Monday, March 24, 2008

Analyzing George Will's columns on Castro's Cuba: Is There a Cure for Cuba?; In Cuba, Ignorance In Amber

Sunday March 9th, 2008

As with most George Will-penned columns, South Beach Hoosier's always felt there were
interesting original thoughts and nuggets of insight in his columns, even if you disagree with certain of his points, and these two recent columns are no exception.

What surprises me -though perhaps surprised isn't the word, since it's the Internet after all- are the high number of people responding with Pavlovian predictability in the Washington Post's comments forum-links below.

The responses there are very different from the comments that one sees at other media sites where these same Will articles are run, like TownHall.com, with facts being the favored approach to the latter.

That's not by accident.

Keep in mind, too, as you read them, that most of the writers on the forum clearly live outside of the immediate Washington area.

The Post readers' uniformly gratuitous/negative comments to these articles, based not on any particular clever use of quantifiable facts by the writer, or even some effective retort to Will's central argument or points, based on some great miscalculation or mis-statement on his part, but rather a more base general ignorance of American and World history.

A willingness to disregard a reality that's staring them in the face and that keeps them and their point-of-view firmly in the minority, and, therefore, firmly on the losing side of history.

But some people -and we all know folks like this- for reasons of their own, prefer to play the role of martyr.

To cast themself and their allies as the underdog, even if it's neither appropriate or an accurate depiction of the circumstances, because the underdog doesn't have to play by society's rules.

It's their conscious way of getting attention that they'd never gain by actually having an original and compelling argument -based in reason and human behavior- that would actually carry the day.

To me, compared to posts on these columns I've read elsewhere, the comments to the Post evince an almost juvenile point-of-view that says that because Will argues one thing, and Will is conservative, therefore Will must be wrong and Fidel Castro and his supporters must really just be misunderstood.

And that, in any case, it's all just a big media-supported manipulation of facts, and only THEY really know what's going on. (There's always that twist thrown in at the end!)

That sounds like a poorly-conceived mathematical formula that just doesn't add up -or explain.

Another often-heard argument is, "Why can't we just be like the Europeans?"
Yes, because that really worked so well for Europe in Bosnia and Croatia in the '90's, oui?
(Will kills this impulse with kindness by specifically mentioning Sartre below.)

To these folks, Castro & Company really haven't killed thousands of Cubans and put an equal or greater number of them in prison for having the temerity to disagree with him.

One thing that I immediately noticed in reading the comments was the way they STILL cling desperately to out-dated media anecdotes/stereotypes.

Not only about the State of Florida, but the GOP, and Bush's State Dept. -or any president's State Dept. really- being completely under the thrall and thumb of South Florida-based Cuban-Americans, rather than looking at the facts in front of them.

This myth persists, despite all the newspaper/magazine articles and TV stories that have been done -to death!- over the past five years about the changing face of Miami's Cuban-American community, and their notions of what should or shouldn't happen in Cuba in the future.
There's no unanimity besides good riddance to the Castro Brothers and their brethren.

These readers commenting in The Post consciously ignore that change in reality, because to
acknowledge that shift would be to eliminate the floor beneath their own flimsy arguments, revealing them as pathetic and desperate.

But then these are often the same people who either don't know, can't quite recall or ever acknowledge that the reason the U.S. has a military base in Guantanamo in the first place, has nothing to do with Fidel Castro and Communism, but everything to do with our defeating the Spanish Empire in the Spanish-American War in 1898, perhaps the single worst-taught chapter of American history by American schools, regardless of location.

Yet I constantly see caustic Letters to the Editor in papers all over the country, brought to my attention by out-of-town friends who forward them to me, by folks who have a bee-in-their-bonnet of the sort that would find common cause with Barack Obama's minister under-the microscope, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

In arguing against this known history, the writers only publicly showcase their own ignorance of this history, as well as that of the Editor of the Letters page.

This is a particular problem with The Miami Herald and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, which routinely runs letters by ill-informed folks baying at the moon, whose central premise is undermined by known facts.

(The recent Geraldine Ferraro flap for instance is a perfect example of this problem, locally.
In her initial comments, she specifically acknowledged that if her name had been Gerald, not
Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, she wouldn't have been offered the Dem Veep spot in 1984 with Walter Mondale.
She specifically says that, and yet the Editorial page editor has no qualms about running a Letter to the Editor by a dummy who posits that if Ferraro was a he...

Yes, yes, thank you!
Those of us who follow things very closely and who actually read her entire remarks, already know that.
Why don't you join us on the train to knowledge by reading her entire comments, mon ami?)

Cuba was never a free country until after the U.S. defeated Spain, and the Spanish
armed
forces were forced to leave the Carribean for good.
Not that free was the same thing as democratic, as we imagine it here.

It's the same reason we had military bases in The Philippines for decades until the too-close-for-comfort volcanoes and changing dynamics of Filipino politics and U.S. foreign policy made that a moot point.


Though many Americans -if not most!- don't know it, many years ago I learned at IU from several books on Congressional history that, in fact, there were non-voting delegates in the U.S. Congress from both Cuba and The Philippines when they became U.S. territories after that war.

Just as there are now delegates in Congress from Puerto Rico, The American Virgin Islands and Guam. And Washington, D.C.

No, many of the negative comments are from people who can't quite square their own personal and political beliefs with the obvious logic and reason of the FOG -the facts-on-the-ground.

There are hundreds of thousands of people living in this area with a familial, social or cultural connection to Cuba, a place that's only 90 miles away from Key West, many with family members still living there or who were born there themself.

A very high percentage of Cuban-Americans living here vote with regularity and don't need to be convinced to turn out and cast their ballot.

Like all Americans, they vote their conscience, regardless of how well-informed they may or may not actually be on the issues.

What the anti-George Will folks who prefer their slavish devotion to stereotypes can't ever publicly admit, is that there are only four nationality groups in the U.S. mainland whose

'motherland,' such as it is, can be reached directly by air from the U.S. in less than one hour:
Canada, Mexico, The Bahamas, Cuba.

That's the whole list folks!

Why would anyone expect the hundreds of thousands of Cuban-Americans now living here in South Florida, especially older folks, to have NOT behaved the way they do now -and have in the past?
I never understood that.

Yet for years as I was growing-up here in the '70's, and then later, when I'd be in South Florida
during summer break from IU, working 2-3 jobs, I'd constantly hear, see and read fairly well-educated but naive and foolish people from myriad U-M and/or Miami-area Peace Groups, saying things that only highlighted their ignorance of basic history and human psychology.

People who seemed to enjoy railing against the Reagan Administration, yet who foolishly seemed to predicate part of their arguments against U.S. involvement in Central America under President Reagan -especially in Nicaragua- as a two-for-one.

They could not only be against Reagan, but because it was in direct opposition to what a majority of South Florida's Cuban-American population genuinely wanted -a bulwark against the spread of communism in Latin America, even if in a country with only one reliable elevator- they could also be against the Cuban-American establishment here, too.

Frankly, it often seemed to be that if Cuban-Americans favored something, the Peace Now, Unitarians and ADA-type Dems were reflexively against it.

Having lived in the heavily-Polish Chicago area for three years in the mid-'80's, when Mayor Harold Washington tried to bring reforms to a city that was the most racially-polarized city in the country, where ethnic culture clashes are played out much differently than they are here in South Florida, I always wondered why it was always so much easier, politically, for Northeastern liberal Democrats to tweak and mock people who had fled Communism in the Tropics, than from those who had lived behind The Berlin Wall.

I'm joking; I understood EXACTLY why that dichotomy existed.

Because they could.

Because so many Cubans who came here succeeded in carving out some niche of middle-class happiness and accomplishment in their personal and professional lives, they became so powerful that they became part of the establishment, so, open to mockery.

I have an excellent memory and a nose for the truth, both of which have served me well over the years.

Yet I don't EVER recall anyone at the time laughing at or mocking Polish-Americans in Chicago, who publicly stated their desire to return to their homeland and live in peace under a true democracy, especially after there was a Polish Pope who came to Chicago, still a day that many will never forget.

(This, of course, is quite different than Cuban-Americans elected officials -especially those born here!- foolishly boasting in newspaper and magazine articles that their career goals include someday being Mayor of Havana.

Those folks can be mocked mercilessly as far as I'm concerned, along with their hack pals, who someone imagine themself as kingmakers and Carnegie-style industry tycoons in a post-Castro Cuba someday, even though they aren't any of those things here, where it would be easier)

[My own maternal ancestors were Poles from a region of Prussian-controlled Upper Silesia, in what is now southwestern Poland, not far from the present day Poland-Czech Republic border,
when Poland as an independent country didn't exist.
Overnight, those ancestors became Texas Hill Country pioneers, whose proud descendants have lived in Bandera ever since 1855.
Due to its large number of Polish, German and Czech immigrants, Bandera County was one of only a handful of Texas counties that voted AGAINST seceding from the Union at the state convention in Austin in 1861.]

While now slightly more moderate in their a
pproach to Cuba's future because so many leaders of the older generation of virulent anti-Castro forces have died, they all would prefer that Cuba be a democratic nation, full of the sort of checks and balances the U.S. political system enjoys.

Everything we know about human behavior, psychology and personal experience says this attitude and behavior of theirs is entirely predictable.
Yet it completely surprises those whose default position is that the U.S. is always wrong or at fault.

As proof of how common this mindset is, let me share with you the closing sentence from a Letter to the Editor that I saw in today's Sun-Sentinel, that was, ostensibly, praising the new book by Carter National Security Advisor and Obama supporter Zbigniew Brzezinski,

Second Chance:

http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/opinion/sfl-pbmail786pnmar24,0,1867422.story
"If we don't change our ways soon, we can be militarily strong, but morally weak and friendless, like Rome and others before the fall.
Alexander "Sandy" Simon, Delray Beach

Do you wanna bet that a person like Mr. Simon, a Delray Beach real estate developer who'd compare the U.S.A. in the year 2008 with pre-5th century Imperial Rome, probably couldn't help himself, and at least once in the past probably compared current U.S. involvement in Iraq with 1960's Vietnam in a previous letter? I'll check.

http://www.sandysimon.com/aboutsandy.htm
http://www.browardpalmbeach.com/1999-04-29/calendar/nickel-for-your-thoughts/
http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/198605/the.arab.americans.htm

[This reminds South Beach Hoosier of a longtime pet peeve he's never mentioned here in this space before:
Why can't anything be unique anymore?
Per the absurd comparison to Rome above, why must people always diminish the latest incident or episode of anything, whatever it is, as simply the incarnation of something that's already happened?]

As to my own opinion concerning the future of Cuba, the most surprising thing would be IF Cuban-Americans in South Florida didn't care about what was happening in Cuba, 90 miles away.
Now that would make me suspicious!
_____________________________________
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030702838.html?wpisrc=newsletter
Washington Post
Is There a Cure for Cuba?
By George F. Will
March 9, 2008

On Dec. 29, 1962, 11 months before he was murdered by an advocate for Fidel Castro's regime (Lee Harvey Oswald had distributed propaganda on a New Orleans street for the Fair Play for Cuba Committee), President John Kennedy, speaking in Miami's Orange Bowl to veterans of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, received from them a Cuban flag and vowed, "I can assure you that this flag will be returned to this brigade in a free Havana." In Cuba, too, regime change has turned out to be more problematic than American policymakers imagined.

Even after the Bay of Pigs -- arguably the most feckless use of U.S. power ever-- Cuba unhinged some American officials. In his biography of Robert Kennedy, Newsweek's Evan Thomas reports that one high-ranking CIA operative had a plan "to surface an American submarine just over the Havana horizon to fire star shells into the night sky, in the hopes of convincing the Cubans that the Second Coming was imminent, thus spurring them to get rid of the anti-Christ -- Castro." Skeptics called this "elimination by illumination."

The question of what should be done now begins with the matter of the U.S. trade embargo. Cuban Americans demanded its imposition in 1961, applauded its strengthening in 1996 and largely favor its continuation. Changing it would be politically problematic. The Cuban American vote can be decisive in Florida, whose 27 electoral votes are 10 percent of the 270 needed to win the presidency. Add the 15 electoral votes of New Jersey, another state with a large Cuban American community, and 16 percent of the 270 can turn on policy toward Cuba.

The embargo was imposed when Cuba was a salient of Soviet values and interests in this hemisphere. Today, Cuba is a sad, threadbare geopolitical irrelevancy. Far from threatening Castro's regime, the embargo has enabled Castro to exploit Cubans' debilitating mentality of taking comfort from victimhood -- the habit, more than a century old, of blaming problems on others, first on Spain and then on the United States.

Those facts do not, however, by themselves make the case for ending the embargo without some reciprocal liberalization by (the other) Castro's regime. Granted, it is arguable that the embargo should be abandoned, or significantly eased, regardless of how the Cuban regime behaves, because the regime has much to fear from any increased permeation of Cuba by foreign commercial and intellectual presences.

U.S. policy toward Cuba should, however, be conditioned, and perhaps haunted, by U.S. policy toward China. That policy was supposed to result in steady, slow-motion regime change through candid subversion in broad daylight. The premise has been that the cure for communism is commerce with the capitalist world. The assumption is that capitalism brings, because it requires, an ethic of trust and the rule of law in the form of promise-keeping (contracts). Also, the protection of private property gives individuals a sphere of sovereignty and whets their appetites for a politics of popular sovereignty.

This has been called "the Starbucks fallacy" (see James Mann's book "The China Fantasy"): When people become accustomed to many choices of coffee, they will demand many political choices. This doctrine may be being refuted by the emergence of a China that has become wealthier without becoming less authoritarian.

Cuba has negligible democratic traditions and no living experience with a culture of pluralism and persuasion. In Iraq, Russia and elsewhere, we have seen how decades of tyranny degrade a public's capacity for a democratic culture. We also have tested, and found questionable, the proposition that democratic institutions can precede and create such a culture.

The embargo is being partially vitiated by dollars -- about a billion of them, equivalent to about 2 percent of Cuba's gross domestic product -- sent to Cuba by the Cuban diaspora, 1.5 million strong. That diaspora supports the embargo, but dollar remittances from abroad can be spent only in government stores, so they accrue to the benefit of the regime.
Castro, whose personal worth is estimated at nearly $1 billion, has sternly -- and proudly -- told Cubans, whose average annual income is less than $200, "We're not a consumer society." That is not news where shampoo is scarce.

Six years ago, Castro's regime gathered 8 million signatures from among the 11 million captive Cubans for a petition -- was that necessary? -- to amend Cuba's constitution (is it necessary?) to declare communism "irrevocable." Let us now praise the much-misunderstood Viking King Canute, who commanded the tide to recede in order to demonstrate that it would not obey.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030702838_Comments.html
________________________________________________
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/05/AR2008030502889.html
Miami Herald
In Cuba, Ignorance In Amber
By George F. Will
March 6, 2008

The letter from a 12-year-old to "my good friend Roosvelt" [sic] is dated Nov. 6, 1940, one day after FDR won a third term. Saying he is "very happy" FDR won, he adds: "If you like, give me a ten dollars bill green american." The letter, an enlarged copy of which is on display in the National Archives, ends: "Good by. Your friend, Fidel Castro."

Young Castro with his hand out prefigured his role in political history. Until its spell was broken, Marxism mesmerized millions by promising to solve mankind's economic problem -- abundance without the alienation caused by work, the French word for which is travail. Instead, Castro created mendicant Marxism, making Cuba dependent on huge subventions from the Soviet Union, which paid eight times the market price for sugar and in the process purchased young Cuban men to fight in various "wars of liberation." When Russia withdrew its aid, Cuba's economy quickly shrank 35 percent, more than the U.S. economy contracted (26.5 percent) in the Depression. Cuba under communism had to import sugar. Today, Hugo Chávez's Venezuela provides $4 billion of oil to a Cuba that has a gross domestic product of $45 billion.

The departure, if such it really is, of Castro, the weird uncle in the island's attic, cures nothing. Cuba's affliction remains: It is Castroism, which is communism colored by Bonapartism. Communism of any stripe is afflicted by terminal ignorance. Having no market, which is an information-generating mechanism, communism cannot know what things should cost.

Hence communism's amazing contribution to humanity's economic history is "value-subtraction" -- products worth less than the materials that go into them. That result is seriously inconvenient for Marxism's labor theory of value -- the theory that labor adds all value to the world's materials.

Castro's career, although calamitous for Cubans, has provided entertaining farce through its effect on Western political pilgrims seeking leftist saviors. Joseph Goebbels called the Nazi regime "ennobled democracy"; the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo called his "neo-democracy." In 1960, the second of Castro's 49 years as warden of Cuba as prison, Jean-Paul Sartre, existentialist and Stalinist, published an enraptured book about Castro's democracy. Sartre marveled at what he called Castro's "direct democracy" as demonstrated when, at a roadside stand, Castro and Sartre were served warm lemonade.

Castro got hot. The tepid drink, he said, "reveals a lack of revolutionary consciousness." The waitress, Sartre reported, shrugged and said the refrigerator was broken. Castro "growled"
(Sartre's approving description), "Tell your people in charge that if they don't take care of their problems, they will have problems with me." Sartre, deeply stirred, wrote:
"This was the first time I understood -- still quite vaguely -- what I called 'direct democracy.' Between the waitress and Castro, an immediate secret understanding was established. She let it be seen by her tone, her smiles, by a shrug of her shoulders, that she was without illusion."

Norman Mailer, the novelist, and Oliver Stone, embodiment of Hollywood progressives in heat, had illusions galore. In 1960, when Castro came to Manhattan, Mailer, banal even when in ecstasy, wrote of white horses: "One felt life in one's cold overargued blood. . . . It was as if the ghost of Cortes had appeared in our century riding Zapata's white horse." Just a few years ago, Stone, a slow learner, advised: "We should look to [Castro] as one of the Earth's wisest people."

In the wise man's prisons -- according to Armando Valladares's memoir of 22 years in them ("Against All Hope") -- some doors are welded shut and prisoners are fed watery soup sometimes laced with glass, or dead rats, or half a cow's intestine, rectum included, containing feces. In 2003, the wise man's pulverizing police state, always struggling to reduce Cuba's civil society to a dust of individuals, sentenced 78 democracy advocates, after one-day secret trials, to up to 28 years in those prisons. Pilgrims praising Cuban health care call to mind Pat Moynihan's acerbic observation that when travel to China was liberalized, many visitors seemed more impressed by the absence of flies than by the absence of freedom.

Castro has ruled Cuba during 10 U.S. presidencies and longer than the Soviet Union ruled Eastern Europe. The Economist has called him "a Caribbean King Lear." Raging on his island heath, with nothing to celebrate except his endurance, his creativity has come down to this: He has added a category to the taxonomy of world regimes -- government by costume party. Useful at last, the Comandante, dressed for success in his military fatigues, presides over a museum of Marxism.

Reader comments at:
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In the Heart of a Great Country, Beats the Soul of Hoosier Nation

In the Heart of a Great Country, Beats the Soul of Hoosier Nation
"In the Heart of a Great Country, Beats the Soul of Hoosier Nation." -South Beach Hoosier, 2007

#IUBB, #bannersix

#IUBB, #bannersix
Assembly Hall, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana; Click photo to see video of Straight No Chaser's version of Back Home Again In Indiana, 2:37
The South Florida I Grew Up In

Excerpts from Joan Didion's Miami, 1987, Simon & Schuster:

In the continuing opera still called, even by Cubans who have now lived the largest part of their lives in this country, el exilo, the exile, meetings at private homes in Miami Beach are seen to have consequences. The actions of individuals are seen to affect events directly. Revolutions and counter-revolutions are framed in the private sector, and the state security apparatus exists exclusively to be enlisted by one or another private player. That this particular political style, indigenous to the Caribbean and to Central America, has now been naturalized in the United States is one reason why, on the flat coastal swamps of South Florida, where the palmettos once blew over the detritus of a dozen failed booms and the hotels were boarded up six months a year, there has evolved since the early New Year's morning in 1959 when Fulgencio Batista flew for the last time out of Havana a settlement of considerable interest, not exactly an American city as American cities have until recently been understood but a tropical capital: long on rumor, short on memory, overbuilt on the chimera of runaway money and referring not to New York or Boston or Los Angeles or Atlanta but to Caracas and Mexico, to Havana and to Bogota and to Paris and Madrid. Of American cities Miami has since 1959 connected only to Washington, which is the peculiarity of both places, and increasingly the warp...

"The general wildness, the eternal labyrinths of waters and marshes, interlocked and apparently neverending; the whole surrounded by interminable swamps... Here I am then in the Floridas, thought I," John James Audobon wrote to the editor of The Monthly American Journal of Geology and Natural Science during the course of an 1831 foray in the territory then still called the Floridas. The place came first, and to touch down there is to begin to understand why at least six administations now have found South Florida so fecund a colony. I never passed through security for a flight to Miami without experiencing a certain weightlessness, the heightened wariness of having left the developed world for a more fluid atmosphere, one in which the native distrust of extreme possibilities that tended to ground the temperate United States in an obeisance to democratic institutions seemed rooted, if at all, only shallowly.

At the gate for such flights the preferred language was already Spanish. Delays were explained by weather in Panama. The very names of the scheduled destinations suggested a world in which many evangelical inclinations had historically been accomodated, many yearnings toward empire indulged...

In this mood Miami seemed not a city at all but a tale, a romance of the tropics, a kind of waking dream in which any possibility could and would be accomodated...
Hallandale Beach Blog
http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/

Hallandale Beach Blog is where I try to inject or otherwise superimpose a degree of accountability, transparency and much-needed insight onto local Broward County government and public policy issues, which I feel is sorely lacking in local media now, despite all the technological advances that have taken place since I grew-up in South Florida in the 1970's. On this blog, I concentrate my energy, enthusiasm, anger, disdain and laser-like attention primarily on the coastal cities of Aventura, Hollywood and Hallandale Beach.

IF you lived in this part of South Florida, you'd ALREADY be in stultifying traffic, be paying higher-than-necessary taxes, and be continually musing about the chronic lack of any real accountability or transparency among not only elected govt. officials, but also of City, County and State employees as well. Collectively, with a few rare exceptions, they couldn't be farther from the sort of strong results-oriented, work-ethic mentality that citizens here deserve and are paying for.

This is particularly true in the town I live in, the City of Hallandale Beach, just north of Aventura and south of Hollywood. There, the Perfect Storm of years of apathy, incompetency and cronyism are all too readily apparent.
Sadly for its residents, Hallandale Beach is where even the easily-solved or entirely predictable quality-of-life problems are left to fester for YEARS on end, because of myopia, lack of common sense and the unsatisfactory management and coordination of resources and personnel.

It's a city with tremendous potential because of its terrific location and weather, yet its citizens have become numb to its outrages and screw-ups after years of the worst kind of chronic mismanagement and lack of foresight. On a daily basis, they wake up and see the same old problems again that have never being adequately resolved by the city in a logical and responsible fashion. Instead the city government either closes their eyes and hopes you'll forget the problem, or kicks them -once again- further down the road.

I used to ask myself, and not at all rhetorically, "Where are all the enterprising young reporters who want to show through their own hard work and enterprise, what REAL investigative reporting can produce?"

Hearing no response, I decided to start a blog that could do some of these things, taking the p.o.v. of a reasonable-but-skeptical person seeing the situation for the first time.
Someone who wanted questions answered in a honest and forthright fashion that citizens have the right to expect.

Hallandale Beach Blog intends to be a catalyst for positive change. http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/

Hallandale Beach's iconic beachball-colored Water Tower, between beach and A1A/South Ocean Drive

Hallandale Beach's iconic beachball-colored Water Tower, between beach and A1A/South Ocean Drive
Hallandale Beach, FL; February 16, 2008 photo by South Beach Hoosier

Hollywood in Cartoons, The New Yorker

Hollywood in Cartoons, The New Yorker
"Gentlemen, I am happy to announce that as of today we are closing down our Washington news bureau and moving the entire operation to L.A."

Hollywood in Cartoons, The New Yorker

Hollywood in Cartoons, The New Yorker
"O.K., so I dig a hole and put the bone in the hole. But what's my motivation for burying it?"

Hollywood in cartoons, 10-21-06 Non-Sequitur by Wiley, www-NON-SEQUITUR.COM

Hollywood in cartoons, 10-21-06 Non-Sequitur by Wiley, www-NON-SEQUITUR.COM
The Magic of Hollywood: A motion has been put forth that we should seek to create rather than imitate. All in favor of killing this silly notion, nod in mindless agreement...

Miami Dolphins

Miami Dolphins
South Beach Hoosier's first Dolphin game at the Orange Bowl came in Dec. 1970, aged 9, a 45-3 win over Buffalo that propelled them into their first ever playoff appearance.

Sebastian the Ibis, the Spirited Mascot of the University of Miami Hurricanes

Sebastian the Ibis, the Spirited Mascot of the University of Miami Hurricanes
Before going to my first U-M game at the Orange Bowl in 1972, a friend's father often would bring me home an extra 'Canes game program. That's how I came to have the Alabama at U-M game program from Nov. 16, 1968, which was the first nationally-televised college football night game in color. (A 14-6 loss to the Crimson Tide.) After that first ballgame against Tulane, as l often did for Dolphin games if my father wasn't going, I'd get dropped off at the Levitz parking lot near the 836 & I-95 Cloverleaf in NMB, and catch a Dade County Park & Ride bus, going straight to the Orange Bowl. Onboard, I'd get next to the window and listen to WIOD's pre-game show on my Radio Shack transistor radio. A few times, I was just about the only person onboard besides the bus driver, which was alright by me. Once at the Orange Bowl, if I didn't already have a ticket, I'd buy a game program for myself and one or two for friends or teachers before heading to the ticket window, since you usually couldn't find a program vendor once inside. I probaly had a friend or my father with me for just under 40% of the U-M games I ever went to, but you have to remember that the team, though blessed with several talented players, like Chuck Foreman and Burgess Owens, was just so-so to average at best, and the games were usually played on Friday nights, so it wasn't exactly high on everyone's list of things to do. Depending upon the opponent, if I was alone, I'd often have entire areas of the Orange Bowl to myself. (Wish I had photos of that now!) For instance, I had a good portion of the East (open) End Zone to myself against Oklahoma in the mid-70's, when the Boomer Schooner and the Schooner Crew went out on the field after an Oklahoma TD, and the Schooner received an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty from the refs, as would happen years later in an Orangle Bowl Classic game. (Against FSU?) I was there for the wins and losses under Pete Elliott, Carl Selmer & Lou Saban, and the huge on-field fight in '73 when under eventual national champion Notre Dame (under Ara Parseghian), they called a time-out with less than a minute to go, and already up 37-0. Their rationale? To score another TD and impress the AP football writers; final score 44-0. Well, they got their wish and beat Alabama 24-23 for the title at the Sugar Bowl. A year later, thanks to my Mom's boss, she and I saw Ara's last game as head coach of the Irish in the Orange Bowl Game from the East End Zone -in front of the Alabama cheerleaders!!!- in an exciting 13-11 Notre Dame win over Alabama and Bear Bryant, a rematch of the '73 national title game. I was also present for the U-M's huge 20-15 win under Pete Elliott against Darrel Royal's Texas Longhorns, the week Sports Illustrated's College Football preview issue came out with Texas on the cover, below. I was also present for lots of wins against schools called College of the Pacific, UNLV and Cal-Poly San Luis Obsispo, which I'd then never heard of before.

Miami Dolphins Cheerleaders, April 28, 2007

Miami Dolphins Cheerleaders, April 28, 2007
Photo by Mario J. Bermudez. April 28, 2007 at Dolphins NFL Draft Party at Dolphin HQ, Davie, FL

Of cheerleaders past and present

Given South Florida's unique version of the melting pot -con salsa- demographics and mindset, these women in the photo above are surely what most South Floridians would consider attractive women. But for this observer, who's spent hours & hours at IU cheerleader tryouts and who has known dozens of cheerleaders -and wannabes- in North Miami Beach, Bloomington, Evanston and Washington, D.C., the whole time I was watching these members of the Dolphins' squad perform, I couldn't help but compare them and their routines to those of some IU friends of mine who ALWAYS showed true Hoosier spirit & enthusiasm. Sitting at my table right near the stage and still later, while watching the long lines of Dolphin fans of all ages waiting to snap photos of themselves with the cheerleaders, I couldn't help but think about those friends who always left me and other Hoosier fans feeling positive & optimistic. Was there anyone I saw in Davie who possessed these valuable intangibles: the dancing precision of IU Red Stepper -and Captain- Gail Amster, my talented and spirited Phi Beta Kappa pal from Deerfield (IL), who always sat next to me in our Telecom. classes as we took turns entertaining the other; the ebullient spirit & energy of two Hoosier cheerleaders -and captains- from Bloomington, Wendy (Mulholland) Moyle & Sara Cox; the hypnotic, Midwestern, girl-next-door sexiness of Hoosier cheerleader Julie Bymaster, from Brownsburg; or, the adorable Southern girl-next-door appeal of former Hoosier Pom squader Jennifer Grimes, of Louisville, always such a clear distraction while sitting underneath the basket? Nope, not that I could see. But then they were VERY tough acts to follow!!! And that's not to mention my talented & spirited friends like Denise Andrews of Portage, Jody Kosanovich of Hammond & Linda Ahlbrand of Chesterton, all of whom were dynamic cheerleaders -and captains- at very large Hoosier high schools that were always in the championship mix, with Denise's team winning the Ind. football championship her senior year when she was captain -just like in a movie. That Denise, Jody & Linda all lived on the same dorm floor, just three stories above me at Briscoe Quad our freshman year, was one of the greatest coincidences -and strokes of luck for me!- that I could've ever hoped for. You could hardly ask for better ambassadors of IU than THESE very smart, sweet and talented women. In a future SBH post, I'll tell the story of one of the greatest Hoosiers I ever met, the aforementioned Wendy Mulholland, the Bloomington-born captain and emotional heart of the great early '80's IU cheerleading squads, and the daughter of Jack Mulholland, IU's former longtime Treasurer. The acorn doesn't fall far from a tree built on a foundation of integrity & community service! (After he retired, Mr. Mulholland was the first executive director of the Community Foundation of Bloomington and Monroe County. I used to joke with Wendy that her dad's name was the one that was permanently affixed to the bottom of my work-study checks for years, while I worked at the Dept. of Political Science's Library, first, at the Student Building in the old part of campus, and then later, after it was refurbished, in magnificent Woodburn Hall, my favorite building on campus.) In that future post, I'll share some reflections on Wendy's great strength of character and personality; my intentions of returning to Bloomington a few weeks before Fall '82 classes started, so I could help Wendy train and work-out to rehab her knee, so she'd feel confident in trying-out for the squad again, following a bad knee injury that'd left her physically-unable to try-out for the squad the previous spring, a big disappointment to those of us who cared about both Wendy and the team; my incredulity at, quite literally, running into Wendy while walking down a sidewalk one afternoon a few years later in Evanston, IL, when we were astonished to discover we were both living there, with me trying to hook on with a Windy City advertising agency, and Wendy then-attending Kellogg (KGSM) at Northwestern, right when the WSJ had named Kellogg the #1 Business School in the country. I'll also share a story about Wendy performing a true act of kindness towards me in 1982, when I was having a real emergency, and she went above-and-beyond what I had any logical reason to expect. Yet, Wendy, along with her very helpful dad, Jack, came through for me when I was in a very bad time crunch. I've never forgotten Wendy's kindness towards me, and her true Hoosier spirit. There's NOTHING I wouldn't do for Wendy Mulholland.

It's All About "The U"

It's All About "The U"
South Beach Hoosier's first U-M football game at the Orange Bowl was in 1972, age 11, against Tulane in the infamous "Fifth Down" game. In order to drum up support and attendance for the U-M at the Orange Bowl, that game had a promotion whereby South Florida kids who were school safety patrols could get in for free IF they wore their sash. I did. Clearly they knew that it was better to let kids in for free, knowing their parents would give them money to buy food and souvenirs, perhaps become a fan and want to return for future games. The ballgame made an interesting impression on The New York Times, resulting in this gem from the "View of Sport" column of Oct, 14, 1990, labeled 'Fifth Down or Not, It's Over When It's Over.' -"In 1972, aided by a fifth-down officiating gift in the last moments of the game, Miami of Florida defeated Tulane, 24-21. The country and the world was a much different place that fall because The New York Times took time and space to editorialize on the subject. ''Is it right for sportsmen, particularly young athletes, to be penalized or deprived of the goals for which they earnestly competed because responsible officials make mistakes? The ideal of true sportsmanship would be better served if Miami forfeited last week's game.' South Beach Hoosier hardly needs to tell you that this was YET another New York Times editoral that was completely ignored!

The issue I took with me the night of U-M's 20-15 upset of #1 Texas at the Orange Bowl

The issue I took with me the night of U-M's 20-15 upset of #1 Texas at the Orange Bowl
College Football, Texas No. 1, Hook 'em Horns, Sept. 10, 1973. Living in North Miami Beach in the '70's, my Sports Illustrated usually showed up in my mailbox on the Thursday or Friday before the Monday cover date. And was read cover-to-cover by Sunday morning.

The Perfect Storm

The Perfect Storm
U-M QB Ken Dorsey, Miami Hurricanes Undefeated National Champions 2001, Jan. 2002

Miami's Romp in the Rose

Miami's Romp in the Rose
Miami running back Clinton Portis, Jan. 7, 2002

Why the University of Miami should drop football

Why the University of Miami should drop football
June 12, 1995

REVENGE!

REVENGE!
Steve McGuire and Miami Overpower No.1 Notre Dame, Dec. 4, 1989

How Sweet It Is!

How Sweet It Is!
Miami Whips Oklahoma For The National Championship, Pictured: Dennis Kelleher, Jan. 11, 1988

My, Oh My, Miami!

My, Oh My, Miami!
Steve Walsh and the Canes Stun FSU, Oct. 12, 1987

Why Is Miami No. 1?

Why Is Miami No. 1?
QB Vinny Testaverde, Nov. 24, 1986

Miracle In Miami

Miracle In Miami
The Hurricanes Storm Past Nebraska, Halfback Keith Griffin, Jan. 9, 1984

Special Issue: College Football

Special Issue: College Football
The Best Passer, George Mira of Miami, Sept. 23, 1963

1984 College & Pro Spectatcular

1984 College & Pro Spectatcular
A Pair Of Aces: U-M QB Bernie Kosar & Miami Dolphin QB Dan Marino, Sept. 5, 1984

Pro Football Hall of Fame Special Issue

Pro Football Hall of Fame Special Issue
Dan Marino, Class of 2005, Aug. 2005

FACES OF THE NFL

FACES OF THE NFL
A Portfolio by Walter Iooss Jr., Ricky Williams, Miami Dolphins, Dec. 9, 2002

Coming Back

Coming Back
Jay Fiedler rallies Miami to a last-second win over Oakland, Oct. 1, 2001

Dan's Last Stand

Dan's Last Stand
At 38 and under siege, Dan Marino refuses to go down without a fight, Dec. 13, 1999

The War Zone

The War Zone
In the NFL's toughest division, the surprising Dolphins are on top, Lamar Smith, Dec. 11, 2000

Down and Dirty

Down and Dirty
Jimmy Johnson's Dolphins Bury The Patriots, Steve Emtman, Sept. 9, 1996

The Sunshine Boys

The Sunshine Boys
Now Playing in Miami: The Dan Marino and Jimmy Johnson Show, May 11, 1996

HOT & NOT

HOT & NOT
Miami loves Pat Riley but wants to give Don Shula the boot, Dec. 11, 1995

NFL PREVIEW 1995

NFL PREVIEW 1995
Which of today's stars are locks for the Hall of Fame? Dan Marino for sure. But who else? To find out, we polled the men who do the voting. Sept. 14, 1995

Sportsman Of The Year

Sportsman Of The Year
Don Shula, Dec. 20, 1993

Dan The Man

Dan The Man
Dan Marino Saves The Day For The Dolphins, Jan. 14, 1991

Dangerous Dan

Dangerous Dan
Dan Marino Passes Miami Into The Super Bowl, Jan. 14, 1985

Super Duper!

Super Duper!
Wide Receiver Mark Duper Of The Undefeated Dolphins, Nov. 19, 1984

Air Raid! Miami Bombs Washington

Air Raid! Miami Bombs Washington
Mark Clayton (burning Darryl Green) Sept. 10, 1984

Rookies On The Rise

Rookies On The Rise
Dan Marino: Miami's Hot Quarterback, Nov. 14, 1983

New Life In The WFL

New Life In The WFL
Warfield, Csonka and Kiick of Memphis, July 28, 1975

Zonk! Miami Massacres Minnesota

Zonk! Miami Massacres Minnesota
Larry Csonka, Jan. 21, 1974

Pro Football, Miami Is Rough And Ready

Pro Football, Miami Is Rough And Ready
Larry Csonka & Bob Griese, Sept. 17, 1973

Miami All The Way

Miami All The Way
Bob Griese, Jan. 22, 1973

It's Miami and Washington

It's Miami and Washington
Mercury Morris Speeds Past The Steelers, Jan. 8, 1973

Kiick and Csonka, Miami's Dynamic Duo

Kiick and Csonka, Miami's Dynamic Duo
Larry Csonka & Jim Kiick, Aug. 7, 1972

Sudden Death at Kansas City

Sudden Death at Kansas City
Miami's Garo Yepremian Ends the Longest Game; (kneeling) placekick holder Karl Noonan, Jan. 3, 1972

New Pro in a New Town

New Pro in a New Town
Miami's Frank Emanuel, Aug. 8, 1966

Old-style "Obie" the Orange Bowl Committee mascot

Old-style "Obie" the Orange Bowl Committee mascot
The iconic image I grew-up with in Miami, before FedEx got into the picture