By: Clay Waters http://www.mrc.org/biasalert/2012/20120131010346.aspx
Tuesday, January 31, 2012 1:03 PM EST

First it was New York Times reporters who were quoting unelected Cuban dictator Fidel Castro insulting the “idiocy and ignorance” of the candidates for the GOP nomination, in a January 26 story. Now columnist Thomas Friedman gets in on the act, quoting Castro approvingly in Sunday’s “Made in the World.”

The Associated Press reported last week that Fidel Castro, the former president of Cuba, wrote an opinion piece on a Cuban Web site, following a Republican Party presidential candidates’ debate in Florida, in which he argued that the “selection of a Republican candidate for the presidency of this globalized and expansive empire is — and I mean this seriously — the greatest competition of idiocy and ignorance that has ever been.” When Marxists are complaining that your party’s candidates are disconnected from today’s global realities, it’s generally not a good sign. But they’re not alone.

Is it really “not a good sign” to be criticised by Castro? Shouldn’t a democratically elected U.S. politician be proud to be on the bad side of an unelected tyrant?

Then again, Friedman has a history of wishing America was more like Communist China.