Devil may care

I've been trying to articulate a comment about Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's comments to the UN last week, where he, in dramatic flair, criticized President Bush as the devil, and made an Amazon.com superstar out of Noam Chomsky.

I met Chavez three years ago (well, not so much met him, as had coffee at his palace, Mira Flores, and watched a FIVE-HOUR taping of his weekly Venezuelan television show, Alo Presidente). I have a story, actually, of being clocked in the head by Chavez when he went to give the woman sitting next to me a hug. Ask me about it sometime, if you're interested. I promise to deliver the story with dramatic flair, though I'll refrain from calling anyone the devil.

I am not a Chavista by any stretch of the imagination, and think that his rant against Bush was unfortunate, if not comical. But don't write off this guy as the Carrot Top of world leaders. If you listened to his entire speech last week, you'll see one smart wizard behind the curtain.

To explain this better, check out Katrina vanden Heuvel's article "The Devil and Mr. Bush," posted here on Common Dreams.

For sure, the speech was far from a model of diplomatic rhetoric. But that didn't seem to bother the scores of experienced delegate-diplomats in the hall, who greeted Chávez's speech with wild applause. (When Bush spoke the day before, the General Assembly's hall sounded like a morgue.) That reaction, as an incisive Washington Post article points out, shows that Chávez's words, while "harsh...in many ways...merely expressed in bolder terms what a number of other world leaders and foreign diplomats believe." Moreover, to be fair, how much diplomatic tact does Chávez owe to a President whose administration supported a coup against him?

Instead of trying to understand why Chávez said what he did, and how it played in Latin America and other parts of the world, or reporting that he also said in an interview last week that he'd welcome an improved relationship with the next Administration, most of the U.S. media was quick to attack the Venezuelan President for his incendiary words. Few bothered to ask why Chávez's excoriation of Bush might increase his popularity with UN member states and boost his campaign to win a non-permanent seat on the Security Council this October.

Katie Couric, Sean Hannity, or Paula Zahn can cover Chavez in any fashion they like, but painting him as a goofball really underestimates how much influence the man has gained, and not just within Latin America, but around the world.