Analogies

I have to say that I would find Anne Applebaum's criticism of American celebrities who say nice things about Hugo Chavez to Communist supporters of the Soviet Union were contemporary Venezuela to, um, resemble the USSR in some salient way. Applebaum writes that "Venezuela is easier to idealize than Iran and North Korea, the former's attitude toward women not being conducive to fashion models, the latter being downright hostile toward Hollywood." Another way of phrasing this would be that it's easier to adopt a non-indignant attitude toward the government of Venezuela because it is, in fact, a much better government than the ones they have in Iran and North Korea.

Similarly, surely the author of a book called Gulag is aware that the mass repression of the Gulag was a major aspect of the Soviet system and that it's absent from Venezuela. Meanwhile, has Applebaum written any columns condemning businessmen or politicians who travel to the capitals of America's friendly dictators in Cairo, Riyadh, Dubai, etc.? Shouldn't a person interested in Americans who help prop up authoritarian governments be trying to come up with something to say about Pakistan ?

Comments

The other oddity about the column is the creation of this category of "a whole new generation of fellow travelers," a category which seems to include exactly two people: Sean Penn and Naomi Campbell. I think you need more than two people to call something a "generation."

Posted by alkali | November 6, 2007 11:31 AM

The inclusion of Venezuela or Chavez as being examples of the worst oppressive governments in the world happens all the time, and it's utter nonsense. There's lots I don't like about Venezuela's government but to compare it to Stalinist Russia is just absurd.

Posted by Freddie | November 6, 2007 11:35 AM

Matt:
It could be my age (70), or maybe my eyesight (bad), but would you parse this sentence for me:

I have to say that I would find Anne Applebaum's criticism of American celebrities who say nice things about Hugo Chavez to Communist supporters of the Soviet Union were contemporary Venezuela to, um, resemble the USSR in some salient way.

Posted by Barry | November 6, 2007 11:36 AM

Agree with alkali. But who the hell cares about Hollywood in the first place? Does Hollywood decide our foreign policy? Seems the only people who care about the politics of Hollywood are these conservative pundits.. "Why can't Brangelina love our dictators?" Bunch of losers.

Posted by 2cynicalbyhalf | November 6, 2007 11:40 AM

I'm only 61 and I second Barry. Do not rely on Microsoft's grammar checker, ever.

Posted by James Wimberley | November 6, 2007 11:48 AM

Barry: Matt - no proofreader he - has dropped a couple of words. Insert "more persuasive" after "Soviet Union" and it will make sense. But the true mark of an Yglesias post is the interpolated "um" combined with the use of literary subjunctive "were" without "if." This is the inimitable style of the hip Harvard grad.

As to substance, what is it with Applebaum? Gulag is a truly important book, but her column's combination of mendacious idiocy and snark could be written by Jonah Goldberg.

Posted by Bloix | November 6, 2007 11:50 AM

Barry, I think there's a "more persuasive" (or something similar) missing after "Soviet Union".

Posted by KCinDC | November 6, 2007 11:51 AM

Heck, even comparing the Venezuela to the Mubarak dictatorship is absurd. Even the right-wing Freedom House ranks Egypt an order of magnitude lower than Venezuela in terms of political rights and civil liberties.

And yet, the U.S. continues to pour $1.8 billion a year into Egypt, most of which is military aid directly funding a repressive state apparatus.

Maybe the right would lighten up on Chavez if he would just agree to torture our terrorism suspects for us. That appears to be Mubarak's current role.

Posted by Toady | November 6, 2007 11:59 AM

Matt: Dubai isn't the capital of the UAE. And the UAE is not a dictatorship. It is, in fact, one of the develoment models of the region. Think Singapore, not Stalin.

Other then that, good post.

Posted by szr | November 6, 2007 12:00 PM

I am not quite there yet, but I enjoy this young man's grammatical and spelling stylings, and actually find them quite charming.

Matt is the ultimate deconstructionist: he writes, intentionally or not, to encourage you to ascribe whatever meaning you want to the text you read.

Posted by gregor | November 6, 2007 12:02 PM

I hate to keep harping on this basic point, but let's compare Hugo Chavez to President Bush. Has Chavez invaded any other countries, cruelly butchering hundreds of thousands of people in the process? No, I didn't think so. How about Bush? Yes, definitely.

So, when are we going to see Applebaum's column that compares Bush supporters to Nazis? The existence of millions of deranged Bush supporters seems just a little more pressing than the handful of Chavez supporters that are scattered about.

Posted by Jim W | November 6, 2007 12:08 PM

Just substitute "comparison" for "criticism".

Posted by Rob | November 6, 2007 12:10 PM

Bloix, I'm disappointed that you failed to note that the interpolation also serves to, you know, split an infinitive. Perhaps you missed it because he didn't italicize the verb, which is a little out of character.

Posted by nolaboyd | November 6, 2007 12:14 PM

The sentence should have a comma before the word 'were.'

I would find Anne Applebaum's criticism of American celebrities who say nice things about Hugo Chavez to Communist supporters of the Soviet Union, were contemporary Venezuela to resemble the USSR in some salient way.

(Deleted the 'um' to also clarify the sentence.]

Posted by Misplaced Patriot | November 6, 2007 12:14 PM

Matt, you're forgetting that Pakistan hasn't had a dictatorship since democracy resumed in mid September of 2001 when "General" Musharraf became President Musharraf, upon being duly elected by The Elector. There may have been some advances as well as some setbacks since, but Freedom remain's mankind's gift from the Almighty, and President Bush remains committed to pushing God's timeline just a bit.

Posted by aleks | November 6, 2007 12:16 PM

yeah, gonna have to hop on the bandwagon here: that first sentence is a mess

Posted by Mark | November 6, 2007 12:18 PM

You know, there should be some award for worst first sentence in a blogpost. This would definitely be a nominee.

Posted by BruceR | November 6, 2007 12:20 PM

The other oddity about the column is the creation of this category of "a whole new generation of fellow travelers," a category which seems to include exactly two people: Sean Penn and Naomi Campbell. I think you need more than two people to call something a "generation."

Posted by alkali | November 6, 2007 11:31 AM

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And Kevin Spacey, Harry Belafonte, and Danny Glover. Does Cindy Sheehan count as a celebrity?

Posted by Campesino | November 6, 2007 12:25 PM

Patriot, that doesn't work -- MY would find it ___? what?

Applebaum is such a hack, I don't know why we bother with her. She's like Althouse, but without the alcoholism and the breast infatuation and ... well, no one is like Althouse, actually.

Posted by Anderson | November 6, 2007 12:25 PM

Matt: Dubai isn't the capital of the UAE. And the UAE is not a dictatorship. It is, in fact, one of the development models of the region.

Well, it's no democracy. It's ruled by a bunch of hereditary monarchs. Does that make it a dictatorship? Or is dictatorial power laundered by inheritance?

Posted by ajay | November 6, 2007 12:27 PM

I thought it was a poor article, but I don't think it's much of a stretch to call the Hugo Chavez cheerleaders fellow travelers-especially since so many of them do the same for Fidel Castro.

I also don't see many of the celebrities traveling to Cairo, Riyadh, or Dubai offering those countries up as examples for the US to follow. Actually, I can't think of any, but maybe I missing some. I'm old enough to remember when Jonas Savimbi was being extolled by some fairly important Republicans as George Washington (or Abraham Lincoln) reincarnated, so I don't think it's impossible that some celebrity Republican has come back from a trip to Saudi and said we should follow their example, but I haven't heard of it.

On the other hand, I can think of celebs who hold up Cuba and/or Venezuela as examples we American should follow.

Posted by Marty Busse | November 6, 2007 12:32 PM

"it's easier to adopt a non-indignant attitude toward the government of Venezuela because it is, in fact, a much better government than the ones they have in Iran and North Korea."

Oh, let's be fair to Chavez: Give him a couple years at the rate he's turning Venezuela into a dictatorship, and then he'll be in the running. He's somewhat handicapped at the moment by having all that residual democracy and respect for human rights to purge from the system. But he's making remarkable progress at that.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | November 6, 2007 12:34 PM

Ms. Applebaum, who, by the way is married to a British MP, is heads and shoulders above morons like Maureen Dowd.

Posted by SLC | November 6, 2007 12:35 PM

SLC, Applebaum's husband is a Polish politician, I believe he was defense minister or something. But what does it matter either way?

Posted by Steve V | November 6, 2007 12:47 PM

Meanwhile, has Applebaum written any columns condemning businessmen or politicians who travel to the capitals of America's friendly dictators in Cairo, Riyadh, Dubai, etc.? Shouldn't a person interested in Americans who help prop up authoritarian governments be trying to come up with something to say about Pakistan ?

What's it called when a blogger demands that someone write about what the blogger is interested in? I forget.

In any case, has Matthew written any posts condemning writers who criticize those who are friendly to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, etc.? Shouldn't a writer who is interested in condeming those who criticize bad governments do so?

Posted by Al | November 6, 2007 12:48 PM

Misplaced Patriot-
Your version would make sense if Matt's meaning is that he literally cannot find Applebaum's criticism of Venezuela - he even looked behind the cushions on the couch - and that he could find it only if Venezuela resembled the USSR - because then the light would be better, or something. Something tells me that's not what he meant, although as gregor observes, it may be a mistake to imply intentionality to this text.

Posted by bloix | November 6, 2007 12:49 PM

People come to MY for the prodigious content, but they stay for the glitches.

Matt, I understand the printed word demands closer editorial scrutiny, but you should demand that your book contain some gratuitous typos, misspellings, and grammatical laughers as a wink to your loyal blog readers.

Posted by Bragan | November 6, 2007 12:50 PM

As others have pointed out, MY's lack of proof-reading skills is really annoying. The FIRST sentence does not scan. Get a clue, guy.

I'm old-fashioned: I read to comprehend, not to decode. Pretty soon I'll just stop coming here. It's not like there aren't lots of other intelligent bloggers who care enough to read what they write BEFORE posting.

Posted by Hypatia | November 6, 2007 12:58 PM

But on the substance, Applebaum is not being particularly coherent. She rails against "[t]he Western weakness for other people's revolutionary violence." What revolutionary violence? There has been no revolutionary violence in Venezuela.

Posted by Bloix | November 6, 2007 12:59 PM

We're gonna go ahead and need to take that diploma back.

Posted by Harvard Repo Men | November 6, 2007 1:03 PM

Well, there was a little, Bloix, during the riots preceding the failed coup attempt in 2002. But since that was a coup attempt against Chavez, it's probably not a good example for Applebaum.

Chavez is a douchebag, but confusing a douchebag with autocratic leanings and not enough respect for his country's constituion with the second coming of Fidel Stalin McSatan is a idiot's game. Glad to see Applebaum living up to the high standards of the Post's editorial page, though.

Posted by Steve | November 6, 2007 1:16 PM

Matt, I understand the printed word demands closer editorial scrutiny, but you should demand that your book contain some gratuitous typos, misspellings, and grammatical laughers as a wink to your loyal blog readers.

Posted by Bragan | November 6, 2007 12:50 PM

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He he! Love it!

Posted by Campesino | November 6, 2007 1:27 PM

"especially since so many of them do the same for Fidel Castro."

Go ahead, Marty. Name some names. Cuase ther's soooooo many of them.

Posted by An Outhouse | November 6, 2007 1:36 PM

Gulag is a truly important book

Why? The world didn't know Stalin did some bad stuff?

Here's John Dolan's excellent review of the book:

http://old.exile.ru/2004-September-04/book_review.html

Key paragraph, very relevant to lots of stuff on both blogs and the Post editorial page:

The crimes of history are optional. We mix, match and discard according to taste and convenience. It's useful for Applebaum's Tory backers to remember Stalin's crimes because they can still use them to bash anyone who might want to beef up the National Health system with higher taxes. "Today an extra 1% VAT on my Jag convertible, tomorrow Kolyma!" is a very familiar war cry from these crusaders for human rights. Other massacres are dim stats, to be dredged up when necessary. Take, for example, all the tens of millions of dead in the Japanese occupation of China. They are rarely invoked in the West, because we don't need them. The Japanese are thoroughly spent, neither a threat nor a bad example of anything we worry about at the moment. The Chinese are more of a worry, making the invocation of their dead a dangerous concession. And in the Tory mind, those dead are connected with ignominy: the surrender of Singapore without a fight, the sinking of the Repulse and Prince of Wales...and so it goes, with a huge number of tangential mental associations determining which of the billions of corpses clogging the earth will be dug up and flung at one's opponents at any particular moment.

In this context, the Russians' lack of interest in Stalin's victims seems quite natural and healthy. It's Applebaum's arduous disinterment of them that ends up seeming forced, disingenuous and surprisingly dull.

Posted by mq | November 6, 2007 1:37 PM

P.S.: last para there was also a quote from Dolan's review, but the italics tag didn't work.

Posted by mq | November 6, 2007 1:38 PM

I have to say that I would find Anne Applebaum's [comparison] of American celebrities who say nice things about Hugo Chavez to Communist supporters of the Soviet Union [more persuasive] [if] contemporary Venezuela [actually] resemble[d] the USSR in some salient way.

Posted by blah | November 6, 2007 1:39 PM

My friend's 6 year old sister could have written a post that made more sense.

Do you spend the Atlantic's intern money on booze and hookers? Or do you just like screwing our minds with words?

Posted by Greg | November 6, 2007 1:55 PM

Applebaum was pretty quick to jump on those who compared Gitmo and the system of rendition hellholes to the GULAG (it's an acronym) archipelago. And that comparison was indeed somewhat fatuous. But it appears that Applebaum is far more tolerant of fatuous analogies if they are made in the service of a Reaganite foreign policy.

Posted by kth | November 6, 2007 2:45 PM

"Do you spend the Atlantic's intern money on booze and hookers? Or do you just like screwing our minds with words?"

I think it's GOT to be the latter; Matt could get better proof reading than this by offering a Jr. High student lunch money.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | November 6, 2007 2:49 PM

Give him a couple years at the rate he's turning Venezuela into a dictatorship, and then he'll be in the running.

And in a couple more years, Iraq will be a democracy loving paradise! Conservatives, always looking for more time to prove their point.

Posted by Rambuncle | November 6, 2007 2:49 PM

Oh, let's be fair to Chavez: Give him a couple years at the rate he's turning Venezuela into a dictatorship, and then he'll be in the running. He's somewhat handicapped at the moment by having all that residual democracy and respect for human rights to purge from the system. But he's making remarkable progress at that.

Oh, let's remove the pole from our own eyes: the US Congress is about to approve the nomination as Attorney General of a man who "doesn't know" if waterboarding is torture, even the the Inquisitors who perfected the practice 400 years ago had it pretty clear.

People in Venezuela may talk about the justice or injustice of allowing a television broadcast license to expire; here in the US our mundane political debate is about how much we should torture. Once Chavez claims the right to detain any Venezuelan citizen and hold him/her without charging them with any crime, and subjecting them to "enhanced interrogation" in the meantime -- once Chavez has reached that level, the clock is ticking as far as a Venezuelan dictatorship is concerned. So far, not even close...

Posted by Charly Gardel | November 6, 2007 2:51 PM

about that first sentence, matt, lay off the acid this early in the day...

Posted by dj spellchecka | November 6, 2007 3:15 PM

the latter being downright hostile toward Hollywood

Giblets thinks this means war!

Iran has for too long positively radiated waves of below average enthusiasm for Hollywood, threatening to deplete the mines of Hollywodrium that fuel our resolve, the leadership our dear leader projects and our freedomweaponry!

pcc Fafblog (c'mon people, come back)

Posted by yabonn | November 6, 2007 3:19 PM

The people of Venezuela are going to fry in their own fat soon enough. And they'll richly deserve it, having been fooled by and voted for a guy like Chavez. The US doesn't have to do anything; Chavez is going to eff up that country so badly it will take a generation to fix.

Posted by Norway | November 6, 2007 3:19 PM

"especially since so many of them do the same for Fidel Castro."

Go ahead, Marty. Name some names. Cuase ther's soooooo many of them.

Posted by An Outhouse | November 6, 2007 1:36 PM

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Not, though, the Castro Faithful--the media moguls, celebrity journalists, filmmakers and Hollywood glitterati who continue to break bread with the Cuban dictator and idolize him as "one hell of a guy," in Ted Turner's words. No, they were silent. And given protest-happy Hollywood's long love affair with the unelected "President" Fidel--"one of the most mysterious leaders in the world," cooed Barbara Walters on ABC's "20/20" in October, as she puffed up his "personal magnetism" and supposed social triumphs--it's unlikely that there will be any expression of disapproval from these quarters soon.

Perhaps they don't know any better, as they return with Cuban cigars and fawning praise: "It was an experience of a lifetime" (Kevin Costner); "he is a genius" (Jack Nicholson); a "source of inspiration to the world" (Naomi Campbell). But people who should know better make the pilgrimage too. Director Steven Spielberg, founder of the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation and winner of an Academy Award for illuminating the horrors of the Holocaust, described his meeting with Castro in November as "the eight most important hours of my life." Never forget, indeed.

This week, as reported in Newsweek International's Global Buzz column, a pack of New York media VIPs, each willing to pony up $6,500 for travel costs, are set to jet to Cuba with Yoko Ono to meet with the Bearded One, just as his crackdown hits overdrive. Slate's blogger Mickey Kaus shrewdly comments: "It's especially ironic that press and publishing executives are paying an enormous premium to meet with a man who is busy jailing journalists and writers for being journalists and writers."

Yoko and Co.'s trek is not the first such jaunt to the land of the Buena Vista Social Club. Remember the February 2001 excursion of CBS President and CEO Les Moonves and his fellow travelers, MTV Networks Chairman Tom "Rock the Vote" Freston, Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter and other well-heeled media executives? Their four-day trip to Cuba, which naturally included a private dinner with Fidel, became the subject of a New York Post article and of quips from CBS employee David Letterman: "On the one hand, you have the ruthless dictator surrounded by sniveling 'yes' men, and then on the other hand, of course, you have Fidel Castro."

Shocking too are the products of fawning tribute that continue to materialize, such as Estela Bravo's adoring documentary "Fidel" and the documentary "Comandante," directed by Oliver Stone and Fidel Castro himself, who was given the power to stop filming at will.

The Stone film, set to be broadcast on HBO in May, will supposedly show the human side of Castro, a man who is "one of the Earth's wisest people," as Mr. Stone said at a press conference in February.

Posted by Campesino | November 6, 2007 3:39 PM

Wow, I know picking on Matt's grammar is one of the themes of the comment section here, but was anyone actually confused by what he meant? I read the sentence a second time, though "hmm, he left a word out. Bet this is going to get the comments coming fast and furious!", and continued on my way, perfectly happy that I knew what he meant.
It might say The Atlantic on the banner, but it's still a blog, folks.

Relatedly, the 'you went to Harvard and you can't spell!' comments are a bit tired. Maybe if Matt went to the Kalahari Typing School for Men, we would have some cause for complaint. But last I checked Harvard wasn't a secretarial school.

Posted by Matt D | November 6, 2007 3:45 PM

Relatedly, the 'you went to Harvard and you can't spell!' comments are a bit tired. Maybe if Matt went to the Kalahari Typing School for Men, we would have some cause for complaint. But last I checked Harvard wasn't a secretarial school.

Posted by Matt D | November 6, 2007 3:45 PM
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So you're saying good grammar and syntax and spelling are "secretarial" skills? I thought MY was supposed to be making a living as a writer. I guess my idea of a writer is someone who crafts good sentences and paragraphs to express himself. Isn't that even a requirement to write term papers at Harvard?

Posted by Campesino | November 6, 2007 3:59 PM

An Outhouse,

Michael Moore, Oliver Stone, Woody Harrelson, Danny GLover, harry Belafonte and Sean Penn all come to mind right off the bat, for celebrities. I'd toss in Alexander Cockburn, but I suppose he's not famous enough.

Of course, I wasn't clear: I was thinking more of the type of people you'll run into on campuses who will tell you that Fidel Castro is the greatest guy ever, and will basically summarize a certain book Tariq Ali (another famous fan of both Hugo and Fidel) wrote. I should have been more specific.

So let me rephrase myself: perhaps Applebaum was calling celebrities who praise Hugo Chavez fellow travelers because there is such a significant overlap between Chavez's American fans and Castro's-and a fan of Castro is a fellow traveler unless, like him, they are an actual Communist.

I don't think there is currently a right wing equivalent to this, though the effusive praise given to Pinochet and Savimbi not too long back was pretty close.

Posted by Marty Busse | November 6, 2007 4:00 PM

Wow, I know picking on Matt's grammar is one of the themes of the comment section here, but was anyone actually confused by what he meant?
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Actually if his errors were rare I don't think people would say anything. It's hard to ignore when they're so incessant. Sometimes it seems like he's doing it on purpose

Posted by Campesino | November 6, 2007 4:03 PM

I guess my idea of a writer is someone who crafts good sentences and paragraphs to express himself. Isn't that even a requirement to write term papers at Harvard?

Matt wrote something like 20 posts yesterday. I doubt very much that he ever wrote 20 papers in a day at Harvard. Or even 3.

I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt and thinking that he has pretty good grammar but that his typing skills aren't great, and that he doesn't proof-read carefully. Which is no surprise, since he writes 20 posts a day.

I guess if everyone else wants to assume that Matt Y is a moron because he can't type well, that's their choice, but I like this blog because it has 20 solid posts a day. And I'm happy to put up with a lack of proof-reading to get them.

Posted by Matt D | November 6, 2007 4:12 PM

I really wonder about Applebaum, she is clearly smart and I have enjoyed a few of her columns, but she is stuck in the Cold War. Also, she spends all of that time in Europe (I believe she is at the Berlin American Academy at the moment) and instead of explaining Europe to Americans, which would be beneficial, she often deconstructs European prejudices about America. How is this helpful if done in the Post? She should either start writing for one of the German papers, or be an anti-CW person at the Guardian or start explaining Europe in an sympathetic, nuanced way to Americans instead of conjuring up Bolschevism and Naomi Klein. Seriously. Because all a column like this does is creates false equivalency between the left and the right. Klein is sort of influential, but also not really, and Penn--well, he is an actor last time I checked. Klein and Penn are not 1/1000th as dangerous as Dick Cheney or Rudy Giuliani.

Posted by d | November 6, 2007 4:23 PM

I guess if everyone else wants to assume that Matt Y is a moron because he can't type well, that's their choice, but I like this blog because it has 20 solid posts a day.
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I think the point is that everyone knows he's NOT a moron and can't imagine why he's so careless. I write technical studies and analysis for a living - good usage is not that hard.

Posted by Campesino | November 6, 2007 4:23 PM

Applebaum personifies the ugly American - arrogant, condescending, smug, unable to even imagine that her views and her way of life might not be the be all and end all of humanity.

Posted by novakant | November 6, 2007 5:05 PM

Why this fascination with lefty show business types? Hollywood, you may have noticed, is full of assholes. Some of these Hollywood assholes develop political interests -- but they're still assholes. Some (far from all) of these Hollywood political assholes veer left -- but they're still assholes. By and large it's the right-wing Hollywood political assholes who actually get a taste of real political power. I'll spot Helen Gahagan Douglas against George Murphy and after that it's Ronald Reagan, Sonny Bono, Clint Eastwood, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Fred Thompson, and the guy from The Love Boat against -- well, who? Nancy ("Miss Jane")Culp lost. Right wingers may foam at the mouth about political show business types, but they're the ones who vote for them. My mother gets upset about Martin Sheen. I could never figure out why. He's just an ex-drunk who plays the President on TV. Then again, so is George W. Bush.

Posted by CJColucci | November 6, 2007 5:15 PM

I don't think it's a fascination with Hollywood folks per se, it's simply that Applebaum's favorite thing to do is to say "ew, these liberal types smell icky" and it's always nice to use a famous example rather than an obscure one.

Posted by Steve V | November 6, 2007 5:31 PM

"I guess if everyone else wants to assume that Matt Y is a moron because he can't type well, that's their choice,"

I don't think he's a moron, at worst he's a careless hack too cheap to hire that Jr. High student, (I was serious!) more likely after a few mistakes slipped through he decided it would be an amusing shtick.

If he were actually making an effort to persuade people on the fence, it would be hurting him, but since he's just amusing the liberal faithful, it's nothing more than funny/annoying, depending on your attitude towards badly executed prose.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | November 6, 2007 6:05 PM

"I also don't see many of the celebrities traveling to Cairo, Riyadh, or Dubai offering those countries up as examples for the US to follow...On the other hand, I can think of celebs who hold up Cuba and/or Venezuela as examples we American should follow."

Probably because there are aspects of those countries that America should follow, whereas there aren't many such aspects in Cairo, Riyadh, or Dubai. (Although Dubai is such a free-wheeling smuggling center that it's economic free trade policies probably should be followed here. Smuggling should be legalized everywhere - whereupon by definition, it is no longer smuggling.)

"Do you spend the Atlantic's intern money on booze and hookers?"

I thought Bill Clinton proved that's what an intern is for.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | November 6, 2007 8:49 PM

"I don't think there is currently a right wing equivalent to this."

What part of Pervez Musharraf don't you understand?

Oh, yeah, they told him to "restore the Pakistani Constitution" - like they care...

Not to mention the fascists in Israel. Oooh, I mentioned them. SLC won't like me now.

Okay, fine, celebrities are political morons. So what else is new? I cut Angelina some slack, even though she deals with morons like Brownback and even the Pakistanis, because she really cares (even if I don't.)

But who cares if somebody thinks Castro is a good guy? He's the ruler of a tiny island nation that is just about as irrelevant a country in the grand scheme of things as Nauru. It doesn't matter that he tried to export a "Communist revolution", or that he sent troops and doctors to Africa, or whatever. He's zero threat to anybody on the planet. His country may be poor and screwed up, but the people there appear to have gotten used to that, or adapted anyway. And they do appear to have some decent social or medical services there. So who cares? A bunch of corrupt Cuban exiles living and running drugs in Miami?

I can't explain why a bunch of celebrities are interested in Castro or Chavez - except for the SubGenius dictum, "There's no such thing as no PR."

Maybe they like their politicians interesting rather than boring drunks like Bush. That would fit the Hollywood mentality. Castro at least was an actual revolutionary who carried a gun and overthrew a government. Where was Bush during the Vietnam war? Chavez maybe never carried a gun, but he came back after the CIA tried to overthrow him for no known reason. Where was Cheney during the Vietnam war? Oh, "other priorities."

Give me a genuine revolutionary and a flamboyant politician over a corrupt war profiteer CEO and a drunken rich frat boy anytime.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | November 6, 2007 9:11 PM

"Give me a genuine revolutionary and a flamboyant politician over a corrupt war profiteer CEO and a drunken rich frat boy anytime."

Pray to God you're never 'lucky' enough to get your way on that, or you're going to get a really nasty lesson in the real-world differences between genuine revolutionaries and drunken rich frat boys...

Posted by Brett Bellmore | November 6, 2007 10:23 PM

The problem is that Anne Applebaum is even fecking-stupider than Chavez, and that is quite a compliment!

Posted by Eco | November 7, 2007 12:29 AM

There are also the points that Chavez was elected, survived a recall election and was re-elected. Both elections were genuinely contested. Don't such events have some relevance to the question of whether he is a dictator ?

I'd say more reasonable analogies would be to say Paraguay or Columbia not Dubai and Pakistan.

Posted by Robert Waldmann | November 7, 2007 4:38 AM

"you're going to get a really nasty lesson in the real-world differences between genuine revolutionaries and drunken rich frat boys..."

We've had that lesson, thank you, and the revolutionary won.

Castro hasn't started a war in what, forty years? Bush has started two and intends to start at least one more in his last year.

Here is a list of supposed deaths caused by Castro's revolution over the last forty years:

executed 18,000

extrajudicial assassinations 1,000

disappeared 250

died in prison for lack of medical attention 50

murdered in prison by guards (brutality) 500

extrajudicial assassinations of women, for different causes 150

Sub-total for extrajudicial killings 20,400

political prisoners who reportedly committed suicide in prison 200

died at sea attempting to flee "balseros" - estimate based on Coast Guard estimates of casualties 83,000

Cubans killed in "internationalist-solidarity" wars in Africa 10,000

Total 113,600

And I'd say blaming the 83,000 dying at sea - which I doubt is valid figure anyway - on Castro is stretching it a bit. Take that figure out and the Cuban mercenaries in Africa, and you are left with a mere 20,000 or so.

(Certainly doesn't match the over 2 million displaced inside Iraq, and an additional 2 million Iraqi refugees outside Iraq. Latest figures are that 14% of the Iraqi population has been displaced.)

Bush has at a minimum directly caused the deaths of over 300,000 Iraqi civilians, and indirectly has caused the deaths of around one million. And that's not even counting Afghanistan, with another 13,000 or so dead bodies.

There's no fucking comparison.

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | November 7, 2007 6:26 AM

"Don't such events have some relevance to the question of whether he is a dictator ?"

Not particularly. Being a dictator is about how you rule, not how you got into a position to rule. Shutting down opposition media has more relevance. Working to destroy those parts of the economy not under his control has more relevance.

People have often elected dictators. Sometimes over and over. Even we had a couple in our history: Lincoln ruled as a dictator, for instance, even going so far as ordering the Chief Justice of the Supreme court arrested for pointing out that a power he'd usurped actually belonged to the legislature. FDR had his court packing scheme, and scared so many we amended the Constitution to introduce Presidential term limits.

I'd mention the most famous example of an elected dictator, but it really annoys me when people start shouting "Godwin!" early in the day.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | November 7, 2007 6:30 AM

Richard, you do realize your argument boils down to, "Castro can't be a dictator, Cuba is too small and powerless!"

And, no, you don't get to leave out the deaths at sea of people fleeing his rule. Being willing to risk death to get away from somebody's rule, and being forced to do it, is one of the key signs of a dictator. It's the whole, "Follow the feet" rule.

Posted by Brett Bellmore | November 7, 2007 6:39 AM

Chavez was called a dictator for years before the incident with non-renewing a broadcast licence, and I think that there anti-government broadcast channel still exist.

A Latin American dictator without death squads? There is a cognitive dissonance right there. Union organizers and inconvenient journalist in neighboring Colombia were gunnued down or intimidated into exile. Before Chavez, politics of Venezuela were that of incestuous oligarchy. So some context please.

Applebaum could write a column about an attempt to create police state in Poland, at the time when her husband was a defence minister (which means, until this summer). Her husband resigned from that government toward the end, and the police state experiment failed, but in what way were the Kaczynski twins better than Chavez, it eludes me completely. Aha, Chavez's demagoguery seems to attract 60% of the electorate rather than 31%, in part because it is somewhat more sane. You have to calibrate these things, you see.

Posted by piotr | November 7, 2007 7:59 AM

A Latin American dictator without death squads?

Just you wait - they are coming.

Chavez is not revolutionary - he is just another Caudillo playing you and everyone else for chumps.
Chavez supporters should just join Scientology like the rest of the clueless subhuman suckers whose only utility in this world is to be used by actual human beings.

Posted by libarbarian | November 7, 2007 11:50 AM

"toward the government of Venezuela because it is, in fact, a much better government than the ones they have in Iran and North Korea."

Tell that to the familes of the over 100,000 people who have been murdered in the last 9 years, making Venezuela one of the most dangerous places in the world to live. Or to the families of over 18,000 people who were fired from PDVSA a few years ago. Or to the millions of people who are listed in the Maisanta list and who cannot get jobs, because they signed against Chavez in the referendum. Or to the hundreds of farmers who have seen their farms taken over by Chavez' supporters and are now producing nothing. Or to the millions of people who are looking for milk (or eggs or chicken) in the supermarkets and can't find none. Or to all journalists who to go out and work must wear bullet-proof vests.

The reality is that Venezuela is today a worse place than it was before Chavez, when the barrel of oil was only $8 (1998). What maintains him in power is an oil barrel of over $70, which Chavez uses to give hand-outs to the poor (real cash). What would happen if the price of oil goes down is anybody's guess, but I'm pretty sure that Chavez won't like it.

Posted by frank | November 7, 2007 1:59 PM

What revolutionary violence? There has been no revolutionary violence in Venezuela.

Nope. No revolutionary violence here. Nothing to see. Please move along.

Posted by Al | November 7, 2007 7:30 PM

Richard Steven Hack-

Can you produce any right-wing figure of any note who holds up Pervez Musharraf's rule as an example the US should follow? I'll grant you that I think the praise he got was ridiculous, but I can't remember anyone suggesting we follow him as a model.

You do have a point about Israel, though: I've heard plenty of people argue that we should racial profile because the Israelis do it, for example. I don't think that's exclusively right-wing, though.

Posted by Marty Busse | November 9, 2007 7:36 AM