Ozzie Guillen, the Venezuelan motormouth baseball manager, was recently hired by the Miami Marlins. (For an intro to Ozzie's personality, here's the video "Ozzie Guillen Visits a Sick Child.") He quickly got himself semi-Watsoned for saying, in the midst of one of his usual stream-of-consciousness effusions:
Guillen’s comments appeared in a Time magazine article, in which he said he “loved” and “respected” Castro, the longtime Cuban leader. Time reported that Guillen said: “I respect Fidel Castro. You know why? A lot of people have wanted to kill Fidel Castro for the last 60 years,” but Castro is still here, he added, referring to Castro as an expletive.
So, the Marlins suspended Guillen for five games.
As I've long pointed out, anti-Castro Cubans swing a lot of weight in Miami. There's not much in the way of effective freedom of speech on Castro-related topics down there. The good news is that they aren't stealthy about it. They revel in being known for publicly crushing dissent. They think that shows how powerful they are. (The career fate of Miami Cuban ex-CNN anchorman Rick Sanchez, however, shows that for national power, it's best to make it a taboo to even mention how powerful your group is.)
Every year, the rest of America becomes more like Miami, just on different topics.
Off topic, that reminds me that I once sat right behind home plate at a White Sox game with all the players' wives and relatives who get the special tickets. A whole bunch of Ozzie's kin and in-laws were there, with the men all wearing lots of silver jewelry. They were a fun bunch. I sat right behind future Hall of Famer Frank Thomas's wife (now ex-), who was showing all the other players' wives this huge diamond he'd given her. Good times.
I can't blame any Cuban for hating Castro or anyone who seems to support him.
ReplyDeleteThe constitution says a person mustn't be discriminated or persecuted on the basis of race, creed, or color. Creed means belief or conviction. If Guillen is a baseball manager, the only thing that should matter is his ability as a manager. Why should his creed matter, whether it's fascist or communist? As long as he doesn't force it on his players, it shouldn't matter at all, and this penalization for people's creeds must stop.
ReplyDeleteThis story unnerves the media, they don't quite know how to take it or where to spin it. It pulls back the facade a bit on the "people of color united against whitey" facade they promote.
ReplyDeleteThe constitution says a person mustn't be discriminated or persecuted on the basis of race, creed, or color.
ReplyDeleteWhat constitution? You mean the charter of your knitting circle? Nothing wrong with that. Let a bunch of communists, Muslims (Sura 8:1, Sura 9:29), Scientologists, whatever you want into your knitting circle.
Whenever I see NAMS flaunting their bling, I get a rush of superiority and reverse snobbism. Then I recall this exchange:
ReplyDeleteOn visiting the home of Plato, he stomped upon his host’s fine carpets saying, “I am trampling on the pride of Plato." "Yes, Diogenes,” Plato replied, “with pride of another sort."
The historical record shows that the mercy shown towards once-failed golpistas such as Castro, Hugo Chavez and Adolf Hitler was misplaced. Executing the three tyrants after their failed coups would have been the more merciful act, saving a lot more lives.
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I would agree with Ozzie Guillen that Castro's genius has been keeping himself and/or his brother in power for the last half century. However,staying in power and doing a good job with that power are two distinct issues. As a competent steward of the country, wonder cow Ubre Blanca would have done a better job than Fidel.
Venezuelan Ozzie Guillen is a baseball player, not a politician. Had he said something similar about Juan Vicente Gomez, a Venezuelan caudillo who died in office after 27 years in power [1908-1935], I wonder what the reaction would have been. Or had he said it about deceased or living caudillos such as Mugabe or the Korean Kims?
My guess is that had Ozzie Guillen said something along the line that Castro has a genius for staying in power but has ruined his country, even the Miami Cubans would have gone along with that. That is also a succient description of Castro. But Ozzie Guillen is a motormouth baseball person who probably thinks as much as he remains silent- not very much.
Ozzie Guillen spoke not as an individual, but as a representative of a company worth hundreds of millions. No one has free speech when one represents a company, as one has to put the company's best foot forward. It is not a good idea to alienate one's customers- in this case the Miami Cubans.
Aside: I recently came across a quote of Fidel saying "Yes, we can," decades before The Won said it.
Every beleaguered-in-their-own-mind ethnic group has its version of this, however I think the Miami Cubans are on the pedestals if not clearly the outright champs. ((White Sox fan here on the 1975 Cuban fencing team) It helps that they're relatively wealthy, but they wouldn't get so far if the culture of outrage hadn't trickled down from the post-WWII elite. The frequent comparison to the Balkans is off because it seems everybody is willing to get incensed about somebody's else issues now. Remember Elian? That kid easily commanded Trayvon-level ratings.
ReplyDeleteCan the government, or corporate America, please just put out a list of things you are not allowed to say so we can all know what is forbidden? So much easier than all of these individual cases of people getting fired you have to keep track of.
ReplyDeleteWatsoned?! He said he loves Castro, you cretin.
ReplyDeleteIs Sailer now pro-Castro? Really?
You and NR can go have a nice time.
As a White Sox fan, all I can say is I'm very happy Guillen is no longer our manager, having been replaced by the soberer (in both senses) Robin Ventura. While Guillen was an entertaining if annoying character, he was a disaster as managerial strategist (who lucked out in 2005).
ReplyDeleteYou've jumped the shark of cranky contrariness. You lost sight of how being contrary is good only when you're right and others are wrong. See, e.g., race realism. To see people reacting correctly to someone defending a dictator like Castro and deciding to just take the opposite view to be "different" or because you sense that, if lots of people believe it, it must be wrong, is juvenile.
ReplyDeleteI thought better of you, Steve.
The only explanation that comes to mind is an ugly one - Hispanics agreed on something, so you reflexively have to take the opposite view. In other words, Hispanics can't be right, so the touchstone of truth for you is to disagree with them. Pathetic.
The end of the post also demonstrates a particularly noxious personality trait of yours - name-dropping. Perhaps the E! Network could hire you to tell breathless stories of your hobnobbing with celebrities.
"They think that shows how powerful they are. "
ReplyDeleteI don't think that's the case at all.
The african-americans are weak because... just look at the Trayvon Martin brouhaha. We all know that the Scots-Irish are so weak that self-esteem has to be salvaged by firing/obscuring any errant mediaperson. Women are weak because women's rights! Third-worlders are weak because the poor dears have to leave their land and live here...as americans.
Today in this inverted hierarchy, having power means not having to use it and thus it is abundantly clear that white men have the most power. Just look at them, all smug with their benevolent stare, acting all non-racist and non-sexist, not uttering a word against the opinions of other groups on them.
That's power.
It's pretty humorous to watch as the sports media reacts to this with a collective "point and stutter" routine. No one can quite articulate why Guillen's comments were so incredibly offensive, but look, all these people are offended, so a five game suspension (or worse) must be justifiable.
ReplyDeleteAfter all, Castro is a bad, bad, bad man. Unless, apparently, you're MLB commissioner Bud Selig.
America more like Miami? Thats a scary tought but I'm not concerned about this anymore.
ReplyDeleteWe're reaching the end game of multiculturalism/diversity or whatever you like to call it.
The next years are goito be very interesting.
Don't worry, we'll track down a white Republicanish guy to affix ourselves to soon
ReplyDeleteYes, if anybody in sports media had half a wit they would have asked him (at the time, of course) what his personal expert opinion was of Mugabe, or Uganda's Yoweri Museveni. Kim il-Sung sure has held on, hasn't he? Somewhere in John Derbyshire's We Are Doomed book I think there's a full list of such athletes of longevity.
ReplyDeleteI haven't liked Guillen since he popped off in opposition to Arizona's SB 1070.
ReplyDeleteScrew him.
Anonymous at 5:56 p.m:
ReplyDelete"I thought better of you, Steve."
Oh, the crushing weight of an anonymous poster's petulant disapproval.
"The only explanation that comes to mind is an ugly one - Hispanics agreed on something, so you reflexively have to take the opposite view. In other words, Hispanics can't be right, so the touchstone of truth for you is to disagree with them. Pathetic."
ReplyDeleteYou don't understand. All of this outrage, real or feigned, is becoming tiresome. There has been a spate of these incidents lately starting with Sandra Fluke and feminist/left rage. Then we have Trayvon and black/left rage. Then we have Derbyshire and more black/left rage. Now we have Guillen and Cuban rage. Rush and Guillen groveled, while Derbyshire was fired. Zimmerman may die at the hands of a Black Panther or an Anti-Racist superhero.
This is about power, who has it, and how they wield it.
>You lost sight of how being contrary is good only when you're right and others are wrong.<
ReplyDeleteIn other words, you believe that the free speech of people who are wrong should be crushed.
Freedom is only understood, liked, and desired by a vanishingly small minority of people. The rest literally cannot grasp it. "Right" and "wrong," however, can be grasped by the lowest evangelist.
To refuse to acknowledge the oppressiveness of a foreign dictator can have real consequences. Who in Miami could have taught them that tactic??
ReplyDeleteIt's okay to threaten to riot in the streets and muscle someone whose speech we don't like - because, after all, he's wrong! But when somebody does that to us, that's terrible - because, after all, we're right!
ReplyDelete- Is this the mentality of the common people? Yes, ever and anon. The notion that one should never intimidate, muscle, or shout down *anyone* for his speech fills them with puzzlement. Mencken was right. (See his Notes on Democracy.)
Send him back to Venezuela to manage a team there.
ReplyDeleteFreedom is a 360 degree endeavor. Thusly, MLB and the Florida Marlins are private businesses, and they have rights too. Thought you knew that.
ReplyDeleteLike him or not, the issue here is the man got penalized for HAVING CERTAIN OPINIONS. What does his personal creed have to do with his role as baseball coach or manager?
ReplyDeleteAnyway, both the Trayvon and this issue show that what makes really makes the news is the public passion and outrage. If not for the rage of Cuban-American community, baseball committee would not have suspended him for five games. If not for public rage over Trayvon, I think even liberal media might not have picked up on the news.
ReplyDeleteSo, what white people need is a group of loud troublemakers who will call for protests, threats, and etc over stuff like black on white crime and etc. Then, white rage too will receive attention. Initially, the media will vilify it, but there's one after another after another, they'll have to acknowledge it. They'll have to fear it and from fear comes respect. After all, fear of Muslims in the West has led to 'respect' for Muslim sensibilities.
When Catholic Americans in the past organized and vented their fury, Hollywood respected them.
Predictions:
ReplyDeleteI think there will be a European-American movement but it will be created/coopted and funded by liberals. Instead of European-American identity as one of white racial pride/uniqueness, it will be about the pride of Western history/culture in creating a more open, inclusive, progressive, and egalitarian world.
It'll be like those PBS documentaries on Europe that tell us (1) how nice it is over there and (2) isn't it wonderful that progressive Europeans are allowing immigration so that all people can share in wonderful European culture?
So, the European-American movement in this country will focus on the inherently progressive and inclusive nature of European heritage, i.e. European-Americans want to finish the Western enterprise of creating a one world order where all people can share in universal European values.
Instead of being about White Identity, it will be about White Ideology that amounts to the generous heritage of European values that wanna share European genius and values with the world.
@ 7:41 PM
ReplyDeleteLike him or not, the issue here is the man got penalized for HAVING CERTAIN OPINIONS. What does his personal creed have to do with his role as baseball coach or manager?
Ozzie Guillen is a very visible representative of the Florida Marlins. His statement pissed off a very high proportion of the Marlins' fan base, which would probably result in reduced revenues for the team. Thus the need to placate a substantial part of their fan base.
It is very poor economics to piss off your customers. Ask the Dixie Chicks.
To see people reacting correctly to someone defending a dictator like Castro and deciding to just take the opposite view to be "different" or because you sense that, if lots of people believe it, it must be wrong, is juvenile.
ReplyDeleteWho is more loyal to the people they rule over, the Obama regime to the American people or the Castro government to the Cuban people?
One thing I have to give him credit for is he became a naturalized citizen. Most latinos just want to make the big bucks and go home.
ReplyDeleteImagine a Yankee skipper during the war or after saying, "I love Mussolini."
ReplyDeleteThe boys in the Bronx would've taken care of him...fast, my father included.
Good post Steve and fully agree- the Ozzie Guillen incident is a foretaste of the balkanization, cronyism and 3rd World-style corruption that awaits the USA as a whole thanks to the massive demographic change our elites keep pushing. Miami is just the tip of the iceberg- most of Arizona where I used to work, is basically indistinguishable from a Mexican shantytown these days, ruled by the same tinpot thugs, the same radical inequality and crime, the drugs and the 3rd-world corruption.
ReplyDeleteWhat makes me and fellow conservatives so angry about cases like this is how complicit the GOP establishment, the "Stupid Party" as you've correctly called them, have been in causing them- encouraging this mass immigration and rapid change of the complexion of the United States for their pseudo conservative big business lobby. Despite the anger of rank-and-file conservatives at uncontrolled immigration, the diversity lobby, outsourcing, affirmative action and so, the crony capitalist and big business factions in the Republican Party promote them to provide cheap labor, bust unions, push down wages and boost their short-term profits.
IOW we have the perversity of Leftist cultural marxists and social engineers teaming up with false 'rightists' and Ayn Rand types in the Chamber of Commerce, the big business lobby and leadership of the Republican Party itself, to flood the US with even more 3rd-world mass immigration, all to make a cheap buck in the short term. It's an irony that big business 'conservatives' have thus become mortal enemies of Christian and social conservatives in the GOP because of it.
This is why the GOP is hurtling ever faster toward catastrophe, because they're ignoring and even attacking the white conservative rank-and-file communities that are the only hope they have left of a base. Most of us couldn't care less about union-busting, privatization or all their free-trade claptrap- we do care a lot about the integrity of our communities, low crime, interference in our worship and right to bear arms and giving a safe environment to our kids. But the big business faction leading the GOP couldn't care less about any of that.
It also explains what the mainstream media is too stupid to figure out, why real conservatives hate Mitt Romney- he stands for all the GOP's corrupt, cronyist factions that team up with the Leftists to inundate our communities with mass immigration and all its associated ills. It's no accident that Romney and other corporate Republicans have made sure to decimate jobs and pensions in the whitest, most conservative parts of the country. People like him and the Kochs and Goldman Sachs love busting unions, privatizing services, laying off people and encouraging mass immigration in largely white Wisconsin, Indiana and Ohio because there's more to steal from in well-run white communities with public trust. These 'corporate conservatives' aren't conservative at all, and with the help of the Left's social engineers, they intend to gut whatever's left of intact white communities throughout this nation.
I can't blame any Cuban for hating Castro or anyone who seems to support him.
ReplyDeleteProbably due to your own personal experience. I have to respect that.
Good times
?
"Dr Cattle said...
ReplyDeleteAmerica more like Miami? Thats a scary tought but I'm not concerned about this anymore.
We're reaching the end game of multiculturalism/diversity or whatever you like to call it.
The next years are goito be very interesting."
From your mouth to God's ears my friend... but I am not as sure as you that the end is in sight.
Didn't our esteemed Attorney General Eric "My People" Holder who was appointed by Barak "He could be my son" Obama say in response to the question of whether it was time to end affirmative action that such a question was crazy and that the real question was when was affirmative action going to begin.
To think that NAMS, trained as they are by the Media Elite in the poltics of outrage (White heterosexual gentile males Be Bad Jews, Blacks, Hispanics and everyone else Be Good) will go quietly into the night is wishful thinking.
As De Toqueville, the famous French historian pointed out, revolutions are ignited when rising expectations are dashed. A lot of NAM expectations were inflated by Obama's election. I fear that the bursting of that bubble will not be pretty.
Diversity is strength except when its not as the recent multi cultural breakups in the Balkans, Lybia, etc. .. can attest
I agree with you that it will be interesting ... expect a lot of riots ... Truly hope that you, me, and most of the posters on this blog will be able to watch it from the safety of our couch on TV but I am not optimistic about that.
Only five games? MLB suspended Marge Schott for a lot longer than that when she expressed much more guarded praise of *her* favorite dictator.
ReplyDeleteMachiavelli was right when he said don't EVER make anyone poor.
ReplyDeleteCubans hate Fidel because he made them poor, took their property, forced them to flee (their good life in Cuba). No wonder they hate him.
Guys like Guillen and various Dominicans are more sympatico to Castro because he took money from the Whiter parts of the Cuban society. Not to give to the poorer, Blacker parts. Oh no, just to his own pockets (and that of his family and goons). But still, that's part of the satisfaction Guillen says.
Everyone pretty much understands it. Its not race as Americans think it, more degree than absolute. And with a huge touch of Amerindian issues too (though not so much in the Caribbean as the Amerinds there did not last so long).
Maria Conchita Alonso and Ozzie Guillen are both Venezuelans, but the one is upper class and far Whiter, than the other. Their attitudes towards Hugo Chavez comes from who/whom? and who gets their property seized to feed the Chavez regime. Same with Castro.
An object lesson for SWPL. You too can be like the Cubans in Miami! Only not so well off, and in Canada not someplace warm. Maybe Alaska, working a crabbing boat.