January 29, 2019 Bruce Bawer 21
Ever since Fidel Castro’s revolution, the New York Times has had a soft spot for Cuba. Not for the Cuban people, mind you, but for their jailers. It was a Times correspondent, Herbert Matthews, who persuaded millions of American readers to see Fidel Castro as a romantic hero and Fidel’s insurrection as a romantic cause. Like an earlier Times luminary, Walter Duranty, who had done the same favor for Stalin, Matthews was not a journalist but a publicist; the wily Fidel, who wanted and needed support from the Times reader base, worked him like a puppet – and, as a result, won the crucial backing of stateside power brokers and shapers of opinion.
Back in those days, the Times, by way of promoting its classified ads section, used to run pictures of various satisfied customers with the caption “I got my job through the New York Times.” In recognition of Matthews’s pivotal role in Fidel’s successful overthrow of the regime of Fulgencio Batista, the National Review published a parody ad in which a photo of Fidel appeared alongside that same slogan............To Read More.......
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