quarterly-report.com Political Commentary by James R. Audet

January 15, 2000
71st Anniversary of Martin Luther King's Birthday

On the birthday of a man who championed civil rights, we examine the tragic case of Elian Gonzalez.

An unethical judge,
  A militant ethnic mob,
    An insensitive media,
      A gang of hysterical congressmen,
        A cabal of presidential candidates, and,
          An indecisive Attorney General.

This is a partial list of the unwelcome cast of characters that surround the Elian Gonzalez custody fight.  Lest we not forget, we also have:

A dead mother,
  An angry father, and,
    A confused and frightened little boy.

Yesterday, Elian Gonzalez was supposed to go home to Cuba.   Aided and abetted by a Miami mob, Rosa Rodriguez, a Dade County, Florida family court "judge" enjoined the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) from returning the 6 year boy to his biological father in Cuba.

Ms. Rodriguez, who has as much understanding of family values as Solomon had of semiconductors, is so patently biased that her performance for the cameras would be downright comical but for the human tragedy she festers.  She is an elected officer of the court, and her decision guarantees her re-election regardless of what ultimately happens to Elian.  Rodriguez issued her order in spite of a conflict of interest -- a financial relationship with a spokesman for the child's relatives -- oblivious to propriety, counting votes for her next election as easily as if the ballots were being passed under her chamber door.

While Elian's two maternal grandparents in Cuba cry for his return, the U.S. Supreme Court ponders a case of the rights of grandparents for access to their grandchildren.  Elian is now is in the custody of his great-uncle.  A close enough match for Ms. Rodriguez.

So a hack judge decides with language so tortuous -- Elian's return to Cuba would cause him to face imminent danger to his physical and mental health -- that the issue is not whether the father is a fit parent but his domicile.  Rodriguez and the short-changed citizens of Dade County would be pitiable but for the disgrace that stains the nation.  Ms. Rodriguez's honor easily fell victim to the message that pervades are political society -- pander for votes in front of the TV cameras.

What makes the law work in southern Florida is the special interest group that has the loudest voice and that is the Cuban-American community.  Elian became a poster child of Cuban-American discord with the Castro regime, a fact not lost on the media as it threw the entrails of the child to the snapping jaws of the politicians who wished to ingratiate themselves with this ethnic group.  There is no bedrock of moral outrage in this country directed at Castro. The fiction has been invented and nurtured by simpletons like Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina.

As we reflect on the hysteria this case has generated, let us not forget the despotism of the U.S. during its protectorate status of Cuba which gave rise to Fidel Castro in the first place.  On the other hand, we are obliged by many to forget about Batista and Myer Lansky and their gang of punks and thugs that raped the country.  Let us focus instead on some of the disposed property owners that left Cuba after they had looted the country under the Batista regime.

Elian's fate now resides with the federal judiciary.  The January 14th deadline was allowed to pass after the U.S. Attorney General, Janet Reno, postponed execution of the INS order so that the U.S. relatives of Elian could plead their case in a federal court.

The media believes that the general public sympathizes with the Cuban-American community and wishes the child to stay.  Though recent polls suggest otherwise, the child's predicament is the best copy imaginable, no less equivalent to a child trapped in an abandoned oil well.  The militancy of the Miami Cuban community has in turn caused Presidential, Senate, and House candidates to stake their own picture perfect position on the matter.

On the ABC television program, Nightline, January 13, ABC journalist Chris Wallace interviewed the father, Juan Gonzalez, from Havana.  Mr. Gonzalez demanded the return of his son.  The father was cogent, articulate, and angry.  He has been deprived of his child by a person we customarily call a kidnapper.

Chris Wallace sought nothing less than to cause the father to miss-speak, thus allowing a perception to build that Mr. Gonzalez was an unfit parent.  Unconscionably, Wallace asked questions that made one react with disgust.  For example, Wallace asked, "If that means sending in federal marshals to take him (Elian) forcibly from your relatives in Miami, would you be willing to see that happen."  Wallace was dissatisfied with the father's straightforward response that he simply wanted his son returned.  Wallace pounced again.  "...Mr. Gonzalez, even if that means the use of force, sending armed federal marshals, you would support that step?"  Again, Wallace was displeased with the answer.  He tried a third time.  "Do you not worry at all about what -- what kind of scene, the trauma that it might create for your son."  The father responded with a well-stated understanding of Elian's trauma.  Later in the interview, to Wallace's satisfaction, the father made statements out of anger -- though in no conceivable way could he act them out -- that might give the Miami relatives just the ammunition they desire for their custody fight.

Wallace approached this interview as if he had the well-schooled politician, Fidel Castro, in the dock instead of an overwhelmed parent.  His tactic was to portray the father as a monster borne from a cauldron of anarchist ideas that must be excised from the face of the earth.  The Nielsen ratings Wallace sought were already guaranteed by his scoop, yet his duty to the Disney Corporation of Florida blinded him to the moral outrage of the situation.  Although Wallace had achieved his journalistic coup, he would have preferred Fidel Castro.  The best he got was Juan Gonzalez.  A deplorable performance, Mr. Wallace.

Comes now the mouthpiece for the guarantor of civil rights for all Americans, Congressman Dan Burton.  This man, who has showed little capacity for clear thinking in the past, issues a subpoena for this six year old boy to present himself on Capital Hill.  Outrageous.  Burton is less annoying than he is flat out dangerous.  The voters of his misbegotten Indiana district should show that they are not country bumpkins and toss this bum out of office.  Please Indiana, spare us the services of this anachronism of the Cold War.

Congressman DeLay of Texas claims that he is "fully supportive of doing what is in the best interest of young Elian," and will introduce a bill to grant Elian citizenship.  Bill McCollum, another congressman who has heretofore demonstrated a dubious level of intelligence, and a host of Florida congresspersons similarly distanced from any understanding of what it means to be a parent, will back the bill.  Rep. Diaz-Balart of Florida states that the measure is designed to "...prevent the INS from continuing to illegally interfere in Elian's judicial custody proceedings and to allow Elian the due process his mother gave her life for..."  Is a six year boy in any position to decide his domicile?  Does not Diaz-Balart's unilateral action interfere in the judicial process?  Oh, you muddleheaded dilettantes.

In a remarkable turnabout, we have the Republican presidential candidates claim that Elian should not be returned to his father.  Gadzooks.  Are these the same men that in an other state, another time zone, another world, complain of federal interference in local school matters?  Are these the same men that demand parental choice and a voucher program for the subsidy of the private schools of their choice?  Yes, they are.  Senator Orrin Hatch says "let's do what's in the best interest of the child."  Yet, beneath the seeming contradiction between parental rights and anti-communism we see an unmistakable pattern.  It is political ideology that makes for a good father.

Parental choice, parental choice, they scream.  Get real, it is choice for the rich, not for the poor.  Are the destitute children of Yugoslavia better off for America's bombing?  Certainly, they are not.  Where are the politicians' bleeding heart sympathies for these youngsters?

Vice President Al Gore asks, "What is in the best interest of the child?"  Likewise, Hillary Clinton, claimed by her media advisers to be a champion of children's rights, states on the David Letterman Show that "everybody ought to take a deep breath and do what's in the best interest of the little boy."   We are desensitized to men stating such worming language.  However, for a mother, who still has the presumption in American courts of having a greater capacity to raise a child than a father, the statement provokes an autonomic reflex to gag.

George W. Bush and John McCain want the boy's father to come to the U.S. and stay a while, hoping the father will want to remain and the matter will blow over.  Spineless positions.

The worst offender of the lot is the Republican candidate Gary Bauer.  Mr. Bauer, who represents the Christian right wing of the Republican party, claims the father's interests are irrelevant and demands from President Clinton that he "not send the boy back."  From what text of the Bible does Bauer take his unenlightened position?  By what tortured Biblical reasoning does he seek to deprive the father of his son?  Shame on you, Mr. Bauer.

The candidates run from the issue with the comment "we must do what is in the best interest of the child" to avoid the anger of the Cuban-American community.  Of course, the media worships at the feet of these capricious wonders for the more obscure a politician is, the more meat on the media table.

The "best interests of the child."  What a politically correct expression that is.  The answer is as obvious as life is better than death.  The child should be with his father.  Why do these fence-straddlers avoid the truth?  Is it not for votes?

Equal justice under the law.  The candidates make a mockery of it.  Where are their voices for the hundreds of Hispanic children that illegally cross the U.S. - Mexico border and are unceremoniously returned to their utterly poor parents in Mexico.  Who speaks for them?  The answer is nobody.  There is nobody willing to spill his political guts on the television studio floor.

We have a government lopsidedly dangling above a morass of ideological positions, hung by ropes of law and threads of hysterical reasoning.

Janet Reno weighs into a case that has exploded in her face by the action of an unethical judge and the posturing of pandering politicians.  A young boy brings temporary paralysis to the Justice Department while the matter receives the attention it desperately deserves.  To rein in a reckless judge in Miami, a constitutional exercise of federal authority must occur.  Will this case be quickly resolved?  Not likely.  The U.S. relatives of the boy vow to fight.  If it appears that they will lose, be prepared for the child to go underground.  At a minimum, these "protectors" of Elian's interests will stage some media incident to arouse the emotions of ambivalent television viewers.

Once again, Janet Reno sees the law through smoked glass.  She stays the INS from sending the boy home to give time to the parties to work things out.  Work out what?  The Bible expression, metamorphosed for this moment, sounds from the tallest television tower, "Let my boy go."

The kidnapping of Elian by his mother, and her decision to make a harrowing journey across the 60 mile wide Straits of Florida, was RECKLESS.  There is no evidence of child abuse to have prompted her to take such drastic action and endanger her child.  Instead, we know that the mother was divorced from Elian's father and made the trip to Florida -- one that cost her life -- with a man she lived with in Cuba.

The politicians want the father to come to America.  Juan Gonzalez resists.  His decision is based on sound concerns.  For all he knows, he too will not be allowed to leave, or will be subpoenaed by Dan Burton to testify on the Hill.  Perhaps, he fears being locked up as some "material witness" in a sham proceeding to determine the boy's custody.  We may think that non-democracies have the patent on twisting the law to suit their political purposes.  If we look at the father's point of view, he may be scared of just this result.

Children are supposed to be protected in domestic custody battles.  Not so for Elian.  He has become the pawn of self-serving persons and special interest groups that have no business whatsoever in interfering with the natural rights of a father and son.

There is a real fear that this federal "custody hearing" will become a farce in this abominable case of forgotten identity.  What if the presiding officer -- no longer a judge but a political lackey -- decides that he must adjudicate the question of communism as a parental disqualification?  One publicly seeking "judge" has already done just that.  Rosa Rodriguez has demonstrated her capacity to supplant judicial integrity by allowing her court to rule that a child's and father's rights must fall victim to a kidnapper parent's claim that a domicile is not democratic.  A federal court could easily become a circus for the adjudication of communism as a political state where no parent may act with free will, thus, the United States has the right to severe any child from its communist parents.

Any foresighted parent should be alarmed and scared of the issue raised in this case -- that a claim of political non-conformance with the state of their residency -- is a basis for separating a parent from their child.  For example, if a non-custodial parent kidnaps her children from their court approved, parental guardian who lives in Nevada, and relocates the children to Florida, does a claim that gambling is a morally repugnant act give the Florida court a legal basis to grant her custody of the children?

Because a fetus can not choose his parents, nor the place of his birth, nor his economy, there must be a supreme principle, one based on natural law, not the fictional law of self-serving politicians.  Rosa Rodriguez would have you believe that fictional law is the right law.  Her logic is so arbitrary as to be ludicrous.  She wants us to believe that the natural law articulated by Thomas Jefferson is an out of date concept.  In the absence of any evidence of abuse, neither she, nor any other judge has a basis to separate the father from the son.

Juan Gonzalez claims that his son is being abused.  The father is absolutely correct.  To paraphrase Hillary Clinton, the abuse is taking place on a massive conspiratorial scale, by the media, the judiciary, and the politicians.

On Thursday, January 12, Elian observed an airplane during one of the many photo shoots staged by his American relatives.  He is heard to say, "I want you to take me back to Cuba."  A local newspaper hired an "expert" to dispute the translation.  Its version, "I want them not to take me back to Cuba."  What nonsense, how supercilious, how desperate.  A six year boy does not look at a wonder to his eyes and state a negative.  He has not the political astuteness to pander to the cameras.  The editor of this newspaper should temper his stupidity for someday he will fall into one of Florida's notorious sinkholes for want of any intelligence to walk around the pit.

This is a dark moment for U.S. - Cuban relations, one that may come back to haunt America.  When an issue brings the fringes of the left and right political wings of this country together, look out, for we are in trouble.

We have signs of mob rule, of law by political correctness for the sake of the media.  This is dangerous.  In this environment, the natural rights of the child, the natural rights of a parent are left twisting in the wind.

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