History, Karl Marx said very famously   repeats itself but not exactly; the first time as tragedy, the second as farce. 

He was writing in the aftermath of the failed French revolution  of 1848 before the game of baseball as we know it existed,;half a century before the Spanish-American War, the U.S.  "liberation/occupation of Cuba and all that followed--the Platt Amendment giving the U.S. right to intervene in Cuban affairs as it saw  fit, the interventions in support of pro  business tyrants, Machado, Batista, even the young law student and baseball player Fidel Castro who once had a tryout with the Washington Senators when U.S. corporations and gangsters were in ownership of much of the Cuban economy in the 1950s.

Now  we come to Ozzie Guillen, who today  pretty literally  repeated history as farce.   He comes from Venezuela, played in the  U.S. major leagues, which Fidel never did, managed the Chicago White Sox to a World Series win, which no one had done since October, 1917(shortly before the Soviet Revolution, a point not yet discussed by major league baseball), and took a job as the manager of the Florida Marlins, an "expansion team" which didn't exist until the 1990s. 

 Guillen is famous for his emotional outbursts, obscenities, acting often as a caricature of the "hot blooded Latin,' a  long established racist comedy relief character in U.S. movies and television.  Nothing he ever has ever said  though is on a serious topic or question. 

 He usually responds to criticisms of his wild statements with wilder statements.  But not this time

Guillen told Time  magazine that he" loved "Fidel Castro--because Fidel has stayed in power for so long  after so many attempts to kill him. 

In a way I can understand that--it was like what I would expect from the street corner boys of my youth in the South Bronx, a tribute to a tough guy and in this case a tough guy from a Spanish speaking country in a country, the U.S., where people of Spanish speaking background and culture have a long history of oppression.  Some of those kids, Puerto Rican kids, would end up in the 41st police precinct for being rowdy and then get pushed around--the police station that came to be known as Fort Apache in the1960s

Ozzie didn't have to worry about that in Florida.  But he did have to worry about the ideological blitzkrieg his statement produced  As the denunciations exploded,  it  was a little like a rightwing politician of the 1930s who said "I beleve in free speech but they can't say that."  

 The organized anti-Castro Cuban forces in Florida, strong supporters of a rightiwng Republican party which advances draconian legislation against undocumented Latino immigrants, suppresses Mexican-American studies programs in Arizona, and crusades for "English only legisation, jumped in to call for Guillen's head. 

Talk show people proclaimed that Fidel was "Hitler" to the Cuban-American community and politicians called for investigations and punishments.

Actually, Latin America had been full of "midget Hitlers" as Nation publisher Freda Kirchwey called them in the 1930s, responding to Franklin Roosevelt's comment about one of them that he was a "son of bitch but our son of a bitch."  Fidel and the Cuban people overthrow one of those "midget Hitlers" Fulgencio Batista, in 1959, but that has reality, not reality tv.

Ozzie isn't the tough guy he pretended to be.  He isn't  Paul Robeson who was denounced(in a distorted way)  in 1950 by the U.S. press as saying in a Paris international peace conference that "American Negroes" would not fight in a war against the Soviet Union.  Robeson made no apologies to the distorters even though it was a factor in  his having his passport lifted. Robeson stood for something and believed in something both in  the U.S. and globally, 

 Robeson  knew on one level that capitalism, in terms of his successes as an actor ent.rtainer, had been "good" to him, but he also knew  but it had not been good to his people in the U.S. or to most of the world's people. 

Capitalism has been very good to Ozzie Guillen as an athlete-entertainer(Robeson by the way as a football player at Rutgers has far better than Guillen ever was as a baseball player) but it has not been good to the overwhelming majority of people in Latin America, including those who brought the socialist goverment of Hugo Chavez to power in his Venezuela.  These people regard Fidel Castro as a revolutionary hero who challenged a U.S. based imperialism that had supported their local exploiters and oppressors all of their lives and the lives of the parents and grandparents.  Large numbers of them love him for what he stood for and what he accomplished

But Guillen groveled this morning to the mass media, saying that what he meant to say, what he was thinking in Spanish, was that he wondered how someone who hurt so many people could stay in power for so long--of course, that makes no sense, since he would not have said that he loved Fidel or mentioned the attempts to kill him(orchestrated by the CIA over many years) if that was what he was thinking in any language,  but it didn't matter.

 Guillen  did a huge disservice to people of Latino background in the U.S, including those Cuban-Americans who are not living in a reactionary past and want to fight the institutional and ideological racism that oppresses all  people of Spanish speaking background here and which  they anti undocumented worker campaigns have intensified. The poisoned political atmosphere that is a legacy of the cold war and the continued blockade against Cuba and denial of its right to exist as a socialist country. hurts all of us, except those who profit from it politically

The Florida Marlins baseball team, famous for  winning two world series and then selling off  or trading their good players before they could get more money in the best capitalist tradition, has suspended him for five games for exercising his right of free speech(so much for capitalism and freedom, or rather citizens do have civil liberties and rights before government but not before private businesses).  Although I remain personally  a Dodger fan(, and in the Marlins division a supporter of the Mets,so this comment may be seen as subjective, maybe they hould change the name of their new stadium to Platt Amendent-Fulgencio Batista Park if they really want to reach out to the supporters of old Cuba and old U.S. gunboat diplomacy in the region.

So far the Marlins of Major League baseball have not demanded that Guillen "name names" of those who put such ideas in his head.

 The Republican state government in Florida has not yet called for the establishment of an Un Battista  Activities Committee(HUBAC) to punish all those living and dead who ever said or did anything in support of the Cuban revolution, opposition to the Bay of Pigs landing, or even failure to launch WWIII to protect Florida from Soviet missiles and liberate Cuba during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962.  And there has been no attempt yet to re-open the 1917 World Series Chicago White Sox victory, the subsequent 1919 "Black Sox"(Chicago White Sox) scandal, and connect it with both the Soviet revolution and the fact that President Obama is the number one Chicago White Sox fan in the country.

But it was a farce day in the U.S., as Florida politicians who said nothing about the Trayvon Martin murder called for Guillen's firing,

The history of red-baiting is both sordid and tragic in the U.S. 

 It has also always served as a distraction from real political and social questions that effect the people.  Florida is a cheap labor "right to work" state with a repressive government--a state which made George W. Bush president of the U.S.  in what was the most corrupt election in U.S. history.  The Trayvon Martin story is what is  important in Florida today along with "gun laws" that are a disgrace to the rest of the developed world   The fight against laws in Arizona, Alabama, and other states which strike at the civil rights of American citizens of Latino background and undocumented workers is important,  

Ozzie Guillen first "loving "and then "hating" Fidel Castro and explaining it all in terms of a language barrier is  farce feeding on farce