CARPETBAGGING....IN VENEZUELA

Jackson and Glover go carpetbagging in Venezuela

Gustavo Coronel has a superb essay on the utter strangeness of the likes of Jesse Jackson and Danny Glover taking their race-grievance show on the road to Venezuela. Neither showed any interest in this country earlier in their careers, but all of a sudden, now that Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has gotten flush with oil money and shown an eagerness to fling it around, these people have suddenly started signalling their lifelong devotion to Venezuela. What could that possibly mean? These nouveau carpetbaggers are truly subjects for Mark Twain, all tears and flapdoodle – but they are bringing in to Venezuela a destructive idea about race relations based on U.S., and only U.S., experience. Latin America doesn’t have any history of racial strife, but given Chavez’s need to amass power, it may be starting.