Quite a few conservatives were incensed over the photo of President Obama and other officials, including John Kerry and at least one of Cuba’s many vice presidents, standing against the backdrop of a several-stories-tall steel relief mural of Che Guevara. Consequently, quite a few liberals told those conservatives, in effect, to get a life.
One of those liberals was Steve Benen, a producer for MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show and the primary blogger for the TRMS website. In a Monday post, Benen suggested that objectors to the photo are dead-enders who don’t or can’t understand that “the debate over U.S. policy towards Cuba has effectively been resolved.” He sniped, “The president’s critics haven’t had much success pointing to problems with the administration’s policy, but they’re apparently apoplectic about a photograph…Before your crazy uncle who watches Fox all day sends you an all-caps email, it’s worth taking a deep breath.”
From Benen’s post, headlined “The Right’s Misplaced Apoplexy Over Cuba Image” (bolding added):
For all intents and purposes, the debate over U.S. policy towards Cuba has effectively been resolved. There’s a broad consensus that the policy of the last several decades plainly failed to produce any of the desired results, and President Obama’s diplomatic overhaul has received broad international praise and strong backing from the American mainstream.
The president’s critics haven’t had much success pointing to problems with the administration’s policy, but they’re apparently apoplectic about a photograph they disapprove of…
…Before your crazy uncle who watches Fox all day sends you an all-caps email, it’s worth taking a deep breath...
…When presidents travel abroad, sometimes they’re photographed with politically controversial images in the background. Ronald Reagan was seen in 1988 delivering comments below a Vladimir Lenin bust and the USSR’s flag. It did not mean Reagan was a communist sympathizer; it was not a signal intended to crush the spirit of anti-communist forces around the globe; and the image drew no meaningful criticisms from Democrats.
George H.W. Bush was pictured – more than once – in front of a Mao portrait in China. It wasn’t a big deal, either…
I’m all for holding presidents to a high standard, but let’s not hold this president to some entirely new standard, never before applied to his predecessors. If some Che image in Cuba is the new national scandal for the right, I’ll take their complaints seriously just as soon as they blast Reagan for speaking under the hammer-and-sickle flag in 1988.
