Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has
always craved the type of news coverage from the Venezuelan media U.S.
presidents such as JFK and Jimmy Carter got from the U.S. media – to say
nothing of the type presidential candidate Barack Obama currently gets.
Alas, a few Venezuelan reporters
persisted in covering Chavez in a manner more similar to that of the U.S.
media's coverage of Republican presidents such as Richard Nixon, Ronald
Reagan and George W. Bush.
To counter such wiseacres, Chavez's
new constitution gives him means much more effective than his feeble
"enemies list" gave Richard Nixon. "Here (at Radio Caracas
Television) they practice yellow journalism, treacherous journalism that goes
against the people's rights!" raved Chavez henchman Alberto Arias last
year against the Venezuelan station most prone to buck the regime's talking
points.
And that was that. In July 2007,
Venezuela's top TV station (RCTV) promptly lost its government-issued license
and was "nationalized" by the Chavez regime, which staffed it with
commentators less prone to "treacherous journalism!"
Thanks to YouTube, we have stark
proof of the educational qualifications of these replacements. On the one hand,
the Chavez-appointed newscaster was very, very respectful of the Yankee
swimmer/phenomenon Michael Phelps: "Never has a living mortal, never has a
mere human being won so many Olympic medals!"
On the other hand, this
uncharacteristic praise by a Chavista for a proud American athlete seems to
have gone slightly overboard. "Only Michael Phelps, when competing in the
1972 Munich Olympics, over there in Hitler's Germany, won as many medals,"
continues the Chavista newscaster. But wouldn't you know it: "Adolf
Hitler, who presided over these 1972 Olympics (in a chauvinistic snit fit, it
appears), refused to personally award the medals to Michael Phelps."
Any doubters of the above, please check the film.
For years, Fidel Castro has been
paying for his Venezuelan oil (approximately 100,000 barrels a day, at last
count) by sending Cuban "doctors" and "Literacy Brigades"
to Venezuela. So in October 2005, Chavez declared Venezuela an "Illiteracy
Free Zone," and the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) concurred with a high-five.
"We visited the classrooms and
centers used in the literacy campaign in Venezuela," gushed UNESCO special
envoy María Luisa Jáuregui last year. "Venezuela is the first and only
country to meet the commitments adopted by the region's governments in 2002 in
Havana to drastically reduce illiteracy."
Literacy, as anyone with experience
under Communist regimes will attest, differs tremendously from education.
A Communist regime's "Literacy Campaign" simply paves the way for indoctrination,
known back in the politically incorrect 1950s as "brainwashing." That
hapless newscaster provides perfect proof.