Under Watch: Castro and Wendy McCaw, S.B. News-Press
Under watch:
Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, undergoing surgery for gastrointestinal bleeding, temporarily ceding power to his younger brother Raul. Castro has been one of the few despots in whom I have so far been unable to confirm addiction. However, in the autobiographical expose, Castro’s Daughter: An Exile’s Memoir of Cuba, Alina Fernandez mentions the prevalence of cocaine in Cuba. For the first 212 pages, there are no clues to drugs in Castro’s life (he, like amphetamine/barbiturate addict Adolf Hitler before him, is a relative teetotaler). Then, “Cocaine was everywhere in Cuba…There was so much cocaine available in Havana that…all production indexes seemed to improve….One could easily conclude that cocaine was the sole impetus behind all the revolutionary marches….This was no secret at all.”She also talks about amphetamine on the island of Cuba as if it were candy. Unlike the pupils in pictures of Yasir Arafat, Castro’s eyes do not give away the secret. On the other hand, he is known for giving six-hour long speeches and recently hosted Mort Zuckerman, publisher of U.S. News and World Report, for a discussion lasting from 9pm to 3am, from which Zuckerman retired while Castro stayed up. Some observers have tentatively diagnosed him as suffering from Parkinson’s disease, which amphetamine addiction mimics and Adolf Hitler was misdiagnosed as having. Hitler was addicted to amphetamines and barbiturates.
Mrs. Wendy McCaw, owner of the Santa Barbara News-Press, for using twisted logic to explain why almost a dozen journalists left the paper. They objected when a story on acting publisher Travis Armstrong’s guilty plea and four-day jail stint was stifled. She wrote that the “real reason”they left was because they objected to her “efforts to improve the paper…[deciding] to leave when it was clear they no longer would be permitted to flavor the news with their personal opinions.”
Until Mel Gibson’s arrest, Mr. Armstrong was earning top story honors this month. But it wasn’t so much him as it was Mrs. McCaw, who is far more interesting. Mrs. McCaw divorced cellular phone mogul Craig McCaw after long and acrimonious proceedings, settling for at least a half billion dollars in 1997. She purchased the News-Press from the New York Times Company in 2000 for $100 million. Since then, six people have held the job of News-Press publisher. In 2004, editors objected to Mrs. McCaw asking for special news coverage of pet projects of hers, including litigation she won against an architect. By the fall of 2004 she “stopped speaking to”Jerry Roberts, the executive editor she had recruited from The San Francisco Chronicle several years earlier. When the paper ran the initial article on Armstrong’s arrest for DUI, Mrs. McCaw agreed with Armstrong that the prominence of the article with its placement on page 3 was a sign of a personal vendetta against him by Mr. Roberts. Roberts denied it, arguing the paper could not favor high-profile figures like Armstrong, regardless of who they work for. When Mrs. McCaw ordered him to kill the follow-up piece, he resigned.
There are numerous other instances of clues to hidden alcoholism. A professional and personal relationship with a Santa Barbara lawyer, Gregory Parker, disintegrated to the point at which Parker sued Mrs. McCaw in 2000 over severance pay and attorney’s fees. An arbitrator referred to Mrs. McCaw’s “oppressive”and “despicable”conduct, which included the hiring of a public relations firm to attack Parker in the press and the filing of a complaint to the State Bar that the arbitrator said was without merit.
She has threatened to terminate any employee who so much as speaks to journalist Nick Welsh, who has written several columns outing the events at the News-Press. One of her editors, Michael Todd, sent a carefully reasoned response to her threat of severe disciplinary action, including dismissal, if addresses of the subject of news stories were ever published again without the acting publisher’s permission. Todd argued that of course the address of the celebrity in question, actor Rob Lowe, should be published, since the entire story was about his quest to build a mansion that neighbors objected to. She responded that his argument to publish the address, which was already cited in a televised day-long government session, was “specious,”lacked regard for the Lowe’s or their safety and was unethical. She said his response was “blatantly disrespectful.”After she wrote the letter, she put Todd, who is reported as being an excellent and hard-working employee, on indefinite unpaid leave purportedly due to a remark he made to a News-Press employee several weeks prior.
These behaviors, which include capriciousness, possible false accusations, likely attempts at revenge, a need to win at any cost, a “rules don’t apply to me”but apply to everyone else attitude, twisted logic, unreasonable resentments, intimidation of others and serious problems at home smack of undiagnosed and untreated alcoholism. You’ll find descriptions of each in How to Spot Hidden Alcoholics: Using Behavioral Clues to Recognize Addiction in its Early Stages, under “A ‘Supreme Being’ Complex.”And these are just the clues we see in a woman about whom there is very little published information and many others are afraid to talk about. Oh, and she insists that we call her by her honorific, “Mrs.”
Note to family, friends and fans of the above: the benefit of the doubt is given by assuming alcoholism (they are either idiots and fundamentally rotten, or they are alcoholic/other drug addicts”which would explain the misbehaviors). If alcoholic, there is zero chance that behaviors, in the long run, will improve without sobriety. An essential prerequisite to sobriety is the cessation of enabling, allowing pain and crises to build. Thus far, many have done everything they can to protect the addict from the requisite pain, making these news events possible. The cure for alcoholism, consequential bad behaviors and, ultimately, tragedy, is simple: stop protecting the addict from the logical consequences of misbehaviors and proactively intervene.