The Pennywise of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, is up to more tricks in his effort to create the Socialist New Man. He of course exempts himself from the privations he seeks to impose on others. We’ll save our question until the end of this AP story:

Chavez’s efforts to encourage Venezuelans to adopt the psyche of the “New Man,” a socialist revolutionary with a monk-like purity of purpose. Chavez often cites the life of Cuba’s iconic hero Ernesto “Che” Guevara as an ideal example — and complains that many Venezuelans’ values are not up to par. “We’re one of the countries that consumes the most whisky per capita in the world. We should be ashamed,” Chavez said recently on national television. “I’m not willing to continue offering dollars to import whisky in these quantities. What kind of revolution is this? The Whisky Revolution? The Hummer Revolution? No, this is a real revolution!”…

the government is tightening restrictions on granting dollars to companies importing liquor…That will force many companies to buy black-market dollars — currently trading at more than twice the official rate, to import Chivas Regal for instance, raising the price considerably. The government also plans tax increases next week of up to 50 percent on a range of alcoholic beverages, while cigarette taxes will rise to 70 percent from 52 percent…”I’ve told the National Guard to stop and seize any truck going around selling beer in the street as if it were ice cream,” he said. “This cannot be permitted.”

The president has a long list of other “New Man” recommendations: don’t douse foods with too much hot sauce, exercise regularly, eat low-cholesterol foods, respect speed limits. He also wants parents to stop buying Barbie dolls — and breast jobs — for their daughters. “Now some say, ‘When my daughter turns fifteen years old, we’re going to give her phony breasts.’ What a horrible thing! It’s the latest degeneration,” Chavez told one packed auditorium. “Am I exaggerating?” he asked. “No!” the crowd responded…

Chavez…says he steers clear of alcohol, and would never smoke — in public. “I really don’t drink. Occasionally I smoke a cigarette, but I’ll never do it in public because it’s a bad example,” he told The Associated Press in a recent interview. “It’s very sporadic. I did it during some periods.”

All of his sermonizing about vices and virtues might make Chavez seem like a prudish sourpuss to some, but he also likes to party — in his own clean way…he unwinds with pickup baseball games or outdoor bowling matches known as “bolas criollas.” And during marathon speeches he breaks into song frequently — so often, in fact, that one aide compiled recordings of him singing on an “All Time Hits” CD, which has yet to be released to the public. “There I am singing, but it’s terrible,” Chavez said.

Which is more disgusting, the antics of this dangerous little dictator, or the AP’s fawning over Chavez, with his cute partying, and that murderer of “monk-like purity”, Che Guevara? — points of course that have been raised about MSM coverage of Venezuela previously. You’d think there might be some fraternal solidarity in the media against a man who shuts down opposition newspapers and TV stations. But alas, it seems to be just the Eason Jordan story of the preference for access over truth all over again. Or is it even worse than that?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 10th, 2007 at 11:26 am and is filed under General, MSM, business, idiots!, radical chic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.