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Worth a Thousand Words

Though we don't work with him, we'd also like to congratulate Alan Diaz of the Associated Press for his richly deserved Pulitzer. Diaz is the photographer who, a year ago this coming Sunday, snapped what our Tunku Varadarajan calls "the abiding image of Bill Clinton's administration"--the chilling picture of a terrified Elian Gonzalez cowering in the arms of fisherman Donato Dalrymple as an agent of Janet Reno, brandishing a gun almost as big as Elian, approaches the six-year-old boy. (You can see Diaz's photo and read Varadarajan's column here. If you want to relive that awful day, the Miami Herald has posted links here to its stories, which earned the paper a Pulitzer for spot-news reporting.)

As we all remember, the Clinton administration shipped Elian back to communist Cuba in the name of "reuniting" him with his father, Juan Miguel Gonzalez. Yesterday brought the news of a rally to "celebrate" 40 years of socialism. "Hoisting an automatic rifle into the air before tens of thousands of chanting Cubans in military uniforms, President Fidel Castro declared Monday that the socialist system . . . was here to stay," the AP reports. "The crowd included high officials and politicians as well as Juan Miguel Gonzalez."

Alan Diaz's photo helps us remember that Elian's mother, Elisabeth Brotons, died bringing her son to freedom. Bill Clinton and Janet Reno saw to it that Brotons died in vain, that Elian will live on an island prison for the rest of Fidel Castro's life.

-- Anonymous, April 17, 2001

Answers

Here's another Pulitzer winner:

October: Horror in the Middle East A Palestinian youth proudly shows Israeli blood on his hands after taking part in the lynching of three Israelis, as he is cheered by fellow protesters at a Palestinian police station in the West bank town of Ramallah. Photo: Chris Gerald, AFP

-- Anonymous, April 17, 2001

That classic Elian photo I find funnier as time goes by. Part of it was the subsequent firearms training I had that helps me appreciate the great significance of the position of the JTB's finger off the trigger. And a take-off on the mastercard commercial. Something along the line of... Round trip ticket to Miami for Elian's dad, $275. Guerilla combat unit to storm the home, $13,602. Look on the little bastard's face, priceless. (ok, ok, probably still non-PC, but it's clear Elian wasn't in danger.)

OTOH, the Israeli photos are still chilling for me. I think there was a companion photo showing the lynching of the two Israelis, or their mutilated bodies being tossed out the window. Something like that.

-- Anonymous, April 17, 2001