The vulgarity of Chavez

There was a little but important item that I was wondering how to cover. Last Sunday, in his freak show Alo Presidente, Chavez insulted Bush. Grossly.



Mr.Deinyer = Mr. Danger = G.W.Bush in the chavista collective. Gross (and on purpose) mispronunciation of Chavez, based on a character of Doña Barbara. Translation (for those who do not get it at first, the worst insult possible that Chavez coudl say) : Mr. Bush, you are just a Hugo Chavez.

Now, there are indeed many reasons that one might push forward to criticize Bush, but as far as I know it is not for the president of any nation to insult the president of another nation. I mean, they might have to seat down at some point to negotiate something. After all, Chavez has Jose Vicente Rangel, his creepy vice president, that can do the job for him. So why did Chavez felt the urge to so grossly insult Bush? Though I kept this thought in mind I did not have time to seek for an explanation (viaduct, polls, work, personal travails). But procrastination pays and yesterday's Tal Cual editorial and Weil cartoon did the job for me. A simple translation will suffice.

Good and bad words
Simon Boccanegra

Can one imagine the amazement and stupefaction of some kid that would have listened to the President last Sunday in his weekly show? A worse example of bad manners, intolerance and aggressiveness would be difficult to remember from the already abundant harvest of vulgarities that have characterized the language of the President. That the President replies to Bush is normal since this one had criticized him a few days earlier. But courtesy does not distract from courage. Any justified argument that Chavez might have had to retort to his colleague is lost when arguments and reasoning are replaced by personal insults. However we must not fool ourselves. The foul language that Chavez uses so abundantly cannot be seen as a mere explosion f his temperament. To the contrary, it is a perfectly calculated attitude, to reduce politics to an emission of personal attacks, removing any trace of debate and rational arguing. The same behavior applies to his internal adversaries. Tulio Hernadez in his excellent article of El Nacional last Sunday writes: “we are in front of an operation […] that expresses openly the will not to live together, not to dialogue, and to bring society to the maximum atmosphere of tension to justify the imminent steps to be taken to control over daily life.” In this case there is also an electoral objective extremely perverse: to create a state of such confrontation (verbal, by the way) that it will allow for a false dilemma “Chavez or Bush”. Any who opposes Chavez would be a Bush lackey. Will that be the tone of the electoral campaign?

What is remarkable is that Teodoro Petkoff and Tulio Hernadez have never been characterized as hard core opposition, trying whenever they could to build bridges to chavismo. That they are concurring to such an interpretation is disturbing.

PS: I cannot fail to observe that this is exactly what happens in the comment section of opposition blogs, where many a chavista supporter goes for the character assassination or to link any opposition attitude to Bush loving. Birds of a feather.

PS2: And today Tal Cual cover carries this very non ambiguous picture supplemented with the ad hoc editorial of which I extract the following line: Each declaration from a gringo [sic] bureacrat or from Bush himself is heavenly music for Chavez.



PS3: Amazingly chavismo seems to be proud of Chavez utter vulgarity. Aporea is posting the snippet where Chavez insults Bush (click below the title of the article "escuche al presidente Chavez"). Now, some of these insults might meet the approval of many readers, but that is not the point. You need to focus on the tone of Chavez as he speaks, the deliberate provocation, the thoughtful rabble raising. Chilling!!! [hat tip Virginia]