Hypocrisy: Thy Name is...

Imagine the following scene, if you will:

I am sitting outside on my deck on another beautiful South Florida Sunday morning with my coffee and my Sunday Miami Herald. Birds flying around, the rush of water from my miniature pool waterfall hitting the pool surface.

I open the paper to my favorite section - Letters To The Editor - and I read letters about the war in Iraq, schools in Morninside, etc. Then I get to a letter titled "Mas Canosa School".

Re the March 16 article School named for exile Mas Canosa: Kudos to the Miami-Dade School Board for unanimously voting to name a new middle school after the late Jorge Mas Canosa.

Perhaps next door the district could build Luis Posada Carriles Elementary School: It is Posada through whom Mas Canosa is suspected to have financed terrorism inside Cuba.

Or how about Orlando Bosch Preschool? Bosch is, after all, a pediatrician who alongside Posada, has been implicated in the blowing up of a jet plane midair that killed more than 170 young athletes.

When Mas Canosa was at odds with The Miami Herald's news coverage of his business dealings and editorials that he deemed were not supportive of Cuban exile causes, the children of then-Publisher David Lawrence Jr. had to attend school surrounded by bodyguards. Feces were smeared on Lawrence's car.

School Board member Ana Rivas Logan succinctly stated in the article that Mas Canosa ``was many things to many people, not only in our community, but internationally.''

MAGDA MONTIEL DAVIS, Miami

So much for a pleasant Sunday morning next to the pool. You can agree or disagree with the late Jorge Mas Canosa's opinions, but accusing him of "financing terrorism"? The lengths that some people will go to in order to smear those who disagree with them and promote their own agenda never ceases to amaze me.

Now comes the good part. The letter writer, Magda Montiel Davis, isn't just some ordinary anonymous citizen living in Miami and expressing her opinion. She is an open pro-Castro supporter who works as an immigration attorney. Living in Miami, the intolerance capital of the USA.

The irony is striking.

Don't believe me? Then read this investigative notice regarding a press conference from back in 1994.

Still don't believe me? Check out Granma's account of Montiel's warm meeting with fidel himself back in 1994, and her subsequent harrassment by "intolerant exiles" in Miami.

I don't condone any violence or similar harrassment directed at anyone, regardless of how despicable their opinions may be. However, I can't help but put in serious doubt the level of seriousness of the alleged actions against Montiel. Here's a person who is open about her pro-Castro leanings in a community filled to the brim with people who have literally suffered
mentally and physically at the hands of the Tyrant of the Caribbean. Imagine walking into a Jewish neighborhood and praising Hitler.

Not the same thing, you say? Tell that to castro's victims.

Yet, Montiel lives in this same community, and whose law practice is openly listed in online litigation records. Apparently, she's alive and well and freely expressing her views, as the unfortunate editorial clearly illustrates.

Hypocrite doesn't begin to describe Montiel, but it's a start.

Now...what was I doing this morning?