JEDDAH, 26 August 2007 — Perhaps one of the most-watched world leaders these days is Cuban President-for-life Fidel Castro. After all, the man who has been a thorn in the side of American presidents since the 1950s is not long for this world.
Rumors have circulated for over a year that the 81-year-old leader of the Cuban Revolution, which ousted American industrialists and their Cuban proxies from Havana in 1959 and brought the Caribbean headfirst into the Cold War, was succumbing not to one of many CIA plots that have been hatched over the decades to assassinate him but rather of banal old age.
So considering this, could it really be that a man more famous for posting unflattering pictures of Britney Spears on his website than for his coverage of major world affairs has been the first to publicly announce the death of Fidel Castro?
“We keep hearing that Fidel Castro is dead,” said a post on PerezHilton.com on Friday. A post shortly later was even more specific, that an official announcement was imminent. When that deadline passed without word of Castro’s death, Hilton persisted.
“Fidel Castro is dead!” the last post about this subject on Friday read. “The only way the Cuban government can settle this once and for all is to parade him (alive) around Havana this weekend.”
Hilton (his real name is reportedly Mario Armando Lavanderia, Jr.) may be an unlikely source for such information. An openly gay celebrity gossip columnist, Hilton’s website boasts millions of viewers a day seeking the latest pictures detailing the day-to-day lives of superstars. A recent post shows a picture of Brad Pitt buying a hot dog in Times Square for his adopted son Maddox. Hilton often takes snarky jabs at his targets; other times he fawns over them like a journalist hoping for an exclusive interview or a gift bag.
PerezHilton.com is also known to provide original exclusives rather than his usual strategy of posting paparazzi pictures (a potential violation of copyright for which Hilton has been sued in the past). A recent post on his website included an email interview with drug-addled British crooner Amy Winehouse about her latest attempts to kick a few bad habits.
But interviews with pop stars are not the same thing as breaking major world events, and it’s likely that the latest rumor of Castro’s passing is just that: innuendo. Like most in Miami’s Cuban-American community, Hilton doesn’t mask his disdain for “Tata” Fidel, calling him in one post an “oppressive ogre”.
Still, if this rumor turns out to be true and by the time you read this Castro’s death has been announced — or is about to be announced — then it wouldn’t be the first time a random guy with a website did what a professional journalist couldn’t do.
On Jan. 18, 1998, Matthew Drudge announced on his deceptively amateur-looking website that Newsweek magazine refused to publish a story implicating a sexual relationship between a 23-year-old intern and the president of the United States.
That story, as we all now know, turned out to be true.