Papal Visit Reveals Bias

Biased Media Demeans America
Tuesday, September 22nd, 2015

          Elizabeth Hasselbeck is one of the three co-anchors on "Fox & Friends" each morning on "Fox News." She opened this week's programming at 6:00 A. M. Monday by reading the teleprompter while a full-screen photo of Pope Francis meeting Fidel Castro appeared on the screen. Her tele-prompted description of that photo was: "THE POPE STARING INTO THE FACE OF EVIL." Not being a gullible idiot, I don't watch "Fox News" except to occasionally monitor its coverage of major events. As the satirist Jon Stewart correctly opined, "Fox News is nothing more and nothing less than a right-wing propaganda machine." The raucous Elizabeth Hasselbeck sentence, implying that the miscreants the 89-year-old Fidel Castro chased off the island in 1959 were angelic Mother Teresa-types, illustrated Stewart's very salient point.

        This is the photo that "Fox News" anchor Elizabeth Hasselbeck at 6:00 A. M. Monday depicted as: "The Pope staring into the face of evil." The photo flashed around the world and was taken in Fidel Castro's home in Havana by his son Alex Castro. The Hasselbeck depiction, typical of everything "Fox News" airs, assumed that the viewers are either too stupid, too proselytized, or too intimidated to form opinions on their own...and "Fox News" is probably correct in assuming its viewers prefer being told what to think instead of doing a little research that might be conducive to some independent, democratic thinking.

Meanwhile.........

      .......it appears that Pope Francis has inspired President Obama to wipe away the embarrassment the above graphic presents to him, to America, and to democracy. Pope Francis had a lot to do with the opening of embassies in Havana and Washington this summer for the first time since 1961. Now he has been told that, for the first time since 1962, the U. S. is willing to accept next month's international condemnation in the United Nations of the economic, commercial, and financial embargo against Cuba. That condemnation has been emphatic. The vote against the embargo last October was 188-to-2 with only Israel, which is very dependent economically and militarily on the U. S., voting to support the U. S. embargo against Cuba. Next month it appears Pope Francis has been told that the U. S. will abstain from voting "yes" on the embargo. In the meantime, there are predictions in Miami and Washington that President Obama will be scared away from appeasing the Vatican and the world regarding the embargo, but Mr. Obama has long called for it to end. Thus, a U. S. "yes" vote in the UN next month, truly an unprecedented step, would seem to be disingenuous at best. Yet, hard-line insanity has dictated U. S. Cuban policy for decades and, as Yogi Berra once said, "it ain't over till it's over." So, Obama's being forced to enforce the embargo will be tested at the UN next month.

And meanwhile..............   

      .................Pope Francis Monday traveled from Havana on Cuba's western tip to the southeastern cities of Holguin and Santiago de Cuba. In Holguin 150,000 Cubans listened attentively as he gave mass at the Plaza of the Revolution. He told them to "be open to change" and advised them to "chart your own course." Just outside Santiago de Cuba, Pope Francis spoke emotionally at the sacred Virgin of Charity shrine.

Pope Francis blessing communion bread in Holguin Monday.

Cubans in Holguin showing their love for Pope Francis Monday.

Elderly Cuban watching wall-to-wall television coverage of Pope Francis.

Pope Francis praying Monday at Holguin's Virgin of Charity shrine.

Pope deplaning at Santiago de Cuba. {Photo: AP/Tony Gentile}

         This Alejandro Ernesto/EPA photo shows Pope Francis outside Santiago de Cuba, the island's second largest city, on his way Monday to El Cobre, a poor Cuban town, to pray at Our Lady of Charity shrine.

Cubans in El Cobre awaiting the arrival of Pope Francis.

Pope Francis has inspired the Cuban people.

Today, Tuesday, he arrives in the United States.

       Cuban and Papal security kept sharp eyes out for trouble as this AP photo illustrates in Holguin, with no major consequences. But beginning today as Pope Francis flies to the U. S., unprecedented safety precautions are awaiting him. 

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