According to the BBC,
“When he fell, some of those among the audience of 30,000 broke into tears, a Reuters correspondent reports.”
I remember my visit to Albania shortly after the collapse of the tyranny there. Alma Kazazi, the professor who had invited me to come and lecture at the University of Tirana, told me that “when Enver Hoxha died, we all cried, even those of us who are the most anti-communist now.” The cult of personality that psychopaths such as Castro (the darling of so much of Hollywood) build around themselves is remarkable. I hope that many of those who cried over Fidel’s little fall today will look back with the same astonishment as Alma showed when she told me about her reaction to the death of Hoxha.
It’s interesting that the evil old killer and tyrant is never referred to as a “dictator; he is “Cuba’s 78-year-old leader” and “the Cuban revolutionary leader” (BBC), “the 78-year-old leader” (CNN), “Cuban President” and “the 78-year-old communist leader” (AP), “Der 78-jÃ?Â??Ã?Â?Ã?¤hrige kubanische Staats- und Parteichef” (Tagesschau), “Le prÃ?Â??Ã?Â?Ã?©sident cubain” (Le Nouvel Observateur), etc., etc.
P.S. For some reason I have attracted a group of quite twisted readers who revel in hateful gay-baiting. The first comment on this post is a truly a nauseating example, the sort one would expect from a Justin Raimondo, whose argumentative skills are so feeble that he thinks that cleverest way to attack someone is to suggest that whatever he’s done or accomplished, it’s all about having a sleazy sex life. Such people spend so much time in the gutter that they think everyone else lives there, too.
I went to Albania in 1990 not to arrange a date with Hacim Thaci, the leader of the truly criminal Kosovo Liberation Front (the UÃ?Â??Ã?Â??K, which was based in Kosovo, which was in Yugoslavia, not Albania, anyway), but to arrange translation into Albanian of textbooks for university education (especially Paul Heyne’s excellent book “The Economic Way of Thinking”), to arrange translation of works by Milton Friedman, F. A. Hayek, and other classical liberal thinkers, to seek out people who would be interested in libertarianism and to assist them, and in general to try to help people to develop the institutions of a free society.
Regarding Antaeus’s reference to that “toothless old Fidel,” he wasn’t so toothless when he sent planes to strafe rickety boats of refugees and armed ships to ram them and drown the adults and children who were trying to escape his compulsory “Paradise.” Thousands of people have been killed by his secret police and thousands and thousands of others have been arrested, beaten, and generally denied something to which every human being is entitled: freedom.
Finally, the commentator thinks that George Bush has a “cult of personality”, so it’s ok for Fidel Castro to have one. (But really, does anybody think that Bush or Kerry or Clinton or Dole or the like have cults of personality?) And George Bush fell down! So therefore his government is just like Fidel Castro’s. See, he fell down, too!