Shut Up, Chavez

Bush is the devil?

You've come to New York City, a glittering monument to capitalist democracy, to claim in front of the international funny-hat squad that Bush is a devil who seeks "domination, exploitation and pillage"? Are we talking about the same former Texas governor who slacked though Yale, had a problem with nose candy, and can't get through a speech without biffing it up so much that even his most faithful supporters wince and grip the arm of the sofa?

You're saying this particular dude is the devil?

Love him or hate him, he’s our president. Most Americans to the political right of Berkeley California feel some sense of obliging loyalty to the institutions he was elected (at least once, possibly twice) to represent on our behalf. And if you stood before the United Nations General Assembly and flung the same bitter anti-American horseshit at Bill Clinton, for example, my reaction would be the same. He may have been a cloying, intelligence-bumbling conniver who couldn't keep his pants cinched, but he was our guy too, as American as cheeseburgers, Missy Elliott, and the GAP. And in the face of any diatribe like yours I'd feel the same sense of patriotism towards any elected U.S. official, imprisoned or at large, from James Traficant to Dick Armey and back again.

Oh, and the smell of sulfur you mentioned? Maybe it's the burnt remains of all of the failed leftist regimes from the past eighty years – many of which are still limping along with a total GDP less than Lincoln, Nebraska – countries which regularly imprison and execute characters like your linguist hero from Lexington – and which have found their final and most fruitful example in your beloved Republic of Cuba – a nation so crumbling, peaceful, and decrepit that families still regularly try to swim across shark-infested waters to America wearing only 1950s-era Donald Duck water wings.

Back to Caracas with you, Hugo. You might have enough sympathy in Hollywood to win a nod for an Oscar for that little performance, but otherwise your speech will be forgotten after the next news cycle. And while I’m lukewarm, at times, to the more aggressive aspects of our free market cultural exports, the best revenge on your country may come after the inevitable revolution that will take place - when I hope every street corner in Venezuela is ablaze with Taco Bells and Jiffy Lubes, and the kids are wearing styles that originated in South Central and Brooklyn – and you ride past them in your old age, still un-imprisoned, in your Lincoln Town Car, with a driver secretly on the payroll of the CIA.

Update: Glad to see hardcore Democrat Charles Rangel agrees with me. Some things are, as they say, all in the family.

Tags: Hugo Chavez, United Nations, Missy Elliott