Fellow Traveler defined:

Refers to a person who sympathizes with the beliefs of a particular organization, but does not belong to that organization. The phrase must be understood as referring to people who “walk part of the way” with an organization, without committing themselves to it.

Some people see the hostility [booing] towards Maglio Ordonez during the World Baseball Classic and find it unfortunate. We call these people metrosexuals. Ordonez richly deserves the mild abuse he has received, since he is a classic fellow traveler.

A professional athlete being booed is mild abuse. Real abuse is what a national government can do to dissidents. Abuse is what the man who Ordonez endorses from a safe distance does to those whom he deems to threaten his power. Until I see proof that Ordonez keeps a healthy chunk–he signed a five-year $75 million dollar contract in 2005–of the monies he has earned in Venezuelan banks, under the control of Venezuelan authorities and subject to the ‘Organic Tax Code’ and wealth and property confiscation laws, then he is a hypocrite. The type that advocates coercive governmental policies which they will never have to adhere to.

I have no idea whether Ordonez is a well-educated man who believes deeply in a more socialized form of government, excusing potential abuses as a necessary evil to correct historical injustices, or just some yahoo whose athlete status and indigenous appearance [4th degree–out of 5–PC Teflon protection, results may vary] has immunized him from a harsher scrutiny up until now. The bottom line is that he has chosen to use his wealth and influence to aid and abet a dictator who many of us believe has done great damage. And for that Mr Ordonez will have to answer for long after his window of usefulness to MLB and the Chavez regime–in that order, unsurprisingly–has passed.

But the powers that be have no doubt noticed what has happened here these past few nights. You can just smell their horror that someone–someone who supports a leftist regime dammit!–is being held accountable for those beliefs. If you close your eyes, you can just see the Ordonez defense team gathering steam. First it will come from someone in the baseball community, likely Peter Gammons.

Host: Now for a report from the great Peter Gammons
PG: MLB officials were privately horrified at the treatment Magglio Ordonez received in Miami. It is fair to say that this area will not be hosting the Classic again, and frankly, you can understand [read: I do] why they feel that way.
Host: [Note: A real ESPN host would never actually ask confrontational and challenging questions, it is presented here as our version of fantasy baseball talk] Peter given that the boos came from his own countrymen, why would MLB seek to punish the Miami baseball community. Wasn’t the Classic in Miami exactly because they knew the fans from Latin countries would be passionate about their teams?
PG: Passion for the game is one thing, but to have a player singled out for his actions off the field is just unacceptable. Especially when those actions are not inconsistent with the type of changes which we ourselves have voted for recently. I mean it’s bad enough Cuba had to shipped across the country to play.
Host: Wasn’t the Cuban sent out west partly due to the Cuban governments boderline paranoid concern about defections?
PG: The Cuban players I talked to were happy to play for the National team and would never think of defecting. Frankly, that’s just the spin from Miami’s Cuban exile community and a lot of people [read: me] think it’s time American foreign policy moved on from their parochial concerns.
Host: Peter, we are in your debt as always.

From there it will spread to the reliable purveyors of leftist truth; MSNBC, network news and late night comics. However, that crowd’s only other contact with people who look like Magglio is their catering crews. So we know that the manufactured-outrage crowd’s attention shall too pass(ball).

What will be left one day is Ordonez likely settled in the U.S. and trying to figure out where he fits in. Forget living in Venezuela, his kids are being raised here. If Thomas Wolfe’s neighbors were immigrants, the book would have been named, ‘We’ll Never Go Home Again.’

First the bad news. Where he settles depends on a choice which awaits him in retirement. He will either issue a sincere and contrite apology for his actions and be embraced by the Venezuelan community in South Florida. Or he can move into Obama’s Hyde Park neighborhood–is that Billy Ayers knocking on the door with an organic fruit basket? The good news is that at least he’s got a choice. Unlike the people whose freedom he helped to further erode.