No sooner had I typed and sent to my noble redactor, Barry White's uncle Perry White, a short uptake on the latest episode in the limitlessly fecund finale of the pageant that has been Fidelorama -- when who should mince up close and personal to our Commandante at the safe distance of a continent away and kick him in the nutz, but monsignor Smiff's waspish hero and quondam patrone, Alex Gall-way Cock-burn the first, he of Serpentine Abbey and the abyss of cynical posing:
"Alas, Fidel Castro just broke an arm and a kneecap when he tripped on that fateful concrete step six years ago. Would that he had bitten off his tongue and thus spared his erstwhile admirers, myself included, the sound of this once great revolutionary plunging into kookdom.Fencing-master Alex at his wicked best, eh? Supple, unhurried, attacking with the usual willowy unstrained skewering thrusts, and, I am forced to add, with the equally usual unbated point covered in shit.If President Raúl Castro wants to defend Cuba’s record on human rights, all he needs to do point to the fact that his brother has not been deposed from his formal position as First Secretary of the Communist Party, and carted off to an isolation ward in the Casa de Dementes, Havana’s psychiatric hospital. Instead he has unstinted access to the state radio and the newspaper Granma."
Something in this charlatan son of a great man forces him to pounce on certain star-studded leads as they wend listlessly through their last acts. I recall Hunter Thompson first of all. And now Alex is battering this tattered giant in his Lear moment, a Lear ready to play both the old king and his fool all by himself.
I despise Cockburn for this wanton cudgeling. He's not content to lay off to the side (where we parlor pinks belong) and laugh wistfully at this long jagged final soliloquy. No, sir. Not our king of the sucker punch. Not Alex. No, he must beat this old man into the ground and kick at him with gallant gusto.
Somehow I hear, wafting up from it all, a certain morbid cankerish brat's envy -- something like this:
"That fucking slimebag Goldberg got this interview! Goldberg! Goldberg! Where was I, or one of my stringers, in all this? Why not me? Where was my call to the fucking Jefe's side? Fuck him! Fuck the senile old crackpot!"
Comments (11)
Hell of a sad business, all around, for me. Fidel and Alex are both firmly established in my personal Pantheon. I can't imagine what Fidel was thinking of, to get anywhere within a hundred yards of that shitbird Jeffrey Goldberg. And I'm sorry Alex took a whack at the old boy. He's deserved better from the likes of us.
Posted by MJS | September 18, 2010 12:27 AM
Posted on September 18, 2010 00:27
Another case for Dr. Fr.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/58/Freud_Sofa.JPG
Posted by lunch | September 18, 2010 12:42 AM
Posted on September 18, 2010 00:42
My response to the Cockburn piece referenced here is that AC is just defending his position on the 9/11 events against what he regards as crackpot conspiracism. Just like he says.
AC has done the same WRT magic bullets in Dealey Plaza and other JFK conspiracy theories for years.
As for wanton cudgeling ... OP ... ha ha ha!
Posted by Flak | September 18, 2010 9:10 AM
Posted on September 18, 2010 09:10
Now op... Al Cocky is a GIANT! And I say that without conscious reference to the excellent graphic you chose. I have always thought of Al Cocky as a giant among liliputians. He is a giant because in a giant's manner, he cares not for what is, because he is busy making his own giant-sized reality that reorients what actually is. When you are homo giganticus of the Irish descdendancy type, your giantism is literary and walks in the footprints of Swift.
I, for one, would never choose to mock Al Cocky. Never.
Not even here: http://pezcandy.blogspot.com/2009/07/cockeyed-cockburn.html
Posted by CF Oxtrot | September 18, 2010 10:23 AM
Posted on September 18, 2010 10:23
what CF is saying, correctly, is that you have to have balls to go up against AC, which evidently OP has. The comparison to Swift is good, too; however admirable as a writer, the Dean is not someone I've ever imagined as a friend.
I live in the same part of the world as AC. It's cold and wet up here, much of the time. Alcohol always has to be considered as a factor in personal behavior up here.
Posted by senecal | September 18, 2010 11:09 AM
Posted on September 18, 2010 11:09
"I live in the same part of the world as AC. It's cold and wet up here, much of the time. Alcohol always has to be considered as a factor in personal behavior up here "
just right ...
as to "balls" i have neither one or the other
worth speaking of
father S does btw
in a naive
school of soft knocks
elightful way
----------------------
consider this:
i'm nobody from no where going no where
and read by nobody "important "
therefore
i face no consequences
i have by god's grace
complete freedom of speech
Posted by op | September 18, 2010 12:37 PM
Posted on September 18, 2010 12:37
I thought the column was disgusting as well. It brought to mind that old Thomas Nast cartoon drawn after the death of Edwin Stanton. And though the analogy is akward, given that Fidel Castro is still alive, the caption of the cartoon goes beyond the content. Cockburn's column is just another case of a live jackass kicking a dead lion.
Posted by Michael Hureaux | September 18, 2010 12:59 PM
Posted on September 18, 2010 12:59
the graphics are perry white's work oxy
i agree ..perry is a bit of an antiquarian
gives the Monsignor Smuff site
a certain
rusty inkhorn panache ...no ??
Posted by op | September 18, 2010 3:24 PM
Posted on September 18, 2010 15:24
op, the drawing looks pretty similar to the style of drawings of characters found in my paperback copy of Gulliver's Travels. That, and its focus on giants, is probably what made me think of Swift and Lilliput.
Perry White? Keep that kryptonite away from Al Cocky!
Posted by CF Oxtrot | September 18, 2010 8:50 PM
Posted on September 18, 2010 20:50
If the old man is a lone-gunman to his honor, what purpose does Alexander von Cockburn serve in the melodrama other than to remind everyone of his own vastly normal stature?
Posted by davidly | September 19, 2010 4:39 AM
Posted on September 19, 2010 04:39
I guess this thread is dead, but I'll tack on a thought.
I don't see the AC piece like most of the commenters. I don't see it as jealousy of Goldberg's access or as pummeling a dying lion, etc.
AC is a committed leftist in my view and he doesn't want left leaning types to be misled by Castro's apparently approaching senility. This piece is an inoculation against the day that Fidel goes onto his knees at the altar of a cathedral or some such.
A painter of my acquaintance once said to me "Did you know that the last thing Picasso drew was a realistic picture of a dove?!" In other words, he repented.
More to be lamented than AC's article is the phenomenon it records. Yes, Castro has stood up to the world's bully for 40 years and accomplished much against great opposition. But if he is going rhetorically undermine his life's work at the end of that life, AC isn't going to pretend that he isn't undermining it.
Posted by Boink, Disturber of the Peace | September 22, 2010 11:58 PM
Posted on September 22, 2010 23:58