Thanks to OTM for running, for once, an unorthodox piece. The New York Times is a great newspaper, but on some matters it cannot be trusted, such as race and gender issues. Another problem its generally liberal middle-class editors and writers have trouble with is understanding that sometimes conservative political forces have taken a better measure of tyrants mouthing left-wing slogans as a cover for their own interests than have ever-naive western 'progressives'. These faults were on display in the days of Walter Duranty, in the time of Herbert Matthews, and in The Times' misjudgement of the likely impact on Cambodia of the Khmer Rouge.

Oh, come on! Parts of the Loyalist forces were aided by this other guy named STALIN! Read Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia". There was quite a lot of immoral equivalency in the Spanish Civil War.

This correspondent/editorialist was all over the map, literally and figuratively. According to Matthews, he "fell in love with" Mussolini, too. I got the distinct impression that when Matthews says the phrase "fell in love with" he wasn't using it as a euphemism.

That is not a position from which to expect rational, objective analysis of political programs to emerge.

The commentator implies some moral eqivalency between the fascists and anti-fascists in Spain. When he accuse s Matthews of taking sides with the loyalists. Well, there WAS a guy named Hitler supporting the other side.

Hey Carol,

Thanks for the heads up. Hopefully we'll be able to fix that quickly. Since we've aired that piece once before, you can listen to it here:

http://www.onthemedia.org/transcripts/2006/04/21/04

(FYI: The easiest way to listen to the show on the web is probably to podcast the whole show - if you use itunes, just plug this into your browser:

pcast://www.onthemedia.org/index.xml

That way you don't have to manually click on each segment.)

Thanks for listening,
Mark
OTM

This is not the segment I asked for. I wanted to rehear the piece on Cuba's early years. Instead, I got letters.