Thursday, September 21, 2006
Not dead yet: Hugo Chavez can still meet Noam Chomsky!
In the hubbub over Hugo Chavez's fire and, er, brimstone at the United Nations yesterday, the coverage has focused on his lunatic bashing of the United States and the joyous reaction of the delegates thereto. Since I view the United Nations much the way Obi-Wan measured Mos Eisley spaceport ("a wretched hive of scum and villainy"), I would have been surprised at anything less. The headlines missed the most entertaining moment, which came later at the press conference:
But compared with Mr. Ahmadinejad, Mr. Chávez was just more colorful. He brandished a copy of Noam Chomsky’s “Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance” and recommended it to members of the General Assembly to read. Later, he told a news conference that one of his greatest regrets was not getting to meet Mr. Chomsky before he died. (Mr. Chomsky, 77, is still alive.)
What a maroon.
17 Comments:
By 
, at
Thu Sep 21, 11:14:00 AM:
It is unclear what useful purpose the UN serves. Maybe it is time to start over again, this time limiting membership to those counties who conduct free, open and democratic elections.
At the very least, I would relocate the site of the UN from the capitol of American economic imperialism to a place that would be more collegial to struggling victims of imperialism. How about Mogadishu?
In the Insult to Injury department, many of these dysfunctional, undemocratic and anti-American states are heckling and abusing us on our dime. We pay their way at the UN, and elsewhere as well. Screw that. We "don't get no respect" because we don't demand it. They can say and do whatever they want with no consequences. When we act like a doormat, we can expect to have people wipe their shoes, or worse, on us.
Don't talk to me about Chavez being democratically elected. The most recent election was right out of the Tammany hall playbook.
By 
Mark Tempest, at
Thu Sep 21, 01:24:00 PM:
I will contribute a small sum to transport Mr. Chomsky to the Chavez HQ so that they can meet....as long as the ticket is one way...
By , at
Thu Sep 21, 09:46:00 PM:
I figure with a handle like "Noam Chomsky" the guy probably got regular ass-kickings as a kid. Maybe that accounts for it.
By Dan Kauffman, at
Thu Sep 21, 10:19:00 PM:
"It is unclear what useful purpose the UN serves"
To put all our enemies in one spot,where we can watch them and who is friendly with them.
Keep your friends close, but your enemies, closer.
See our Veto in the Security Council?
Choke on it. ;-)
By Assistant Village Idiot, at
Thu Sep 21, 10:38:00 PM:
What an irony! One of Noam Chomsky's greatest regrets is that he didn't get to meet the back half of Barbero before he died.
By , at
Thu Sep 21, 10:48:00 PM:
However, just as a reminder:
"Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead!"
-David
By , at
Fri Sep 22, 03:13:00 AM:
He was getting Chomsky mixed up with the 12th Imam.
By Georg Felis, at
Fri Sep 22, 01:07:00 PM:
Perfectly normal, the less informed the Liberal, the higher the volume. Mr Chavez fits that to a T.
By Chris Lawrence, at
Fri Sep 22, 03:29:00 PM:
Well, in fairness to Chavez, Chomsky has been braindead for quite some time... in fact, his works seem to have the amazing effect of causing formerly intelligent people to also experience braindeath.
By , at
Sat Sep 23, 10:30:00 AM:
What a bunch of sore losers here. Don't you know that using the NYT as a source reveals you as an idiot? The dim wit from the NYT misquoted Chavez (most likely intentional). Here's the reality:
"The Venezuelan leader told New Yorkers to read Abraham Lincoln and Mark Twain as well as modern thinkers like Noam Chomsky and John Kenneth Galbraith, lamenting he could not meet Galbraith before he died in April at age 97."
Of course, you have to go outside the US mainstream media to get any accuracy these days. Idiots.
http://www.news.com.au/sundayheraldsun/story/0,,20456795-5005961,00.html
By TigerHawk, at
Sat Sep 23, 11:09:00 AM:
Well, if your point is that you can't trust the New York Times, I am in general loathe to disagree with you. However, it looks as though the Herald Sun and the NYT were covering different events. The Herald Sun assigns the Chavez quotation you cite to speaking engagements in Harlem, whilst the NYT quotes his appearance at the press conference after his speech. I'm guessing that they are both accurate -- that somebody -- obviously not a reporter on the spot -- corrected Chavez after the first error and he revised his stump speech afterward. I don't know what happened, but that seems like a more likely explanation than that the NYT lied about a statement at a press conference. It is also unlikely that it made a mistake, because they would have had a recording. Also, there is nothing in their corrections section -- much as I make my blog-living off of bashing the Grey Bitch, I doubt they got it wrong.
By , at
Sat Sep 23, 01:00:00 PM:
Tigerhawk, you are also then "guessing" (or, more accurately, assuming) that Hugo Chavez, the President of Venezuela, is too stupid to know which of his favorite authors is dead, even given that Galbraith just died this April.
Also, the New York times article is the ONLY source I have seen that claimed that Chavez mistakenly bemoned Chomsky's death before he met him.
Finally, the entire NYT article is deceptive and biased. They leave out ANY significant quotes by Chavez about the criminality of the US government, attempting only to ridicule Chavez.
In fairness to Chavez, hows about you give this a read? God knows it'll never, ever be published in the NYT or any other of the mainstream rags:
http://www.progressive.org/mag_intv0706
By TigerHawk, at
Sat Sep 23, 02:28:00 PM:
The Independent, hardly a right-wing rag, reported Chavez' mistake too. As for the idea that the president of Venezuela might "make the mistake" that one of his favorite authors is dead, it is more than plausible. Several years ago, I rather confidently declared in a semi-public setting that J.D. Sallinger was dead, and was dead wrong. It can happen. The only difference is that I did not claim that not meeting him was one of my "great regrets." It makes one wonder whether Chavez was not just bloviating. That's OK too, inasmuch as it is expected of politicians, but it is at the least bad staff work.
By , at
Sat Sep 23, 04:09:00 PM:
ummm....the NYT article was posted September 20th. The Independent article was posted September 23. I'm "guessing" that the Independent writer got his info from the NYT. That's just a guess, though.
I can't find a single other mainstream piece that mentions it, but lots and lots of left gatekeeper sites (ie Democracy Now - George Soros' mouthpiece) also quoted the NYT.
Also, neither the NYT nor the Independent stated where this press conference occurred, other than New York. Harlem is in New York, right?
By TigerHawk, at
Sat Sep 23, 09:52:00 PM:
Well, Chavez definitely held a press conference at the United Nations on September 20. Lots of news outlets have reported the death-of-Chomsky comment. Go listen to the podcast of the PBS show "Washington Week In Review," also mentioned. You offer no evidence, not even a denial, that he did not say it, other than to quote something else he said at an entirely different event.
Now, I don't really care what he said. Increasingly, I'm intrigued by your persistent defense of Chavez by claiming that he did not say the silly thing he mocked, when the evidence that he did is much more varied and complete than the evidence against.
By , at
Sun Sep 24, 09:04:00 AM:
"It is unclear what useful purpose the UN serves. "___It provides a permanent building where diplomats from all countries can meet and hold discussions on delicate topics, without the publicity involved in setting up a publically announced conference. If the UN didn't exist, some such institution would have to be established. It is not the fault of the UN as an organisation that many (or most) countries are governed by creeps and crooks. Those are the people you have to deal with in the real world. A UN just for the good guys would be pointless.
By , at
Wed Nov 01, 09:44:00 AM:
For the sake of accuracy, you might want to acknowledge that the NY Times issued a retraction of that story, and that Anonymous was right after all.
An article on Sept. 21 about criticism of President Bush at the United Nations by President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela and President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran reported that Mr. Chavez praised a book by Noam Chomsky, the linguist and social critic. It reported that later, at a news conference, Mr. Chavez said that he regretted not having met Mr. Chomsky before he died. The article noted that in fact, Mr. Chomsky is alive. The assertion that Mr. Chavez had made this misstatement was repeated in a Times interview with Mr. Chomsky the next day.
In fact, what Mr. Chavez said was, “I am an avid reader of Noam Chomsky, as I am of an American professor who died some time ago.” Two sentences later Mr. Chavez named John Kenneth Galbraith, the Harvard economist who died last April, calling both him and Mr. Chomsky great intellectual figures.
Mr. Chavez was speaking in Spanish at the news conference, but the simultaneous English translation by the United Nations left out the reference to Mr. Galbraith and made it sound as if the man who died was Mr. Chomsky.
Readers pointed out the error in e-mails to The Times soon after the first article was published. Reporters reviewed the recordings of the news conference in English and Spanish, but not carefully enough to detect the discrepancy, until after the Venezuelan government complained publicly on Wednesday.
Editors and reporters should have been more thorough earlier in checking the accuracy of the simultaneous translation.
