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| Rep. José Serrano (D-NY) |
A great compilation by Michael Moynihan in Daily Beast:
(1) The most astonishing entry comes from New York University professor Greg Grandin, writing in The Nation, who allows himself to “be perverse and argue that the biggest problem Venezuela faced during his rule was not that Chávez was authoritarian but that he wasn’t authoritarian enough.” If nothing else, one must give Grandin points for honesty and for bolstering Polish historian Leszek Kolakowski’s theory that such regimes must resort to authoritarianism to survive.
(2) In an unbylined piece at The Huffington Post, readers are told that “Hugo Chávez was a man of many talents: he played ball, sang songs, pulled out pistols, and got down and groovy—and that is precisely how we’ll remember the Venezuelan leader.” One can debate whether drawing a firearm counts as a talent, but The Huffington Post might want to remember Chávez’s reign, which was, in the words of Human Rights Watch, “characterized by a dramatic concentration of power and open disregard for basic human-rights guarantees.” How very groovy.
(3) The indefatigable British-Pakistani chávista Tariq Ali, writing in The Guardian, blubbered that Chávez “appeared as an indestructible ox, speaking for hours to his people in a warm, sonorous voice, a fiery eloquence that made it impossible to remain indifferent. His words had a stunning resonance. His speeches were littered with homilies, continental and national history, quotes from the 19th-century revolutionary leader and president of Venezuela Simón Bolívar, pronouncements on the state of the world and songs.”
And those watching television and listening to the radio, as noted above, had no choice but to listen. One can only imagine what Ali would have said if, during the 1980s, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, in her plummy and sonorous voice, commanded all media outlets to carry her speeches or risk being shut down. That would be fascism—but the “eloquent” and literate cadena is freedom.
4) Rep. José Serrano (D-NY) eulogized Chávez both on Twitter and in a press release: “He believed that the government of the country should be used to empower the masses, not the few. He understood democracy and basic human desires for a dignified life. His legacy in his nation, and in the hemisphere, will be assured, as the people he inspired continue to strive for a better life for the poor and downtrodden.”
Congress is clotted with buffoons, so it’s not surprising that the media often fails to give Serrano his due. Nor is it surprising that a man who once refused to acknowledge that Cuba isn’t a democratic country (“I don’t know ... I don’t live there”; “It’s a sovereign country”; “It’s a country with a different system than ours”), and who claimed that Castro’s one-party state indeed allowed freedom of speech, would lament the passing of el comandante.
5) And finally, instead of the predictable nonsense from Joe Kennedy, Oliver Stone, and Sean Penn, let us turn to one of Venezuela’s many authoritarian allies. PressTV, the reliably insane news service of the Iranian regime, speculated that Chávez was offed by the CIA’s give-cancer-to-Latin-American-
(1) The most astonishing entry comes from New York University professor Greg Grandin, writing in The Nation, who allows himself to “be perverse and argue that the biggest problem Venezuela faced during his rule was not that Chávez was authoritarian but that he wasn’t authoritarian enough.” If nothing else, one must give Grandin points for honesty and for bolstering Polish historian Leszek Kolakowski’s theory that such regimes must resort to authoritarianism to survive.
(2) In an unbylined piece at The Huffington Post, readers are told that “Hugo Chávez was a man of many talents: he played ball, sang songs, pulled out pistols, and got down and groovy—and that is precisely how we’ll remember the Venezuelan leader.” One can debate whether drawing a firearm counts as a talent, but The Huffington Post might want to remember Chávez’s reign, which was, in the words of Human Rights Watch, “characterized by a dramatic concentration of power and open disregard for basic human-rights guarantees.” How very groovy.
(3) The indefatigable British-Pakistani chávista Tariq Ali, writing in The Guardian, blubbered that Chávez “appeared as an indestructible ox, speaking for hours to his people in a warm, sonorous voice, a fiery eloquence that made it impossible to remain indifferent. His words had a stunning resonance. His speeches were littered with homilies, continental and national history, quotes from the 19th-century revolutionary leader and president of Venezuela Simón Bolívar, pronouncements on the state of the world and songs.”
And those watching television and listening to the radio, as noted above, had no choice but to listen. One can only imagine what Ali would have said if, during the 1980s, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, in her plummy and sonorous voice, commanded all media outlets to carry her speeches or risk being shut down. That would be fascism—but the “eloquent” and literate cadena is freedom.
4) Rep. José Serrano (D-NY) eulogized Chávez both on Twitter and in a press release: “He believed that the government of the country should be used to empower the masses, not the few. He understood democracy and basic human desires for a dignified life. His legacy in his nation, and in the hemisphere, will be assured, as the people he inspired continue to strive for a better life for the poor and downtrodden.”
Congress is clotted with buffoons, so it’s not surprising that the media often fails to give Serrano his due. Nor is it surprising that a man who once refused to acknowledge that Cuba isn’t a democratic country (“I don’t know ... I don’t live there”; “It’s a sovereign country”; “It’s a country with a different system than ours”), and who claimed that Castro’s one-party state indeed allowed freedom of speech, would lament the passing of el comandante.
5) And finally, instead of the predictable nonsense from Joe Kennedy, Oliver Stone, and Sean Penn, let us turn to one of Venezuela’s many authoritarian allies. PressTV, the reliably insane news service of the Iranian regime, speculated that Chávez was offed by the CIA’s give-cancer-to-Latin-American-
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