Well, well. Isn't it reassuring-- if you're a Democrat-- to know that Al Gore is quite capable of getting down and dirty when necessary to win votes. Makes you feel all fuzzy and warm about his prospects for the November presidential election.
Al Gore, don't you know, would like to win the state of Florida in November. The state of Florida consists largely of crime-ridden urban vacuum Miami and Disneyland. With George Bush Jr. as the Republican nominee, Disneyland is sewn up, but, hey, Miami is still up for grabs. And Miami is populated with ex-Cubans still seething with hatred for Fidel Castro, forty years after he nationalized the casinos and bordellos of Havana.
Enter Elian Gonzalez and his mom. Elian's parents were divorced, and his father had custody of Elian. His mom, ever the responsible parent, and a non-swimmer, decided to abduct him-- that's what we call it when a dad does the same thing-- and hop into a flimsy home-made aluminum boat and defect to America. The boat departed at night, over-loaded by two with a couple of last-minute adventurers, and almost sank shortly after it left the beach. Elian, terrified, didn't want to go when they tried again a few days later. He had more sense than the rest of them: out in open water, the boat sank. Elian stayed afloat on an inner tube and saw his mother and almost all of the others drown.
Elian drifted for several days until he was picked up by a fisherman and brought to Miami. He was placed in the custody of some distant relatives of rather distinctive all-American enthusiasms. They decided that rather than send Elian to live with his own father in Cuba, they would make Elian a symbol of their festering obsessive compulsive hatred of Castro. They would Americanize him.
A whole cartload of conservative Republicans supports this disgraceful effort to remove a child from the custody of his father. They support this brazen and cynical attempt to exploit the child for craven political ends. How low can you sink?
Well, you could be a Democrat and do the same thing.
