Yea a lot, not to mention when it comes to attire.
What a spectacle it was in March to see Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez chasing President Bush up the length of Latin America, from Buenos Aires to Port-au-Prince, shouting challenges and insults at the American leader and “empire.” Gilbert and Sullivan could have turned this indirect combat between the hemisphere’s two most self-consciously macho presidents into a smashing comic opera.
Bush was not in his usual macho mode. On visits to Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala, and Mexico, he didn’t wrestle foreign security guards, as he had done in 2004, but behaved like a diplomat discussing issues of real interest to Latins and Americans. The president focused on social justice, energy, trade, and migration, substantially downplaying the U.S. security concerns that had become the increasingly abrasive core of U.S.-Latin relations since September 11. Without ever publicly uttering the Venezuelan president’s name, Bush promoted a constructive alternative to the Chávez-style authoritarian populism that has spread in Latin America during recent years and took at least a preliminary major step forward in relations with much of the region, particularly the largest country of them all, Brazil.
In contrast, Chávez was wearing his paratrooper boots and was in no mood for diplomacy. He began his safari in Argentina with a broadside on Bush the “political cadaver.” He went on to Bolivia, Nicaragua, Jamaica, and Haiti, ceaselessly blasting Bush and “the empire” with a wild-eyed flourish, looking something like the opera fanatic in Werner Herzog’s film Fitzcarraldo. Chávez massaged anti-American crowds that rallied to him, though most were not as crowded as expected.
Chavez truly believes that he is the one to bring down the “Empire”,
Chávez’s message can be boiled down to three points:
1. Most of Latin America is plagued by seemingly intractable poverty and inequality.
2. The United States and entrenched domestic elites and institutions are responsible for this.
3. Chávez’s “twenty-first-century socialism” is the hope for the impoverished masses who seek a free and prosperous future.
He is dead right on the first point, partly right on the second, and dead wrong on the third.
For some reason I’m leaning on the first point only his dead wrong on on both.
And for some odd reason, Sean Penn keeps drooling over Chavez. ha! what do you know a washed up old actor found his way to be on frontpage again. I’m still waiting for Fonda, Robbins, Glover, and who’s the Che lover again oh.. Depp to pop up. do u know that Sean Penn finally found a country for himself? Useful Idiots.
While Chavez made a speech, however, Penn stood at a distance alongside the audience, occasionally jotting down notes. He spoke only when Chavez asked the actor to say a few words.
“I came here looking for a great country. I found a great country,” Penn told the crowd.
Ha! they can have that dood.
