I’ve recently started reading a book about the O.J. Simpson trial by journalist Jeffery Toobin. In hindsight, it’s kind of funny to read about the dramas, both big and small, that happened during the trial and to remember where I was when they happened; it’s sort of a surreal “This is Your Life.”

The main thought that keeps coming back to me is how serious the trial seemed at the time (at least for the first few months), and how now it’s a joke, a historical afterthought.

The same sort of thoughts can be related to the case of little Elian Gonzalez, the 6-year-old boy who lost his mother during their search for freedom, only to become America’s Favorite Immigrant.

Like the Simpson ordeal, Gonzalez’s case is peppered with divisive racial issues, since Little Havana in Miami is bursting at the seams with tension over the future of this one little child.

And like the Simpson case, what once seemed so crucial has become a big joke.

After last Thursday’s ruling, the future of that little child seems destined to take place in Cuba. A federal court sided with the U.S. government and denied Elian an asylum hearing, in which the little boy might have been called to testify about why he wants to stay in the Land of the Free with his opportunistic relatives and that fisherman.

The 11th Circuit Court is the third legal entity to deny the Miami relatives’ battle to keep Elian in the United States. Their options and time in the spotlight are running out.

It’s true that many Americans are sick of hearing about Elian, sick of seeing file footage of him playing on that plastic jungle gym, sick of the Miami relatives fainting and weeping and carrying on for the media and their supporters in Little Havana about a kid they didn’t even want to care for when he first arrived in America.

If there’s anything Janet Reno did to mishandle this case, it’s letting it drag on way too long.

The Miami relatives are absolutely sickening. How in the world can they justify keeping this child from his father any longer than they already have?

It was a sympathetic move to take Elian in when he needed help, although it’s a move they first resisted.

To try and keep him, to try to present any sort of case that Elian can make an effective argument about why he should stay in America to a federal court is ludicrous.

These people need to realize their 15 minutes is up and take their place alongside America’s Most Ridiculous Hangers-on and Embarrassments, with All-stars such as Kato Kaelin, Tanya Harding and John Bobbitt.

As for the hysterical throngs in Little Havana, their perspective is a little bit different, or, unlike the Miami relatives, at least it can be justified.

The majority of them risked their lives to escape from Fidel Castro’s communist Cuba. They recognize that under Cuban law, Elian is property of the state and not technically under his father’s care. They have a lot of anger and fear toward Castro’s government, and their feelings are perfectly understandable.

What isn’t acceptable is how they have taken their struggle, their hatred, and placed it on a 6-year-old martyr in the making.

Elian is too young to understand their cause, and he shouldn’t become their poster boy.

There’s nothing more unnerving than seeing one of the protesters waving a sign with Elian embossed on it, looking absolutely divine. He’s not a saint; he’s a child.

Maybe it’s true that as Americans, we take our freedoms for granted, but that doesn’t mean the pendulum should automatically swing toward ethnocentrism.

Who’s to say what the ideal life for Elian should be? Not the Miami relatives, not Little Havana and certainly not the Republicans, who are only too happy to use Elian’s case to illustrate how the big, bad Clinton administration doesn’t have a lick of common sense.

It’s true that the pictures of that April morning raid appear very disconcerting; nobody would approve of the image of Elian screaming with a gun pointed at him.

Although I was at first shocked, later examination made me realize the raid and its subsequent photos are just another manipulative tactic by the Miami relatives.

They had repeatedly been warned by the court that they had to give the child back. Their repeated ignoring of the law is what led the raid to happen in the first place.

The fact is, the child belongs with his father, and his father wants to raise him in Cuba. No one else should have any say in the matter.

If the Miami relatives have any kind of empathy or dignity left, they’ll drop this case and not stand in the way of Elian’s inevitable return.

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Kate Kompas is a junior in journalism and mass communication from LeClaire. She is editor in chief of the Daily.