Saturday, December 22, 2007

Notable & Ironic: Fidel Is "A Cuban X-Man"

"He's eighty some-odd years old, has had more than a few surgeries, has been out of his beloved limelight for 18 months, has been reportedly pretty ill and bedridden and must be taking a slew of meds and just the other day reported that he was done with the leader of the country thing. And yet, he still has the wherewithal to sit down with his protegé [Hugo Chávez] and discuss such complex issues as the integration of two countries into one! The man is a horse, folks! A Cuban X-man!"Val Prieto, "Must be the Spinach or the Bionic Tracksuit," Babalú, December 21, 2007

How many times has Val Prieto killed and resurrected Fidel Castro this year, let alone in the span of his blog? More than we can remember. At Babalú that's known as building an audience. That this is also playing into Castro's hands, discrediting his enemies and fostering the myth of his indestructibility, is also quite obvious. What we had not suspected is that Val is actually overawed by Castro's seeming invulnerability, really the product of diverting all the king's horses and all the king's men to his preservation. Nothing can be more ironic than to have Val mock Castro as "the horse" — or, in Val's cultural parlance, an "X-man" — when no other exile has contributed as much as Val in recent years to perpetuating the myth of his indestructibility.

5 comments:

nonee moose said...

MAT, no one has contributed to the "myth" of fidel's indestructibility as much as fidel himself. Val's recognition is merely of that fact. Or are all accounts of fidel's health problems, and his damnable persistence in overcoming them, now to be taken as a fiction?

I must tell you, it's not hard, in this instance, to share in Val's frustration over this "myth". As if to ask the heavens, "What's it gonna take?"

Perhaps only the good do, indeed, die young.

Manuel A.Tellechea said...

nonee:

Let me understand you: Val is to be excused for perpetuating the myth of Castro's indestructibility because Castro himself has done more to perpetuate it than has Val. Isn't that like saying that Charles Mansson should be forgiven because Hitler killed a lot more people?

nonee moose said...

Nothing like that. I only meant that you give him too much credit here. I think his intent was much smaller in this case, and in that vein, I could agree with his apparent frustration. The beard doesn't need anyone to feed his myth of indestructibility. Sadly, that myth is borne out by his permanence in our collective psyche as a general matter, irrespective of the shades of debate.

I know your point was to paint Val as an unwitting dupe. But I respectfully disagree, based on the limits of that post. There may be better examples.

And please, no more manson and/or hitler references.

Manuel A.Tellechea said...

nonee:

The presumption on Val's part is that others give too much credit to Castro as some kind of "Superman" (or "X-Man" as he puts it). My point is that no one has contributed more to fostering that image in recent years than Val himself, who keeps "killing" him and resurrecting him on a regular basis. One would almost think that Castro were Val's messiah.

nonee moose said...

MAT, if Babalu were somehow a for-profit endeavor, and I have no indication that it is, then reference to castro's messianic role may be a propos. Perhaps castro is a source of relevance, but again, that is hardly uncommon or even objectionable around these parts.