Michael Moore Sneers at Cuban Americans

BY: Humberto Fontova

Last week on "Larry King Live" Michael Moore took the high road. He simply could not bring himself to pronounce judgment on the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's tirades. "I'm a white guy," explained the rotund film-maker. "And I mean, you have to ask yourself, Larry, what's it like to be black in America? . . . And I do not believe, as a white guy, that I am in any position to judge a black man who has had to live through that."

Michael Moore's non-judgmental scruples apply only to celebrity victims of Jim Crow lite. A much different set of scruples apply to victims of Stalinism.

"Florida's Cubans" writes Moore in his book, "Downsize This," are responsible for "sleaze and influence-peddling in American politics. In every incident of national torment that has deflated our country for the past three decades - Cuban exiles are always present and involved."

Such a blanket trashing of an entire ethnic group straddles the very dictionary definition of bigotry. Normally the entire Democratic Party would work itself into a collective froth against the villain who spouted such hate-speech. Normally every media outlet in the land would promptly and boastfully ban this bigot from its airwaves, broadcasting the decision between film clips of fire-hoses in Selma, cross burnings, and torch-light storm troopers at Nuremberg.

Moore himself denounces Republicans as "people who hate . . . people who get up at 6 in the morning trying to figure out which minority group they're going to screw today."

But in "Downsize This," Moore was insulting Cuban-Americans (80 percent Republicans), you see. So all is forgiven. So instead of being pummeled as a bigot by the usual media sniffers and snouters, Moore was feted as the guest of honor at the last Democratic National Convention, squatting his gargantuan gluteus in the very president's box alongside Jimmy Carter.

Then waddling onto the stage at Boston's Fleet Center to a whooping, hollering ovation rivaling even the one that deafened Fidel Castro when he addressed Harvard Law School and Washington's National Press Club in 1959, though it was close.

"These Cuban exiles, for all their chest-thumping and terrorism, are really just a bunch of wimps - that's right, Wimps!" Moore continues in his book. His smear refers to all Cubans who left Cuba but singles out the Bay of Pigs freedom-fighters for particular scorn. "Ex-Cubans with a yellow stripe down their backs," he calls them, on top of "crybabies."


During the Bay of Pigs days these men - all volunteers and overwhelmingly civilian - battled savagely against a Soviet-trained and Soviet-led force 10 times its size, inflicting casualties of 30-to-1. When the local CIA man realized they'd been betrayed by the best and brightest he pleaded with their commander to allow an evacuation. "We will not be evacuated!" yelled that Cuban-exile commander into his radio from the clearly doomed beachhead. "We came here to fight! This ends here!"

And so it did. Then came the real heroics. Living under a daily firing squad sentence for almost two years these men refused to sign the confession damning the "U.S. imperialists" (the very nation that betrayed them on that beachhead.) Many spat on the document in front of their Communist torturers. "We will die with dignity!" responded their second-in-command Erneido Oliva ( a black Cuban, Messieurs Rangel, Wright and Jackson) to his furious communist captors, again and again and again.

In blanket-trashing all Cubans who for some crazy reason rejected free healthcare for U.S. freedom, Moore also trashes the longest suffering political prisoners of the century. Cuban-Americans like Roberto Martin-Perez, Mario Chanes De Armas, Eusebio Penalver, Angel de Fana, who all spent spent almost 30 years in Fidel Castro and Che Guevara's gulag. That's more than three times as long a Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Natan Sharansky spent in Josef Stalin's gulag.

Normally such men would have publishers, producers and documentary makers lining up for their stories. A&E would feature them every other month. NPR, "Frontline," "60 Minutes" and the History Channel would beat down their doors.

Alas, these were Fidel Castro and Che Guevara's victims. Enough said. Sadistic and cowardly torturers just doesn't square with the image of the left's premier pin-up boys.

Think about it: the very things people like Moore, Sean Penn, Danny Glover, the Dixie Chicks, etc. say and write for free publicity, Fidel Castro and Che Guevara's prisoners refused to sign to save their lives, or to end two decades of daily torture. Yet the Democrats' pet walrus sneers at them from his Upper West Side pad as "wimps, cowards and crybabies."

A guilt-stricken JFK finally ransomed back the Bay of Pigs prisoners. After fighting - literally - to the last bullet against swarms of Soviet-led troops in Cuba, hundreds of these Cuban exiles promptly joined the U.S. Army and many volunteered for action in Vietnam. One of these was named Felix Sosa-Camejo.

Mr. Sosa-Camejo died while rescuing a wounded comrade, he'd already been awarded 12 medals, including the Bronze Star, three Silver Stars and two Purple Hearts. I'll quote from his official citation:

On February 13, 1968, the lead platoon was hit by an enemy bunker complex manned by approximately forty North Vietnamese Regulars. Upon initial contact the point man was wounded and lay approximately 10 meters in front of the center bunker.

With disregard for his safety, Captain Sosa-Camejo ran through the intense enemy fire and pulled the wounded point man to safety. After ensuring that the wounded man was receiving medical treatment, Captain Sosa-Camejo returned to the fire fight and again exposed himself to the intense enemy fire by single handedly assaulting the center bunker with grenades killing the two NVA soldiers manning the bunker.

As he turned to assault the next bunker an NVA machine gun opened up and he was mortally wounded. Captain Sosa-Camejo's valorous action and devotion to duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the United States Army.

From his limousine Michael Moore sneers at this Cuban-American and his band of brothers as "wimps and crybabies with yellow lines down their back."

Humberto Fontova is the author of four books including "Exposing the Real Che Guevara and the Useful Idiots Who Iidolize Him" and "Fidel; Hollywood's Favorite Tyrant." Visit www.hfontova.com