http://www.msnbc.com/news/393950.asp?0a=2212380v
I thought it was humorous and thought-provoking. Of course I’m sort of tired of the whole thing and have thought that he should have been returned immediately to his father. The audacity of America sometimes floors me.
trisha
I’ll read the article in a second…but somewhere on the net in a Forum I read the perfect solution to the problem:
Cut the media in half and send the kid back 
Obviously taken from the Biblical King Solomon and the two women and a baby story…
I thought it was a good idea myself!
-SS
If “knowledge is power,” why does stupidity reign?
It’s not America that’s being audacious; America wants to give him back. It’s the crybaby Cubans in Miami who are flailing around and making this a far bigger issue than it is. Any respect I had for the Cuban community down there has evaporated.
The most annoying figure of all to arise out of this situation has been that narcissistic, crazy-pants drama queen Marisleysis Gonzalez. When she’s not talking about herself to the media, she is swooning over like as if she was in some 19th-century pulp romance.
Anyway, it’s a moderately funny article, though of course the Miami Cubans would outbid Fidel. They represent enormous wealth (though heaven forbid they should ever spend a nickel to actually influence Cuba in a constructive manner!).
Nuke 'em! Nuke 'em all! Make Canada a bigger place! YEAH!
<g>
Ok, the day has been LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG.
E
“Black holes were created when God divided by 0” ~Wally
Well said RTA
I haven’t liked her much either, but remember, Marisleysis is only 21 years old and has been put under tremendous pressure by her family and the media in this whole dreadful situation.
There are obviously people in Miami who would love to have the media record the kid being carried out screaming; I hope his relatives will not let it come to that. Obviously this should have been dealt with one way or another at once; to let it drag on so long (four months is an eternity to a six-year-old) is criminal.
This is one of those issues where I’ve heard both sides argued by left and right, each taking the usual shots at the other. For me, the kid belongs with his dad.
Catrandom
If I had a child, should my relatives in Europe be able to take him from me and raise him just because they have decided they want to? Because America is too violent and dangerous and materialistic and he would be better off growing up in the Netherlands?
We return children to abusive, chemically dependent, neglectful, mentally ill, and highly criminal parents (who sometimes proceed to bring about the child’s death in some fashion) because we believe that family should be preserved at almost any cost. Large numbers of children will be in foster care for life because, no matter how horrifically abusive, neglectful, or fucked up the parent, parental rights cannot be terminated except in truly extreme circumstances. But these idiots in Miami feel justified in taking a child from a fit home and his natural father - BECAUSE THEY WANT TO. I just don’t get it.
:: walking off, muttering in a surly fashion ::
MST3K: Best lil’ puppet show on the planet.
Anybody notice that the Miami relatives, who are supposed to only have this little boy’s best interests in mind, regularly parade him out into the front yard to play in front of the cameras like a damn panda in a damn zoo?
Noooooo … they don’t have an agenda …
I’ve also decided that the new definition of Hell is being locked in a room for eternity with a half-dozen of those self-righteous, incessantly screeching Miami Cubans …
“We are here for this – to make mistakes and to correct ourselves, to withstand the blows and to hand them out.” Primo Levi
This is beginning to sound a lot like the thread over in Great Debates which has hashed & rehashed the sunject into a fine powder.
Just in case you missed it.
Is Castro’s Cuba a better place for Elian to grow up than Miami? If yes, send him back.
If Miami is better for him, keep him there.
If you don’t want the kid to be treated like a trophy, don’t leave him in either place. Send him to Switzerland, Chile, Nebraska, wherever, but not Cuba nor Miami. But the kid’s gonna have a worse time on Cuba, blockaded little island that it is, than in the US. Castro will send him to be re-educated as the perfect little pseudo-Marxist propaganda mouthpiece for ol’ Fidel’s fascist paradise. I vote for Miami.
Familial rights? Get over it. I remember someone jumping on me (in the late, unlamented gay marriage thread) because I said terms like ‘family’ and ‘marriage’ indicated ‘blood ties.’ But now everyone’s insisting that the boy belongs with Juan Miguel Gonzalez because that’s his natural father? Sheesh!
The boy’s mother lost her life trying to get to the States. In the words of E. E. Cummings, “no slave’s unlife shall murder me for i will freely die”!
But President Clinton has triangulated his most popular possible response: Anti-Hispanics; Anti-Anti-Communists; Anti-Immigration types; weenies who think “a boy should be with his dad (SOB)”; and of course Fidel Castro will all appreciate sending the kid back to Cuba.
People who recognize Cuba as a totalitarian-fascist prison will be upset, but the Democratic-Party/teacher’s-unions/media-conglomerates have spent a generation raising up an America that knows too little of geopolitics and nothing of honor.
If Juan Miguel Gonzalez wants to take Elian back to that purgatory, that is sufficient evidence of parental incapacity. PERIOD. The boy should not go to Cuba.
I thought I had waited too long to say this, but as long as the thread’s been resurrected…
They should have fought it out on Springer.
Oh, I dunno know, Janet Reno’s goons brandishing automatic weapons in the vicinity of children was better than anything on Springer. 
Anyone want to bet on the outcome of Thursday’s court appointment?
Is it just me, or does the link in the OP not work?