printThe “loss” of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has hit hard at MSNBC. (Rachel Maddow is sure to turn on the waterworks during her show.) How do you omit the pejorative “socialist,” in a piece about the death of one? Look to one Tracy Connor, staff writer at NBC News, who finesses an economy partly nationalized or under threat of expropriation with upbeat words: Chavez was a “self-styled populist,” who initiated “government reforms that championed the downtrodden,” and who “took greater control of the state-run oil company.”
More control than complete state control? More control than the nationalization of industry?
“A kind of very personalized socialism” is Eugene Robinson’s spin. Robinson is a writer at the Washington Post and an MSNBC pundit. Chavez, like the Cuban brothers, followed a “pure ideology model,” Robinson noodled.
Robinson proceeded to underscore the broad popular support Chavez enjoyed among his people, and then … contradicted himself (Robinson did; Chavez was consistent), saying that Chavez’s popularity ran counter to his many anti-democratic policies.
Robinson is no different to almost every single American voter, politician and chattering-class member. He equates crude majoritarianism with justice. If the masses want something—the masses must be right. Where mobocracy appears manifestly unjust, reason people like Robinson, this must be because it veered from the express wishes of the upright majority that unleashed the People’s Power.
News flash: Chavez was on his way to securing leader-for-life status because he had the support of the masses. Democracy—rule by absolute and unfettered majorities—is dictatorship by any other name.
More eulogizing for “Hue” courtesy of Eugene Robinson: Chavez was “quick witted,” “loose,” “idiosyncratic.”
UPDATE: Via Nick Gillespie come some facts about the “affable” commie who croaked, including that Chavez had amassed a fortune of $1 billion.