August 2,
2005
Does Hugo Chavez
Need an Exorcism?
The hands down winner for the category of he’d
be hilariously funny if he weren’t so dangerous
has to go to Venezuela’s aspiring maximum dictator
Hugo Chavez. During
his presidency, many a Venezuelan has uttered the words
el hombre está loco.
Well, Venezuela’s top Catholic leader now apparently
believes Chavez has a demon. On Sunday, Cardinal Rosalio
Castillo called Chavez "a paranoid dictator"
who needs "an exorcism."
Put that up against an article I saw recently by a New
York ministry that claimed Chavez was a born again Christian.
I think I’m with the exorcism crowd. Chavez did
announce he was born again in 2002, but one account has
the conversion lasting about four days.
Who Says the French are Pathetic Losers? They
Do.
The London Telegraph’s Kim Wilsher writes how the
French Republic has been taken to the woodshed by one
of its brightest lights. Wilsher chronicles how
“Maurice Lévy, the head of the media giant
Publicis, whose company owns Saatchi and Saatchi and has
offices in 100 countries across six continents, said France
had failed to get the 2012 Olympics because the world
now saw it as a nation of perdants – ‘losers.’”
Levy’s critique, on the front page of the newspaper
Le Monde, described France as being in steep
decline and his countrymen as "narrowed and stunted."
Levy called France’s hallowed 35-hour work week
"absurd" and all the whining after Paris's loss
of the Olympics to London as "pathetic."
Ouch.
More honest national debate like that, and perhaps France
won’t slip from second rate nation to third rate
nation, as I have been expecting.
I got funny looks in Paris a while ago when I announced
that France had become like North Korea, which is another
place where the citizens are told they are lucky to live
in one of the last paradises on earth. Not only the French,
but others in Western Europe are told by their leaders
and media that they have the best standard of living in
the world, and they don’t.
As I explained in
a piece last year, the United Kingdom, France, Germany,
and Italy now have a lower per capita Gross Domestic Product
than all but four U.S. states. Most people in the world
don’t know that; in part because the world media
hates the Bush administration and can be counted on to
change the subject before saying something nice about
American Capitalism.
