The government of Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez is giving the US actor Danny Glover 18 million dollars to make a film about the Haitian rebel Toussaint L'Ouverture and his revolt against the French and Spanish in the early 1800's. Mons. L'Ouverture was double-crossed by the French, arrested and transported to France; dying there in a prison in the Jura Mountains in 1803.
Whatever one thinks about Mons. L'Ouverture and his rebellion: Dictator Chavez, the proper object of rebellion and imprisonment if ever there was one -- is making his gift to Mr. Glover with malice aforethought. According to The Guardian, the aforementioned tinpot hopes that his gift will ". . .sprinkle Hollywood stardust on his effort to mobilise world public opinion against imperialism and western oppression." All this is going on, mind you, while Chavez muzzles what's left of a free press in Venezuela.
Now buying a movie is a good move on the Dictator's part and it's obvious why he would make it. It's always good policy to have actors and similar idiots on one's side when one's putative enemies are bigger and stronger in hard power terms. Mr. Chavez is the enemy too: he accuses the Americans of plotting invasion; calls the President of the United States a "devil" in the United Nations; gives financial aid and rhetorical support to America's enemies, including Iran.
As I say, it's obvious why Mr. Chavez would do this -- and it's a good move for him. Were I in his shoes, I would be more aggressive with such projects, in fact: sprinkling Hollywood stardust should be easy for him as long as he parrots the appropriate leftist slogans on cue; is nice to visiting professors of the goateed Birkenstock set, as well as the odd actor with his or her paramour of the week; and generous with the checkbook. Meanwhile he can jail who he wants as far as the Stardust and the professors are concerned -- after all, he's on the Right Side.
Chavez, I can understand. He's out for power, and he's pursuing whatever state policies he thinks are appropriate to establish his regime of Justice and Enlightenment or whatever he -- and all those who are wise while residing in range of his police -- might call it. Chavez is a Venezuelan and a foreigner, and hopefully sooner, rather than later, he will get his. Chavez, though he's a foreign enemy, is a rational actor, who plays politics with the best. But Mr. Glover, born in San Francisco, California, USA, and people like him, I totally cannot begin to fathom.
7 comments:
Good grief.
let's see how much blather i use in equivalence to the concise comment of CC.
if i said this doesn't surprise me, it would be a fabrication. i'd never dream it. however, i can see where it came from.
hugo, i can call him hugo can't i?
hugo is sitting there watching the red carpet interviews on oscar night. and the discussion goes something like this.......
look at the tatas on that one, oooo she is so skinnnnny, mamasita come to papa..........
you get the picture.
and when they present al gore an oscar, the light bulb, dim as it is, comes on.
if they give a trophy to that buffoon, or is it baboon, is:
a danny glover production of a hugo chaves film
very far behind?
who knows. maybe hugo can convince the local south cal authorities to let paris hilton work off her 23 days in one of his posh dunegons.
as for the 18mil, i'm assuming it is venezuela's money and not hugo's. or is it, what is yours is ours, and what is ours is mine? either way, i will do with it, as i see fit.
as for EL JEFE I opinions of mr. glover ......... as referenced in a previous comment of LL, if EL JEFE I wants to go out thar to Hobby and gets on one of them thar planes, gets hisself behind the counter of my favorite liquor store in Tulsa, he can get his belly full of and people like him, I totally cannot begin to fathom.
well, that about covers it.
I'll be the first to admit that there is much about the modern world that I cannot fathom, or, more accurately, that I refuse to sign up for and join in. I tend to assume that people are good scouts until proven otherwise.
That said, I'm not PC, or a hyphenated-American, and I deny that there is legitimately such a thing. One is an American, or one is not,and entitlement to the passport for me ends the inquiry or the interest. I'm not concerned about people's background unless they become troublemakers.
That said, I do not approve of racists. But I refuse, as much as I can, to take race into account. Charles DeGaulle, perhaps the western politician I admire above all others, was in Moscow sometime late in WW II, having a conversation with Stalin. Paris had been liberated, and DeGaulle, for the moment, was in charge. Seems like Stalin asked what DeGaulle intended to do with the French communists (not that Stalin cared...he just wanted to know what sort of person he was dealing with). Well, old DeGaulle just looked down that long nose of his --aristocrat looking at bank robber -- only guy in the world who could do that to Stalin and get away with it; and De Gaulle told Stalin essentially that he didn't care. He said: "The French Republic treats its citizens according to the services it expects of them."
Dayum, I do so like that. A Frenchman was a Frenchman. DeGaulle refused to be modern, and put people in ideological drawers.
So people aren't good scouts. But we just go and reward them for it. Trashy directors take money from tyrants to make trashy films; or travel to their countries illegally and bootlick and kiss up -- anything to shock and make points in the right places for being anti-Imperialist, and anti-American. But people here at home, hell, kids of people I know, people with law degrees -- will line up in big bleeding batches to see their films. And they'll go to rich parties in their imported cars, tasseled loafters and manolo blahniks, drink some Chilean wine and talk about the artistic depth of the work and the trenchant social commentary (fill in your $40 word of choice here).
I can go on -- despite the fact that people enter the country illegally -- we'll just forgive them for it. Then we'll decide between people with identical grades for college loans or admissions on the basis of which one of them is 1/700th Antarctic-American. Then we have people who think nothing of hiring lawyers to figure out ways around re-employing people who have left work because they've been called overseas on reserve callups, and the one person in 500 who decides, because he can, he wants to bankrupt a school district because somebody used the word God at a commencement. I could go on, but you get my drift.
If we stopped treating scads of people as special cases; if we insisted that the borders actually meant something; if we stopped financially rewarding pond scum for making trashy films and writing books laughing at ordinary people and their values; if we stopped using lawyers and litigation as a substitute for morality; if we decided we cared about winning wars we were in, instead of shaming the dead by giving them up like failed fad diets -- we might be able to fix things.
But until we decide all these things, we'll just be stuck wondering why nationally we feel like the spoiled rich kid for whom nothing goes right, and who spends his life taken for a sucker.
(End of rant -- this was stream of consciousness -- hope it makes sense).
.......my customers are looking at me funny
wow, what happened to your eyebrows? as one passes by.
dude, what happened to your beard? as one passes by.
louie, what happened to the wallpaper facing your monitor? as another passes by.
and what is that head & shoulders pattern? as another passes by.
louie, what happened to the front half of your shirt? as tracy comes up from the back room.
.......my customers are looking at me funny
Eh ? So what did happen ? And who's Tracy ? What did she bring from the back room ?
tracy is my part time help.
you've no doubt heard of orators that can "peel the paint off the walls" and maybe even heard one or two yourself.
with that brief description, imagine yourself in front of a computer monitor reading, not your post, but the comment to the post.
armed with that info, now go back and read my comment from 5:11pm.........
sorry, forgot to include this link in my previous post.
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