[Photo: Chavez Promoting Chomsky at the UN]Bravo to Chavez! How refreshing to see a public figure speak their mind about Bush. If you haven’t heard, Venezuela’s leader took the podium at the UN today and called Bush “the devil.” Nice touch. But the best part was that he also took a copy of one of Noam Chomsky’s books on US hegemony to the podium with him – and held it up as he referred to it!
Now the question is, what will Bernie say about all this? Being the fair-weather friend that we know he is, I’m sure the great wall of Bernie silence will greet this news. Bernie loves the photo-ops with Chavez’s representatives when he can promise cheap oil but runs like hell when his friends out radicalize him (which ain’t hard). Don’t forget, Bernie’s too tumid to even endorse a motion to impeach Bush, let alone call him the devil he really is.
Hey Bernie, guess what? There are poor people all over the world, and their suffering, too. You say you want to be different. So start being different.
Speaking of Bernie, I was out on the town last night and bumped into a few all-too-happy Bernie supporters. You know the kind, they’re the ones who get all googly-eyed when they speak of him and rattle off the times they’ve spoken with him one-on-one and all but promising never to wash their hands after touching the old fuck. Ew.
They even got all misty-eyed when I told them about my bandaged hand and the impact it’s having on my financial well-being. Hey, liberals are easy. If I could have just kept them on the tear-jerking train, I’m sure I could have had free drinks the whole night and probably some pocket change, too. Hey, liberals are even easier after a few drinks.
But Snarky Boy came to the fore. Fuck. Sometimes I just can’t keep that bastard from taking over. And I proceeded with this line of questioning:
How can a grumpy, joyless, angry old bastard like Bernie make so many people so hopeful and happy? And I’m serious. The fact that he can pull this off is almost enough to convince me that the man’s nothing short of magical. I mean, think about it, Bernie is the last person any sane person would want to hang around with for more than the length of a short stump speech. The guy’s just all doom and gloom. Worse, he’s always pissed and never happy. And yet he’s got legions of people out marching around in their Bernie-red shirts, smiling from ear to ear, and acting like they’re out promoting some modern incarnation of “Up With People.” Sorry, but it’s just fucking weird.
There’s an old lefty political message about personifying the change you want to see in society. Now let’s pretend for a second that Bernie’s personifying the change he wants to see in society. How goddamn ugly is that? Bernie makes Castro look like fun for crying out loud; at least Castro goes to baseball games and even dances from time to time. Not Bernie. He’s just pissed. Worse, he’s pissed AND ineffective. Even worse, he’s pissed, ineffective AND he compromises himself into irrelevancy.
Personally, I keep waiting for Bernie to break out of character and declare the last 20 years nothing but a grand act of guerrilla theater that he concocted during his pot-smoking Stannard days. You know, the days when he carried Chomsky books around and called presidents the devil, just like Chavez still does today. My guess, though, is that somewhere along the way he realized just how lucrative it is to con liberals. And now he’s most certainly going to be the dourest U.S. Senator in history! And the angrier he gets, the happier his followers get.
Why can’t I just keep my fucking mouth shut? I can’t even stay in character long enough to get a free beer. Some people never learn. Oh yeah, baby, I’m the leader of that pack.
