Hugo Chavez

As Nicholas Fondacaro at NewsBusters noted on Friday, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow's obsession with the money raised for President Donald Trump's inauguration went into overdrive the previous evening. During the same show, Maddow combined that obsession with another one shared by most of the news media — the absolute necessity to avoid blaming Venezuela's dire economic circumstances on its Bolivarian…

Even in the face of obvious failure, the liberal media deflect blame for Venezuela’s economic collapse away from socialism. On April 1, New York Times columnists Max Fisher and Amanda Taub blamed “populism” for Venezuela's issues, using the economic crisis there to explain the dangers of populism while essentially ignoring socialism’s impact. “Socialism” was mentioned just once in the entire…

Almost fifteen years ago, South Park paid tribute to a trailblazing animated TV series by calling an episode “The Simpsons Already Did It.” According to Columbia Journalism Review columnist Joel Simon, regardless of the current hubbub over President Trump’s media-bashing, several “Latin American populist” heads of state, including the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, already did it, or…

Is the United States doomed to become the latest global victim of a dangerous strongman, a la Venezuela under Hugo Chavez? That's what economics reporter turned left-wing columnist Eduardo Porter thinks in Wednesday’s New York Times: “How Dysfunction Threatens U.S. Democracy.” What led to this dramatic conclusion? Trump’s election. Porter made a rare Times admission of the “authoritarian” nature…

The New York Times and The Washington Post demonstrated again Sunday their warm feelings about communist dictators when they die.  The Times headline was “A Revolutionary Who Defied the U.S. and Held Cuba In His Thrall.” The Post headline was slightly more balanced: “Revolutionary remade Cuba: Dictator who defied U.S. was loathed, beloved.” For the Times, Anthony DePalma found a “fiery apostle…

William Finnegan's lengthy report from Venezuela in the November 14 edition of the New Yorker begs two obvious questions: Where have you guys been? And why did you wait until the wee hours on November 7, the day before Election Day in the U.S., when almost everyone's attention was on the presidential and other contests, to post it online? The report's headline asks a question: "How did this…

While a guest on CBS's Late Show With Stephen Colbert on Tuesday night, liberal actor/activist Sean Penn asserted that Americans have two options on November 8: “stick it out” under a Hillary Clinton presidency or “masturbate our way into hell” with Donald Trump. According to an article posted by Jessica Chasmar -- a continuous news writer for the Washington Times -- Penn was on the program to…

The absurd headline at a September 20 story at the New York Times is a sight to behold: "How Bad Off Is Oil-Rich Venezuela? It’s Buying U.S. Oil." As formulated, the headline is clearly meant to communicate something that is supposedly a surprising new development in that country, which, thanks to 17 years of Bolivarian socialist rule, has turned into a financially destitute humanitarian…

Over two weeks ago, the Bolivarian socialist government of Venezuela under de facto dictator Nicolas Maduro decreed that private-sector and government workers can be forced to work on farms if the military, which is now responsible for food production and distribution in that shortage-wracked country, deems it necessary. Relevant site searches indicate that the country's forced-labor decree…

The latest installment in leftist excuse-making when socialism fails goes into the "It would work if leaders just had the right people handling things" file. It comes in the form of a Friday morning "analysis" at the Associated Press. Writers Jorge Rueda and Joshua Goodman want readers to believe that the economy in the Bolivarian socialist and once fairly prosperous nation of Venezuela would be…

It would be far too kind to give three cheers to CNN for exposing the disastrous conditions in a children's hospital in Caracas, Venezuela caused by over 15 years of Bolivarian socialism in a July 13 broadcast report. The network gets one hearty cheer for the detailed report's existence. It lost a chance for a second cheer when it failed to mention the country's socialist form of government…

Monday’s lead New York Times story by the paper’s Andes bureau chief Nicholas Casey was a grim report on the ongoing societal collapse of Venezuela: “Pillaging by Venezuelans Reveals Depth of Hunger.” But in typical media fashion, Casey managed to avoid the S-word -- socialism -- for almost all his report, and in an interview for NPR's Fresh Air actually blamed “consumerism” for the country’s…

On May 1, the Washington Post's Jackson Diehl warned: "We ignore Venezuela’s imminent implosion at our peril," noting that the South American nation of 30 million "has descended into a dystopia where food, medicine, water and electric power are critically scarce." Given the dire humanitarian crisis which has enveloped that country, broadcast media coverage during the ensuing seven weeks,…

If form holds, the Democratic Party's presidential candidates in the U.S. will continue to spout various forms of socialism and class warfare as the answers to this nation's woes in hopes of buying enough "free stuff" votes to hang on to the White House. Venezuela's apparent imminent economic collapse poses a problem for this strategy. The country's problems are the direct result of 15 years of…