I suspect US publications, upon hiring any reporters or columnists who might mention Chávez at all, order these writers to use one of the following words within the first paragraph (preferably first sentence) of mentioning the man: "firebrand," "populist," "controversial," "revolutionary" (generally preceded by the phrase "self-proclaimed"). He's backwards, too, right--cuz he doesn't know that socialism is totalitarianism incarnate, a dead 20th century Ideology of Hatred, and probably has something to do with Terror. Tsk tsk.David Rieff says: "Perhaps we were kidding ourselves when we imagined that when Castro died, the yearning in many parts of the world for a figure like Castro would die as well. If Hugo Chávez proves nothing else, it is that such dreams are alive and well." Isn't that nice of him? Though of course the whole article has the bitter patina of someone just appalled that these masses of Third Worlders might have opinions of their own, I have to say ... Rieff's anti-Chávez write-up is (shockingly) one of the least vitriolic, "fairest" things I've seen written on the Venezuelan in the American press.
I guess we call that "balance" in the media? Eh ...
1 comment:
aRight on for bringing up these servile writers, and implicitly, the sharp instincts against such defeatism(at best --counterrevolution,at worst and most often) by the Venezuelan populace. Venezuelan's must be the best bullshit through-seers in all the world (considering the media there is just as counterrevoltionary...and yet). I call the writers servile because I'm assuming there're some who don't actually believe such nonsense about history, the world, and Chavez. But maybe they do, they all do, and that's how bad it is?
The acrobatics of a Rieff are amazing. What a waste.
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