Can we really call ourselves a civilized society?

It’s stuff like this that makes me think that maybe there really isn’t any hope for this country. This isn’t just some whacked out Bush administration action that can be written off as one lunatic’s obsession; it’s a whole community--a government and its population apparently going along with it.

The city of Miami is planning an official celebration at the Orange Bowl whenever Cuban president Fidel Castro dies.

Discussions by a committee appointed earlier this month by the city commission to plan the event have even covered issues such as a theme to be printed on T-shirts, what musicians would perform, the cost and how long the celebration would last.

I along with probably every American was appalled by news reports of people “dancing in the streets” in places like Baghdad and Gaza after the 9/11 attacks, but as disturbing as these were, they were not government sponsored and in reality were later noted as more scattered incidents than mass demonstrations. So sure, if a few callous, obsessed individuals want to celebrate a national leader’s death, then who’s to stop them, but an organized, state-supported event?

Nixon was responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in Southeast Asia, and yet I don’t recall organized, state celebrations in Berlin, Paris, or Hanoi. And yet the media treats this as a natural and inevitable and even justified event. It’s truly shameful, for Miami, for the media, and for this country.