: "Listen, your paper's full of Jews being persecuted, their cemeteries vandalized and their synagogues
burned. Mine's full of Jews controlling the banks, the media and Hollywood. So I like good news." This joke comes to mind when I see how the media trash Cuban-Americans over the Elian Gonzalez affair.
How come Cuban-Americans are fair game for media barbs? It also explains why I'm taking more than a small delight in this attack on the ethnic group I sometimes have to remind myself I belong to. Cuban-Americans can talk all they want about statistics that show comparatively high
educational levels and middle-class incomes after only four decades in America. To me, there's never been a bigger sign that Cubans have succeeded in America than the total absence of any political correctness in the whole Elian story.
Media commentators feel free to attack Cuban-Americans in a way they never would any other ethnic group. Thus Time magazine recently referred to Cuban-Americans as a "privileged, imperious elite who set themselves up as a pueblo sufrido, a suffering people." And CBS's Bryant Gumbel,
asking a question of Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R., Fla.), proclaimed that "the Cuban-American community has been supporting clear disobedience of the law."
Cubans irk liberals for two reasons. First, liberals harbor a latent sympathy for Fidel Castro and for communism. Second, our very success disproves the claim that "Hispanics" or other minority groups cannot thrive in America.
The latter point really rubs some people the wrong way. I've seen it in the eyes of every liberal who has lectured me about America's unfairness only to be cut off by my saying, "I'm one of these Hispanics you keep talking about and, really, I've done fine."
Cubans indeed break just about every liberal taboo. We're very judgmental. We think America is a better place to live than Cuba; we think capitalism is better than communism; and by a wide margin we vote Republican.
This last point is an interesting one. Many liberals want to believe that a majority of Cubans vote Republican because of the party's staunch anticommunism. But they ignore what it is in the Republican Party that attracts us. The GOP's anticommunism reflects a broader philosophical outlook.
Republicans more than Democrats stand for liberty. Liberals, despite the name purloined from classical philosophers, are all too willing to trade liberty away for the promise of security. This is why they want to nationalize the health care system, refuse to let public schools compete and want
to take people's guns away. Miami is better armed than Fort Knox.
This is why I love it when liberals go to Cuba and sing the praises of the Cuban system. This strange behavior shows just how far leftists are willing to see our societies go in order to get state freebies. Sure, Fidel Castro refuses to hold real elections, and those who speak their minds in
Cuba are beaten up and imprisoned, and religious people are second-class citizens. But hey, that's a small price to pay for universal health care.
That health care stinks, of course, as it would in this country if some version of HillaryCare were ever enacted. But the state provides it, and for this liberals seem to be willing to sell their birthright. We Cuban-Americans have seen the future, we say no thanks, and we vote conservative.
Cuban-Americans, moreover, are like the little old Jewish man in the joke. We refuse to play the victim. We just get on with it, and in today's culture of victimhood, this is a major infraction.
The personification of this perfect insouciance is Lazaro Gonzalez, Elian's great-uncle. He is truly a piece of work. If he cares that he's become the most hated man in America, he certainly doesn't show it. He wants to do right by Elian, and knows what the boy would be going back to in Cuba,
so he has resisted every attempt to railroad him. So far he's succeeded in standing up to the combined forces of Washington and Havana; Wednesday the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals extended an order preventing Elian from being deported to Cuba.
The little-educated Lazaro Gonzalez seems to rely on his own common sense and his religion. Burly and rarely seen without his undershirt or his heavy gold chains, Mr. Gonzalez will get his due if he doesn't crack under the strain. He struggled to get that working-class house that people all
over the world now see on TV, and he's proud of that. He has the temerity to want his great-nephew to be able to have the same rights.
David Rieff writes in the New York Times that Miami is "an out-of-control banana republic within the American body politic." Oh well, worse things could happen. In fact, I'd be more worried if the Times suddenly found reason to sympathize with us. |