Categorical Aperitif

Dear Anne Applebaum:

Fuck you and your snotty little column about celebrities visiting with Hugo Chavez and your snide little cracks about "the malcontents of Hollywood, academia, and the catwalk" and your lame little guilt-by-association attempt to equate Chavez's Venezuela with Bolshevik Russia.

Has it eluded your notice that Chavez did not take power in a revolutionary bloodbath but instead has commandingly won democratic elections—repeatedly? Or that the track record of the U.S. when it comes to democratically elected leaders like him who move in socially democratic directions is generally, well, bad, including as it does the support of reactionary authoritarian coups against democratically elected governments in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Chile (1973), etc.? Or that the U.S. was complicit in an overthrow attempt against the democratically elected Chavez just a few years ago?

Has it not occurred to you that these facts might have something to do with why Chavez has referred to "President" Bush as "the devil," a "dictator," a "madman," and a "murderer"? Given what Bush and his administration have done to both Iraq and the United States, I fail to see much that's objectionable about any of these—except maybe "the devil," but that's only because I resist the temptation to blame supernatural beings for human evil.

For all your breezy insinuations that Chavez is some sort of awful tyrant, let's be honest: he's got a long way to go if he's even going to try to compete with Bush in degrading democracy, encouraging corruption, and piling up corpses. And you know what? I didn't even know who Naomi Campbell was until I read your column, but now I think that that you ought to get down on your knees and kiss her scrawny supermodel ass and thank her for giving you this opportunity to phone in a practically-writes-itself column where you sneer at celebrities and invoke the ghost of Bolshevism and talk about Hugo Chavez like he's Stalin or Pol Pot or something. Hey, as I type this, our "ally" Pervez Musharraf is busily jailing his entire political opposition. I eagerly await your column about that poor dupe Jon Stewart, who once offered Musharraf tea.

You wanna see a "useful idiot"? Look in the fucking mirror.

// posted by nash @ 4:31 PM