The Longest Romance: The Mainstream Media and Fidel Castro

by Humberto Fontova

Overview

Fidel Castro jailed political prisoners at a higher rate than Stalin during the Great Terror. He murdered more Cubans in his first three years in power than Hitler murdered Germans during his first six. Alone among world leaders, Castro came to within inches of igniting a global nuclear holocaust.

But you would never guess any of that from reading the mainstream American media. Instead we hear fawning accounts of Castro liberating Cuba from the clutches of U.S. robber-barons and bestowing world-class healthcare and education on his downtrodden citizens. “Propaganda is vital—the heart of our struggle,” Castro wrote in 1955. Today, the concept is as valid to the Cuban regime as ever.

History records few propaganda campaigns as phenomenally successful or enduring as Castro and Che’s. The Longest Romance exposes the full scope of this deception; it documents the complicity of major U.S. media players in spreading Castro’s propaganda and in coloring the world’s view of his totalitarian regime. Castro’s cachet as a celebrity icon of anti-Americanism has always overshadowed his record as a warmonger, racist, sexist, Stalinist, and godfather of modern terrorism. The Longest Romance uncovers this shameful history and names its major accomplices.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781594036675
Publisher:	Encounter Books
Publication date:	06/04/2013
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Humberto Fontova was born in Havana, Cuba in 1954 and fled to the U.S. with his family in 1961. He is the author of four books and a frequent commentator in national media. He lives in New Orleans, LA.

Table of Contents

Preface: The Connections You Don't See vii

Chapter 1 The Golden Anniversary: A Half-Century of Loyal Service 1

Chapter 2 Communist Omelet: The Unreported Cost in Life and Treasure 7

Chapter 3 The "World's Luckiest People," or So Says Newsweek 21

Chapter 4 Here Come the Sharks. Where's the Discovery Channel? 35

Chapter 5 The Discovery Channel Spins the Missile Crisis 47

Chapter 6 Castro's Running-Dogs: Herbert Matthews and The New York Times 53

Chapter 7 To Kill a Labor Leader: Manhunt in Buenos Aires 69

Chapter 8 Papa Hemingway Admires Death in the Cuban Afternoon 77

Chapter 9 Castro's "Revolution of Youth"-Imprisoning the Young 83

Chapter 10 Jon Stewart to Don Fidel: Thank You, Godfather 95

Chapter 11 Not Your Father's Hit-Men: Gangsters in Cuba Today 109

Chapter 12 How Barack Obama Tried to Lose Honduras to the Dictators 127

Chapter 13 Keep Your Pants On, Stephen Colbert. Che Wasn't That Hot 135

Chapter 14 Sickos! The Cuban Health-Care Hoax, Directed by Michael Moore 159

Chapter 15 The Cuban "Embargo"-Are You Kidding? 177

Chapter 16 "Agents of Influence"-Castro's Ladies and Men in the U.S. Media 195

Chapter 17 Barbara Walters, Charmed by the Hemisphere's Top Torturer of Women 205

Chapter 18 Dan Rather on Castro: "This Is Cuba's Elvis!" 215

Endnotes 223

Index 235