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.