Posted on 03/27/2002 10:00:18 PM PST by CHACHI
Looking for Elian
19 March 2002
Eugene Robinson Assistant Managing Editor Washington Post robinson@washpost.com
Dear Mr. Robinson:
I read your story, "Looking for Elian", with interest; the headline caught my eye since not one reporter has laid his eyes on an unaccompanied Elian since he was seized by the INS in a pre-dawn military raid two years ago.
From the beginning, I knew that finding Elian was unlikely, because he lives in a communist dictatorship where there's no such thing as freedom of the press, which is why those of us who think communism constitutes child abuse opposed sending him back to that hell you described.
I found your story well written and often involving -- until the end, when you write: "The Cuban government has kept journalists away from [Elian and his Cuba family], and the truth is that this is a good thing."
Good --- for whom? For Elian Gonzalez, who is shut off from freedom? For the press, which is shut off from reporting? Perhaps you mean it's good for the communist regime, which must repress dissent in order to survive.
Any reporter who regards being completely cut off from the media and from any independent evaluation as good for any human being, especially a child, should never should be sent to Cuba, let alone be assigned a story about a child's life in Cuba.
Your viewpoint makes the whole premise of looking for Elian a lie -- why bother looking for one who, according to you, will be harmed by your reporting?
Knowing the history of the Soviet Union and China and that you're in the grip of Castro, did it really never dawn on you that Elian might be shut off from the free world because Cuba's totalitarian regime doesn't want you to know how he lives? Are you seriously willing to take the word of a second-rate bureaucrat mouthing Havana's dictates as the final arbiter on the fate of a child whose life you are assigned to chronicle? Is that all it takes to shoo the Washington Post away from following up on the biggest story of 2000 --- a few words from a heel-clicking communist?
If so, the Post applies a higher standard to terrorists at Guantanamo Bay than to a child whose mother died to bring him to America. What a twisted hierarchy of values.
You refer without attribution to "a constant stream" of reporters from whom Elian presumably must be protected, as if a reporter is more dangerous than that thug who sure made an impression on *you*, a grown man. And that thug is a daily presence in Elian's life, not a passing moment of danger in an assistant managing editor's notes.
Journalism is the relentless pursuit of truth; you ostensibly went to find Elian Gonzalez and, being told by threat of force that you are not welcome, you abandoned that journey and blindly accepted the ideas of those who refused you.
Looking for Elian? You weren't looking for Elian. The article is written as if you were looking for vindication of a nation that, in one of its darkest moments, forcibly returned a child refugee from communism *to* communism.
If you were looking for such vindication--or at least moral neutrality--you sure came away empty-handed. When the INS should have been arresting Islamic terrorists, they were forcing a child at gunpoint to live in tyranny. Now even the mighty Washington Post can't get a lousy photograph to prove he exists, let alone report how he lives.
This nation ought to be ashamed of turning its back on that child -- and on our founding principle of inalienable individual rights -- and your half-hearted, failed attempt to find him demonstrates why.
Sincerely, Scott Holleran cc: Letters letters@washpost.com;
SCOTT HOLLERAN sholleran@earthlink.net ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ FOR FREEDOM & JUSTICE GROUP http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ForFreedomandJustice
and the clintons/janet-bone-in-her-nose-reno are her spear chuckers---the trench coat mafia--kkk!
The part about the INS torturing some poor child while hundreds of thousands of illegal Arabs set up attacks is truly vile, nauseous Democrat evil.
Bump to remember Elian.
and the clintons/janet-bone-in-her-nose-reno/waters/rangel are his spear chuckers---the trench coat mafia--kkk!
and the clintons/janet-bone-in-her-nose-reno/waters/rangel are his spear chuckers---the trench coat mafia--kkk!
Devilcrats!
That whole shameful episode still rubs me raw.
"Communism constitutes child abuse."
Click for the FLASH video:
Wassup Elian?
Regards,
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