Barbara hearts Hugo

Feel the loooove. Watch those videos and tell me if you can’t almost hear Barry White music in the background. Barbara, shrouded in a soft-focus, wrinkle-covering haze, interviews fawns over Hugo:

Now excuse me for a moment, because I’m going to make an exception to my rule of keeping the discourse at an elevated level, but the word that describes Barbara’s puff-piece is fellational.

“Are you married to the revolution?” Like a discalced Carmelite, married to her vocation, Barbara?

Is that why he’s squandering money

Chavez has already spent about $20 billion of his people’s money in trying to buy political loyalties in the Western Hemisphere, about $6 billion in arms and weapon systems and has promised another $20 billion to countries in the region to build refineries, gas lines, houses and roads, as long as they join his team. All of this is taking place while Venezuelans are increasingly undernourished and food shortages are becoming chronic occurrences in the country. One of Chavez’s latest efforts seems to involve the creation of a domestic nuclear capability. A prominent Venezuelan scientist from the Venezuelan Institute of Scientific Investigations, Claudio Mendoza, recently denounced these pretensions and was immediately dismissed and is being persecuted as a traitor.

Is that Barbara’s idea of a marriage?

Barbara’s affection for the presidente is hardly surprising, considering La Barbara’s adoration of Hugo’s mentor, which goes back to the 1960s. It never occured to her to ask, as Andres Oppenheimer does, some tough questions,

So with all due respect, I would like to pose the following questions: If you are so democratic, why do you glorify military coups? If you are so progressive, why do you close down independent television stations? If your hero Fidel Castro is so popular in Cuba, why doesn’t he allow a free election? If you respect human rights, why don’t you allow OAS human rights inspectors into your country?

And, finally, if you are so convinced of what you say, why do you only grant interviews to nonchallenging reporters? Last time we met and I respectfully asked you for an interview, you told me to go to hell.

Make no mistake: Barbara’s puff-piece, while ignored here (I didn’t even know it was on until yesterday when a friend told me about it and Larwyn sent me this), is being used as major propaganda in Venezuela and is being flogged on all state media – radio and TV – prompting one blogger to ask, Does Barbara Walters work for Chavez?

Why the need to use Chavez to make a home point against Bush? Can you not find something more palatable at home?

But I do get a double bonus with this post: see, there is the proof on how the Venezuelan media is now controlled by Chavez. All sorts of PSF, of which Barbara Walters is now a full fledged member, keep stating that the Venezuelan media is all against Chavez and that he is always on the defensive. Well, let’s look at the picture above.

Once you pass the invitation to watch the show at 9 PM tonight, you will read the list of all the media transmitting SIMULTANEOUSLY the Walters farce. Details:

• National TV broadcast (open signal most of the country): VTV, VIVE
• National on Cable and on the main TV markets: TeleSur, ANTV
• Local TV: CatiaTve (Caracas), and many local TV stations
• The only radio station allowed to broadcast all over the country: RNV
• A network of pseudo individual radio Stations in fact owned by chavista agents: Radio Rumbos, Mundial
• Many community radios (almost all Venezuelan community radios are authorized by the government, if I wanted to open one I would be quickly shut down)

And to ice the cake, 1 hour later the Venevision network will rebroadcast the interview. Venevision is supposedly private but for the last two years has found itself collaborating closer and closer to the government. I suppose that now that any journalist that criticized the government has been fired, it is a kosher network again and allowed to broadcast to the glory of EL Surpremo.

List of media that WILL NOT broadcast Chavez interview?

• RCTV (soon to be closed)
• Globovision and Televen (both do not have open signal all over the country, and Televen is semi pro Chavez anyway)
• ValeTv (cultural TV that does not have news or talk show whatsoever and only in Caracas or on Cable)
• Some local radio and TV stations, very few of them.

As you see, the ratio is now approximatively 3 to 1 in favor of Chavez for all broadcast access existing. In some areas Globovision is not allowed to have open air signal and once RCTV is gone, there will be NO media critical of the government on the air. Only on cable if you can afford it ( a huge if for most Venezuelans). Nice, no?

Barbara, ever the narcissist, played strategically into Hugo’s, the narcissist-Leninist, greedy hands, as A.M.Mora y Leon explains in her article (emphasis added),

For starters, Walters did it on extremely peculiar timing. Walters’ ‘catch’ came through on short notice, but right when Hugo Chavez needed political help. He rarely does interviews, but this week he was trying to repair his image. Walters didn’t say so, but the backstory to her interview is that Chavez has lost tremendous political capital in the hemisphere in the wake of President Bush’s Latin American tour and is actively trying to regain lost ground.

Investor’s Business Daily chronicled Chavez’s troubles from the Bush tour, first describing Chavez’s early effort to hit Bush with nasty street protests in a bid to direct cameras away from the visiting U.S. president, and ‘seize the message. That didn’t work, so his next move was to launch of a ‘shadow tour’ to his allies, in a further effort to draw attention from Bush. The ‘shadow tour’ didn’t go according to plan and worse yet, made him look ridiculous. Instead of getting spontaneous adoring masses and media coverage, Chavez was repeatedly described – from Argentina to Mexico – as a spurned boyfriend stalking Bush, unable to handle his quiet rejection. After that, Chavez watched as his own allies distanced themselves from him, just as it was getting obvious that success was building in President Bush’s own tour.

As Bush warmed the hearts of Latin Americans and accomplished real diplomacy, Chavez became a laughingstock and apparently knew it. He reversed course and started a new soft approach (a first for him), mimicking Bush as now a nice guy, not a firebrand. He said he didn’t really mean anything personal in his Bush insults, despite calling Bush a ‘donkey,’ a ‘drunk’ and a ‘political corpse’ throughout the week. In fact, not only was it nothing personal, he added he’d like to play dominoes with Bush and laugh over old times when the two of them eventually retired. Meanwhile, back in Caracas, his ministers repeatedly denied that Chavez’s shadow tour of Bush was really that. They emphasized it was “only a coincidence,” not a stalking. Obviously, the Venezuelan dictator was in trouble.

In waltzed Walters, possibly ignorant of all this going on (to be charitable), and just thrilled to crow to U.S. viewers about her new interview ‘catch.’ But not only did Walters give Chavez a platform to improve his image – something Chavez had been trying hard to do in the last few days, she piled on the usual claptrap from the Chavez propaganda machine about Chavez’s wonderful generosity to the poor in both Venezuela and the U.S.

The Economist, never a big Bush supporter, commented,

But most of Mr Chávez’s neighbours are not enthusiastic about his leadership nor willing to turn their backs on the United States. Lula’s coming trip to Camp David is a sign that Brazil will not be bullied into an anti-American axis. Mr Bush wisely ignored Mr Chávez’s taunts.

Last night I was conversing with Louisiana Conservative, who will post on our conversation. We discussed Venezuela, and what should the USA do.

One of the most effective things I believe the USA should do is to foment wealth creation in Latin America. I firmly believe that the USA should create a circle of prosperous nations through abolishing all agricultural subsidies and trade tarriffs with all Latin American countries that foster true democracy, support the rule of law, and provide property rights for their citizens. A circle of prosperous nations surrounding a Communist nation is not a new approach: it has happened in East Asia.

A cricle of prosperity will defeat Communism, because for Communism to thrive, there has to be poverty and uprising. A circle of prosperity will also solve many other problems, among them the huge numbers of illegal immigrants trying to make a living here rather then in their home countries.

It can happen in Latin America. It’s up to our politicians.

Do it, and do it now.

Update: Louisiana Conservative has his first post on our conversation from last night.

Update 2:

Dear friends of ABC:
The interview done by Ms. Barbara Walters to Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has damaged considerably the cause of democracy in our country, Venezuela. Today, Chavez is using all Tv’s and radio stations in the country to reproduce this interview , which amounts to an endorsement by a well-known U.S. journalist in a highly important U.S. television network. It is very sad that the 200,000 abandoned children in the streets of Venezuelan cities, the 13,000 plus Venezuelans assasinated in the country during 2006, the billions of dollars stolen or pilfered by Chavez’s revolutionary gang and the Venezuelan public school students who are being indoctrinated today with socialist slogans similar to those of the grotesque Chinese cultural revolution of the 1960’s cannot receive equal time with Ms. Walters. As a Venezuelan, witnessing first hand the tragedy of our country under this ignorant and vulgar dictator, I resent Ms. Walter’s shameless enthusiasm for this rogue leader and her disdain for objectivity. It is the 1960’s, Herbert Mathews and Fidel Castro all over again. Can’t the lesson ever be learned?
Sincerely,
Gustavo Coronel