Balance is Served (UPDATED)

I have to make a confession before I get to the meat of this post. I stopped visiting Stuck on the Palmetto almost 5 months ago. I quit cold turkey. It's not because I disagree with many, if not most, of the authors' posts. That would be too easy. Quite simply, I got tired of the same old discussions and disagreements that went absolutely nowhere. One thing is to have healthy debate that make you feel as if you may have actually learned something, another is to participate in an endless series of roundabout discussions whose aim is in making the debaters look bad rather than making an honest and sound point.

Having said all this, in light of Henry's Babalu post today regarding reaction to George's slam dunk on TV yesterday, I visited Stuck on the Palmetto for the first time in a long while.

This is what I read. Quite a reminder of why I stopped visiting that blog.

Now, a personal and public note to Rick:

Rick: I have disagreed with you on many occasions, and despite the occasional less than flattering or downright insensitive posts about Cuban-American conservatives that you have authored in the past 2 years, I'd like to think that you're an intelligent person who's capable of seeing beyond the rhetoric and chest-thumping and call a spade and spade.

Your post which I linked above was a huge disappointment. Yes, you acknowledged that the video shown yesterday was legitimate and "needs to be seen by the world", but only in the comments and only after you were challenged by several readers (not just Henry and Val). All your post mentioned is a need to present a balanced story, with a picture of a scale for emphasis.

Your assertion that Babalu has never presented the other side of the story is blatantly wrong. I can't tell you how many times we (yes, I am a part of Babalu) have brought up the apartheid-like health care system in Cuba, where good hospitals and care do indeed exist but only for tourists and the regime and NOT for ordinary Cubans.

The other side of the story, yes the other side that ABC refused to dive into, is what you and I saw last night on Channel 41 and Fox News Channel. No propaganda, Rick. Brave, courageous men risked their livelihoods to bring us those videos straight to our HDTV sets in air-conditioned comfort. Now that's balance for you, not brought to you by the MSM save for Fox of course.

All Michael Moore had to do in Sicko was lie and misrepresent by parroting the regime's line. Any coward can do that. That is propaganda and having an agenda. The vast majority of MSM outlets lapped it up.

You should be ashamed of yourself for placing words such as "truth" and "real Cuba" in quotes instead of waiting until challenged to acknowledge the legitimacy of the videos. Men with more courage than you or I could ever imagine having, placed themselves on the line to bring to light those videos, and you resort to pitiful quotation marks.

Deep inside, you must realize that the pathetic level of health care presented in the videos is much more representative of what Cubans have to deal with than the BS Moore wants us to believe. In other words, the real story.

I get it, Rick. You don't like us Cuban-American conservatives. You don't agree with our ideology. You don't like our style. You don't like hardliners like "us".

Fair enough.

However, if you're going to take the high road and express a desire to be balanced and fair regarding health care in Cuba, you need to be fair to your readers and to us by acknowledging WITHOUT caveats, WITHOUT quotation marks around key words, and WITHOUT the same bias which you denounce, that what was presented on national TV and posted on Babalu yesterday and today was a factual, raw, and accurate representation of what happens in Cuba, free of agenda other than to bring light to the severe injustices and hardships that occur daily in Cuba.

Yes, Rick. Free of agenda. You ought to realize that. You can start your fairness campaign by focusing and passing judgement on the idea, not the person or people who present it. Otherwise, your own bias is transparent and we are right to call you out on it.

Rick, you asked for balance? It was staring right at you last night.

And it's about time.

UPDATE: Alex from Stuck on the Palmetto deserves praise for setting the record straight in an update to Rick's post. Quite simply, this needs to be acknowledged as well.