Hugo Chavez has just won the Venezuelan election (again), and I predict tomorrow’s newspapers will be filled with more of the same superficialities used to describe him on both sides of the Chavista divide.
He’s not an angel, and certainly not the devil (Bush holds that title), but you’d think he was the messiah reading most journalists on the Left.
openDemocracy has a fantastic article about the disastrous inaccuracies produced by “solidarity journalism” about Chavez. Read it, in case you’ve ever wondered who to trust.
My own view is tainted by my visit to Caracas during the World Social Forum earlier this year. The cult-mentality surrounding Chavez was overwhelming.
I met people who said he was the reincarnation of Simón Bolívar. And one guy really did suggest he was the messiah.
No politician deserves that kind of blind admiration.
Our job as activists and journalists is to keep politicians on their toes, no matter what colour shirt they wear (red), and how right they are to stick it to Bush at the UN. Solidarity journalism needs to be about solidarity with “the people” not the politicians.
“Chavez is the people,” read the graffitti on the wall… “Chavez is the social movements,” a community radio journalist explained to me in Caracas.
Well OK, that’s very convenient. I’ll just call his press secretary to have that view confirmed.
David Letterman has his way with Fox talkshow host Bill O’Reilly. Why are comedians responsible for most of the stuff worth YouTubing in this country?
And here’s something nutty from O’Reilly’s webpage. A test to help determine if you are a “Cultural Warrior” (a good thing), or in my case an “S-P” (a secular-progressive). Thanks, Bill. What an idiot.
This seemed pretty ridiculous. There were so many unhappy people having their drinks, medicine, and toiletries confiscated.
Once we landed in New York, I was asked by a police officer to switch off my cellular phone in the baggage retrieval area because, as he said, “Those emails that have been going around about mobile phones not always being phones? They’re true.” Really? OK.
Laughable as it seems, apparently one airplane really was brought down by a toothpaste tube with plastic explosives 30 years ago.
It happened to be in the case of Luis Posada Carriles, who blew up a Cubana Airlines flight with 73 people on board, but is being protected by the US government. A terrorist you say? Clearly it depends on who the target is.
Here is the other TV performance everyone is talking about. Good and bad. If more politicians actually said what they were thinking, the UN would be a very different place (wait no, it would be shut down by the US government).
Also, by Anthony Barnett (I meant to link to this a few days ago), a refreshingly different apporach to thinking about the bombing of Lebanon and global security in general: invite Israel, Palestine and Lebanon to join the EU. The whole article should be required 9/11 anniversary reading.
The Japanese press reports on Miss Puerto Rico’s (now Miss Universe) triumphant return to Puerto Rico. But clearly, her dress is yellow and not green as the article says.
My friend Chris in Australia shares the local perspective on the death of a true crocodile-lover (RIP Steve Irwin). Check out the video of him hugging a dead croc “… I loved her like my wife.”
I watched TV at a friend’s house and was pleased to see the documentery “Out of Control: AIDS in Black America” on Primetime (ABC). Reporter Terry Moran presented it as an underreported story that politicians and activists would have acted on more forcefully if affected White people to the same degree.
“Black Americans make up 13 percent of the U.S. population but account for over 50 percent of all new cases of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. That infection rate is eight times the rate of whites. Among women, the numbers are even more shocking—- almost 70 percent of all newly diagnosed HIV-positive women in the United States are black women.”
Some of the conclusions were a little simplisitc in blaming popular culture (hip hop) for glorifying multiple sex partners. But there was adequate wrath for political leaders – both black and white – who have let so many people down. Jesse Jackson got grilled.
The irksome thing was that the film seemed angled to inform White people of what’s going on among Black, as though it’s now something America’s non-Black population only needs to worry about when it boomerangs back.
