The Last Days of RCAB and the Cuban-American Blogosphere?

The Babalunians have always been at a great disadvantage in their battles with me (besides the obvious intellectual chasm between us): they are afraid to mention my name. Why? Because to do so is to make a gift to me of Babalú's readers. Their fear is not unfounded since that is exactly what has happened each and every time that one of them has made reference to me at Babalú. I can almost sympathize with their predicament. If they combat the "enemy" not only will they lose the battle but a considerable number of their adherents will defect to the other side. Their only choice, then, is to take volley after volley without offering any resistance. In the past, Fortress Babalú could withstand such an assault. Now, however, there are very considerable chinks in its walls and the whole edifice has been structurally compromised. Their friends (so-called) in the blogosphere have even begun to take notice of its dilapidated state and to allude mischievously to the cause (and even link to it). Then there are my secret admirers in the Babalunian fold itself. They pay me the tribute of their words, that is, they endeavor, with varying degrees of success, to model their writing on mine. I am to them what William Hazlitt and G.K. Chesterton were to me. Which is not good for them. They should go to the well rather than draw water from my pail, as I recently advised one of them. But let them do as they please.

The only response to RCAB that the Babalunians ever ventured safely upon was to attempt to parody it. From the start, I was the biggest fan of those parody blogs, because, of course, the joke was not on me but on them. I even reviewed these "Reviews of the Review" besides always linking to them. I regarded them as homage blogs and looked upon their proliferation with satisfaction even if their overall quality did not always do me honor. The best of these parody blogs was undoubtedly George Moneo's Review of the Review of Cuban-American Blogs , and the worst (for how could he hope to imitate me?) was fantomas' since deleted The Cuban American Misfits Review. Moneo's blog profile of "Manuel A. Chechechea" still makes me laugh and I even copied it in a post at RCAB lest it should ever be lost to history (which is a real possibility since George keeps forgetting the password to his parody blog since he posts there so infrequently. See here).

Of course, RCAB was not conceived as a parody of Babalú. But, imagine, how smart Val Prieto would have been if he had received it as such, publicized it, linked it and offered no opposition to it, taking it all as a big joke and finally reducing it to a big joke. In short, if he had taken a page out of my book. Instead, he has allowed it to cloud his sunny days for going on 2 years and can't even write a sentence now without trying to second guess it.

I have said that if Barack Obama wins this election I will close RCAB on Inauguration Day 2009. There will be no need then to be Babalú's watchdog because the proto-Communists will be in charge of U.S. foreign policy towards Cuba and the opinions of Val & Company will matter as much as a bucket of warm shit and my opinions about their opinions even less. All Cuban-American blogs, in fact, will become irrelevant because it will not be possible anymore to influence U.S. policy towards Cuba. Let the Babalunians rail against the storm all they want and put their Human Pressure Cooker on automatic, it will avail them not. With Obama's unconditional capitulation to Castro, the criminal state created by him in Cuba will be accepted as the legitimate representative of the Cuban people by the very nation that enthroned Castro 50 years ago. The betrayal of Cuba's freedom, independence and sovereignty will come full circle and find the U.S., as in the beginning, on the side of Castro. Well, maybe it was always on the side of Castro and we refused to believe it until it became official policy. With Obama's "Good Neighbor Policy" towards the Castro regime and Ambassador Greg Craig as the new Sumner Welles, it will be impossible to pretend anymore that we shall ever see a free Cuba. Even if we all live 100 years more it will be too little to see the end of Castroism in Cuba though long enough to see the decline and fall of the United States.

The Cuban-American Misfits Review: Of Dead Blogs and Other Irrelevancies