Theodore Dalrymple on why liberals are so cosy with Cuba:

Perhaps no tyranny in history has enjoyed such a good press, and for so long, as Cuba under the Castro boys. When it comes to Cuba, restrictions on freedom of opinion, thought and expression, which have been both severe and long-lasting, are suddenly deemed by liberals to be unimportant, of no fundamental significance in their assessment of the regime: though the Brooklyn Museum has only to be prevented from showing pictures of the Virgin Mary surrounded by blobs of elephant dung – without any private institution being prohibited from showing them – for the cry of ‘Intolerable censorship!’ to go up.

Why should the Cuban tyranny be given, even now, such an easy time in at least some sections of the press? It may sound frivolous, but I think it has something to do with the weather.

In a flash of typical Dalrymple insight, we now have the answer for why Fred Hiltz likes to travel to Cuba: it’s the weather.

And all this time I assumed it was because Cuba is, for him, a home away from the ACoC home: a totalitarian, thuggish tyranny where freedom is vigorously suppressed by a crackpot dictator.