McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Reasons to Dispatch Bush
DAILY REASON TO DISPATCH BUSH.DAY 104:
President Bush’s new rules on travel to Cuba went into effect on June 30. They allow Cuban Americans only one visit home every three years, eliminate humanitarian permission to attend funerals or to see dying relatives, and remove all extended family—such as aunts, uncles, and cousins—from the list of government-approved relatives. Violators are fined $65,000.
In July, during a speech about the travel restrictions, President Bush told an audience of Florida law-enforcement officials that Fidel Castro was promoting sex tourism to Cuba. “The dictator welcomes sex tourism,” Bush said. “Here’s how he bragged about the industry. This is his quote: ‘Cuba has the cleanest and most educated prostitutes in the world.’”
The quote was from a paper written by a Dartmouth undergraduate, Charles Trumbull, in 2001. His paper provided no footnote for the quote, but when reached by the Los Angeles Times, Trumbull guessed that it was a paraphrase of comments Castro made in 1992. In that year, Castro told the Cuban parliament that “there are prostitutes, but prostitution is not allowed in our country. There are no women forced to sell themselves to a man, to a foreigner, to a tourist.” A State Department official said that the White House asked for material on human trafficking in Cuba less than a day before the speech and that the department then found Trumbull’s paper on the Internet.
(Sources: Maura Reynolds, “Bush Took Quote Out of Context, Researcher Says,” Los Angeles Times, July 20, 2004. See article at: commondreams.org. Portia Siegelbaum, “Castro Blasts Bush on Sex Charges,” CBS News, July 27, 2004. See article at: cbsnews.com. Mary Murray, “Castro Responds to Bush’s Prostitution Charges,” NBC News, July 27, 2004. See article at: msnbc.msn.com.)
Reading through the other items on this page just reminds me of EXACTLY HOW ATROCIOUS the current administration is on issues of race, the environment and children. I mean, it’s fantastic for business owners and friends of the administration, but for the rest of America, not so much.