Catching up with Bryant Gumbel from a couple of weeks ago, on the April edition of his Real Sports show on HBO, the NBC News and CBS News veteran came to the defense of Miami Marlins manager Ozzie Guillen, who caused outrage amongst Cuban-Americans when he declared “I love Fidel Castro.” In an end of the program commentary, Gumbel couldn’t resist taking a jab at conservatives, charging:

Whipping up a frenzy over slights real and imagined is a play straight out of a far right handbook and Florida’s electoral cloud has often given Fidel’s critics far more leverage than their arguments merit.

Gumbel contended that ever since the Bay of Pigs failure, “exploiting anti-communist fears to portray Castro as a monstrous boogeyman, has been a cottage industry in Florida and Washington.” Those upset with Guillen, Gumbel maintained, “simply hate” Castro because “he overthrew their dictator, Fulgencio Batista, whose corrupt government helped enriched privileged Cubans and American interests at the expense of the country’s poorest people.”

More in the cross-post on the MRC's NewsBusters blog.