. . . it's a good time to remember the longtime love affair between the news desk at the Houston Chronicle and the author of that country's misery, the late Hugo Chavez. Who can ever forget the Chavista love letter disguised as . . .
. . . a news obituary?
And long before this blog was a gleam in Unca D's eye, the Chronicle employed a writer -- one cannot say reporter, since that implies a certain respect for reality -- named John Otis to share his opinions on matters South American.
As I have said more than once, he might as well have been on the payroll of the Venezuelan information ministry, with his puff pieces on Mr. Chavez's manifold good works and dismissive stories about, say, empty store shelves, a national oil company falling into ruin, a runaway professional class (as engineers and doctors decamped to Canada and America), and a "currency" modeled on Monopoly money.
Not one thing happening on the streets of Caracas today should surprise any serious adult. Search for "Venezuela" in Unca D's search box and you'll return forty-eleven hits on stories that justify my well-earned toljaso, including this useful explanation of the dynamics by which South American leftists regularly destroy their own countries, cities, economies, and lives -- a specific case of the general proposition that all leftists destroy their own countries, cities, economies, and lives. Detroit is a finished example of their handiwork. The United States of America is a work in progress.
But what does the Chronicle news desk care? It sleeps well at night, secure in the media wing of the compound for leftwing cultists of personality. The news editors dream dreams of innocence. Meanwhile Venezuelans risk their lives in the streets of Caracas to reverse the course set by a tryant admired, perhaps even loved, by the Houston Chronicle news desk.
UPDATE: This was a rare case where, at least once, the Chronicle's editorial board got it right, calling him a "vitriolic socialist ideologue." Credit where due.
UPDATE: A better newspaper on America and the Americas than Chronicle -- Britain's Telegraph -- offers this useful commentary on the troubles in Venezuela.
The absence of a voice like the Telegraph's at the Chronicle is the biggest continuing scandal at an badly managed newspaper. Not one commentator at the newspaper unapologetically speaks for the values of classical liberalism: democracy, property rights, the rule of law, free markets. Not one. If it ain't touchy and it ain't feely -- if it doesn't mock conservatives and point to Wendy Davis -- it ain't in the local columns.
I give a partial pass for Bill King. He has a brain, and (except on wither Social Security is unfunded) uses it. At the end of the day, however, he cannot articulate and properly defend Western values without bowing his head in misguided deference to the left. After all, the West is not perfect. After all, he is just an old, white male.
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