Chatterbox: Fidel Castro, Book Critic - Foreign Policy magazine buffs a dictator's image.

It's been widely observed lately that Fidel-adoring artists and intellectuals in the United States never seem to mind whenever Cuba's charismatic dictator tosses his own country's artists and intellectuals into the slammer, as he did last month. (Their crime was to fraternize with U.S. diplomats. Their prison sentences range from 12 to 25 years.) Castro would appear to believe that free expression is a wonderful thing so long as it never enters his jurisdiction. Why do Fidel's groupies stand for it? Writing in the Washington Monthly, Damien Cave says it's because Castro is a master at the art of flattery. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Andrew Breitbart speculates that it's Castro's longevity. Writing in Slate, Mickey Kaus says "It's the 'ho's!" (Havana's "prostitution scene," he explains, "is reportedly a shopper's paradise.") To these, Chatterbox would add his own suspicion that Fidel's acolytes view Fidel's jailing of artists and intellectuals as a form of literary expression. It's his way of saying that he doesn't care for their work.

That Castro is a literary critic is established in the March-April issue of Foreign Policy magazine, which publishes a book review by Castro of Gabriel García Márquez's memoir Living to Tell the Tale. Márquez and Castro are, famously, pals-an association that's never spoken well of Márquez-and executive editor James Gibney explained to Chatterbox that "Castro's review brought that relationship into sharper relief." But a reading of the review will quickly disabuse anyone of that notion. It is, as one would expect, amateurish, frequently unintelligible, and (of course) all about Castro himself. It's Castro's attempt to promote an idea of himself not as Communist dictator, but as littérateur manqué:

[A]s a public man forced to compose speeches and narrate events, I share the illustrious writer's delight in searching for the precise word, a sort of mutual obsession that is unappeasable until the phrase is just right, faithful to the sentiment or idea we wish to express, even as we remain firm in the belief that it can always be improved.

These mots justes include "provocation" and "subversion," which is what the latest crop of dissidents stands accused of. Maybe something gets lost in the translation from the original Spanish.

Foreign Policy has spiffed itself up lately, and as a result the magazine is much livelier and thought-provoking than it used to be. Gibney notes, correctly, that running Castro's review does not imply any sort of endorsement. "We'd run a movie review by Kim Jong-il if we felt it might shed some useful light on his thinking and personality," Gibney says. (Next month: Idi Amin reviews The Lovely Bones!) On reflection, Chatterbox can't really dispute that it's interesting to learn what dictators do in their spare time. But that doesn't let Foreign Policy off the hook. A movie review by Kim Jong-il couldn't enable any widespread belief that Kim is some sort of philosopher-king, because no such belief exists. It's different, alas, with Castro. Many people think of Castro as some sort of Latin Papa Hemingway, and the publication of this review will only encourage them to go on believing it.

Where are you now, Fidelistas? ***What's truly shocking is the absence of outrage from his American friends. Where are all the Fidelistas in Hollywood, whose lengthy love affair with Castro is impressively -- and depressingly -- documented by Damien Cave in the April issue of The Washington Monthly? Oliver Stone has recently completed a documentary, ''Commandante,'' which HBO was supposed to air in May but canceled last week because of the news events. In Stone's oeuvre, Castro is given a chance to assert, unchallenged, that the Cuban regime has never practiced torture -- and also to show his ''human'' side by discussing, among other things, his love for the movie ''Titanic.'' Maybe the metaphor of a huge sinking ship strikes a chord: After all, Castro presides over a country whose economy has hit bottom and whose inhabitants are willing to brave shark-infested waters in rickety boats to seek their fortunes elsewhere. Stone is well known for his far-left political views, but he is hardly alone in his Fidel worship. Actors Kevin Costner and Jack Nicholson and director Steven Spielberg have made fawning comments about the Cuban dictator; after a trip to Cuba last year, Spielberg described his meeting with Castro as ''the most important eight hours in my life.''

And it's not just Hollywood types, either. Media stars and executives, from CNN founder Ted Turner to ABC News veteran Barbara Walters and Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, have joined in the lovefest -- apparently setting aside for the occasion their passion about freedom of speech. In The Washington Monthly, Cave speculates that the reasons for this strange romance are both personal and political: They range from resentment of US foreign policy and the perception of Castro as a fearless David standing up to an American Goliath to the dictator's personal charisma and his skill at massaging the egos of his celebrity guests. All that may be so. But one would think that the recent crackdown in Cuba would serve as a shattering wake-up call even for the most oblivious.***

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