With Friends Like These, Little Elian Needs No Enemies

So now, in the latest manipulation out of Miami, somebody turns a video camera on this poor little Cuban cutie-pie Elian Gonzalez and tells him, “Ready when you are, E.G.,” or some such thing. And then the boy sits atop his beddy-bye and looks right into the lens and tells Papa--who isn’t permitted to be in the room but perhaps will be satisfied with a home movie--that please, don’t make me go back to Cuba.

And there you have it:

The sincere, unrehearsed, spontaneous, from-the-source’s-mouth opinion of a 6-year-old kid, who is barely mature enough to know whether he should put sugar on his Froot Loops.

It is confirmation enough for the anti-Fidel factions of Florida, who say, “See? Even Elian himself does not wish to live in Cuba!”

(Because after all, why would a 6-year-old say something if he hadn’t really thought it through rationally?)

And thousands of Cuban Americans then surround the house where Elian has made this touching little independent film, because a rumor has circulated that government agents are coming to seize the boy at any minute. And these individuals know in their hearts that the United States government is wrong, wrong, wrong in demanding that Elian go home with Papa, because here in this country, we all know that the child custody law should be changed to: “Finder’s keepers.”

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Of all the shameless, self-serving, inexcusable behavior, the making of this “Papa, I don’t want to go to Cuba” film takes the cake.

Who does this Lazaro Gonzalez think he is, to use a 6-year-old nephew this way, to defy the law this way, to place a motherless boy in the center of a hostile and potentially violent situation this way, a few months after the boy already had been put in mortal danger by his mother at sea?

Who does this Great-Uncle Lazaro think he is, that he is justified in holding this boy captive in a house, rather than making sure Elian is in school every day, where 6-year-old boys belong? How dare he play Geppetto to this boy’s Pinocchio, making little Elian dance on a string the way he’s been doing?

And who do these Cuban American protesters think they are, portraying--literally, in paintings and posters--Elian Gonzalez as some kind of biblical figure, as if he were a holy child placed in a basinet in the river at birth and cast unto them as a spiritual being whose body and soul should be held sacred?

He’s just a kid whose mother snatched him away from his father. That’s all he is. He isn’t a martyr and he isn’t Moses’ second coming. He’s just a little boy who likes to go to Disney World, a boy who looks into a TV camera and says exactly what good old Uncle Lazaro wants him to say, like a toddler counting to 10 with Bert and Ernie and Big Bird.

They’re using you, kid.

If only you were old enough, Elian, to realize how so many of these people have been pretending that this is about you when it’s actually about them, pretending to care about your welfare when all they really want to do is thumb their noses at Fidel Castro, pretending that this is about what’s best for a boy’s well-being when if anybody ever tried to treat their children this way, they would scream bloody murder.

Imagine how they would react if Elian were to spend 10 minutes alone with his father, and then a second video movie were to be released, showing Elian saying: “I am sorry. Now I want to go back to Cuba with my Papa.” Oh, this boy is being told what to say, the protesters would howl. Oh, don’t trust what you see, they would warn.

Elian isn’t a kid; he’s a cause.

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He is just a handy excuse for protesters to amass and demonstrate. He is merely talk-show fodder for a Florida radio personality who exhorts listeners to stay outside Lazaro Gonzalez’s house and who has the temerity to mock President Clinton as the “new compatriot” of Castro, as if Clinton had ever made a single allusion to supporting the Cuban dictator in any way, shape or form.

This character doesn’t care if Elian Gonzalez wants to live with his father, with his uncle or on the Good Ship Lollypop. He cares about the cause, not about the kid.

The protesters don’t care if a 6-year-old boy suffers psychological damage from being pulled in two directions, or from seeing thousands of strangers surrounding his house every day, chanting his name, waving his picture, making it impossible for him to take a walk around the block.

They want what’s best for them, not for him. They’re the ones who don’t want to go back to Cuba.

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Mike Downey’s column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Write to him at Times Mirror Square, Los Angeles 90053. E-mail: mike.downey@latimes.com