Amid reports of Fidel Castro’s decline (and possible demise), U.S. News editor Mortimer B. Zuckerman offers this week his fond recollections of long conversations with the dictator.
Though the column ignores Castro’s evil, there is at least one humorous observation:
[H]e escorted me to a room next to his
office filled with the new Chinese gadgets and began citing from memory
Cuba’s hour-by-hour consumption of energy, the energy efficiencies of
the new generators, and the cost savings from reduced energy imports.
Without pausing for breath, he then segued into a description of
another new program, to reward Cubans who use less energy rather than
assessing everyone the same consumption cost. I told Fidel he was
becoming a capitalist, but he disagreed. He was no capitalist, he said;
he was just approaching the subject rationally. But Fidel, I replied,
that’s what capitalists do.
