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