The new Cuba was invented in the heady Days of Aquarius, two generations back, and left-wing America cheered, as it cheered all things statist, from Hanoi to Peking to Moscow.
But Cuba was even more enchanting. At last, a pattern of lovely, cuddly government right in our own hemisphere.
Pete Seegar and his Guantanamera haunted much of a nation which somehow got the idea it was a revolutionary hymn rather than a routine Tin-Pan-Alley lament by a guy who couldn't get the girl.
Our consciousness was especially raised by frantically caring celebrities orgasmic over the revolucion of Fidel and Che.
Harry Belafonte, representative of the gushers: If you believe in freedom, if you believe in justice, if you believe in democracy, you have no choice but to support Fidel Castro.
Other true believers in the Cuban Miracle included Chevy Chase, Kevin Costner, Oliver Stone, Stephen Spielberg, Vanessa Redgrave, all ready on a second's notice to lecture us as to why socialist dictatorships work so well.
Their pronouncements did not, unfortunately reach the ears of selected Cuban citizens, the Castro Gulag not being wired for cable.
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Uh oh.
"The Cuban Model doesn't even work for us anymore. -- Fidel Castro, speaking to Jeffery Goldberg of The Atlantic.
There is another point of interest in Goldberg's fawning essay on his conversation with Fidel.
We can wonder why he seems so delighted with this old thief, jailer, torturer, and mass murderer who almost single-handedly destroyed every productive human being and institution on his island. Maybe it was because Jeffie was so delighted with himself for charming ol' Fidel into inviting him along on a dolphin-gawking party.
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Raul Castro, the little brother now in charge, is quoted as saying Cuban citizens will need to demand less of government. We are entitled to wish for even remotely similar words from a the presidente of a country just 90 miles off Cuban shores.
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