I was listening to some archival coverage from NPR over the weekend, from May of 1945, about the death of Adolf Hitler. \u00a0I was kind of surprised:<\/p>\n
“On the one hand, he directly ordered the death of 11 million Jewish, gay, Roma, Sinti and Slavic civilians in a campaign of ethnic cleansing, and launched a war that led to the deaths of between 50 and 70 million people.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, he was a committed vegetarian and dedicated to animal rights, and his death by gun suicide highlights attention on the epidemic of gun violence, in which guns killed millions of Europeans.<\/p>\n
So the truth is somewhere in between.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n\n\nWell, no. \u00a0I made the whole thing up. \u00a0Well, not the whole\u00a0<\/em>thing; Hitler could in fact not bear the though of animals coming to harm. \u00a0He was a very forthright vegetarian, and had no tolerance for any sort of cruelty to animals. \u00a0But nobody in history has suggested that those facts even nudge the scale in comparison to his crimes against humanity and morality.<\/p>\n
That would be just stupid.<\/p>\n
I thought about this as\u00a0I was listening to NPR talking about the death of Fidel Castro.<\/p>\n
It was a series of “Journalists” bending over backwards to ensure the world knows that there were two sides to Fidel Castro; the one who “stood up for the little guy” (using funds taken from Russian and Eastern-European “little guys”, but that’s getting too detailed, right?), who was a huge patron of Cuban arts and sports, and public health on the one hand…<\/p>\n
…and who may have been a bit of a totalitarian tyrant on the other. The truth, an NPR reporter sonorously reminded us, was “somewhere between the two”.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nAnd it made me wonder – how many people WOULD he have had to murder to push the needle?<\/p>\n
A visitor to this planet might wonder who’s being more satirical, NPR or me.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\u00a0However, one can forgive NPR for being at least a little less detached from reality than five notable world leaders in their statements about Castro’s expiry<\/a>. \u00a0 If you happen to be a citizen Canada, have a word with Prime Minister McDreamy<\/a>, eh? \u00a0\u00a0Likewise, if you’re from Ireland or\u00a0the EU, you need to see about changing leaders. \u00a0(If you are an Iranian citizen, you don’t have much more choice than the Cubans did; if you are a member of Britian’s Labour Party, you probably don’t know any better.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n