Every dictator have a white monkey...

Darn! Funny to read Caracas Chronicles' latest post. I also went to see the "Last King of Scotland" a few days ago and was planning to write about it, but Quico got the lead. It's OK though, because my commentary is different than his.

Besides the fantastic acting of Forrest Whitaker who led him to win an Oscar for best actor, I thought the movie not only caught Dictator Idi Amin Dada's personal madness, but also Uganda's at that time (driven by the madness of one). And of course, Venezuelans should be very surprised in an ugly kind of way to find out many characteristics of their beloved leader Hugo Chavez on the persona of Idi Amin Dada. The Chavezesque charming Amin possessed, his love for singing, to entertain foreign correspondents, to make them laugh and treat them very good, to be very nice to the rest of the world but a sick degenerate for his own people. Only that the international charm for Amin Dada's didn't last as long as it's going on for Chavez.

There's no question that these two characters share a lot in common. A LOT.

Now, is Chavez eating hearts of their opponents like Amin did and keeping their head on the fridge? Not that I know, BUT, he said he will "fry the heads of their opponents on hot oil"... well, maybe a joke, you know. What is definitely NO JOKE is this militia Chavista group that slowly but surely is becoming one with Hugo Chavez. One of their members talked to the press saying that if they have to shot people Che-style they will do it. Another joke?

Something else I found really interesting in this movie was the character of Nicholas Garrigan, who was based very loosely on the life of Idi Amin Dada's "advisor" Bob Astles. Astles was called the White Rat of Uganda, he was not a idealistic young guy as the movie portraits the fictional character of Garrigan, but yes, he was somebody who went up for an adventure on a different kind of zoo, and stayed there. Somehow Astles managed to gain Amin's trust and stayed as his side. Astles came to be the second most dangerous man in Uganda at the time of Amin, plus both were about the same age. My though is that the director wanted to portrait Garrigan as a young, smart and educated person from the 1st world for a good reason. These idealist from developed countries, from your local college kid with the Che Guevara, Hugo Chavez or Fidel Castro t-shirt, to "important" journalist (like Barbara Walters, yes), show how much ignorance and idealism can hurt. Looks like still, a whole bunch of smart human beings all over the world haven't learn zippo.

Idi Amin kept its white monkey alive and close to him, he could have gotten rid of him, but he didn't. The reason, maybe to help him build some international PR around this idiotic world.

Think about the international crowd of white monkeys that Hugo Chavez is keeping handy. Same reason. The last of those white monkeys is Ms. Barbara Walters. I happily and intentionally missed the interview but I found very interesting all the comments it produced on fellow bloggers Quico, Miguel, MacPerro and Daniel among others. You wanna think Ms. Walters, today, March 2007, know a little bit better than what she did when she interviewed Fidel some decades ago. She shown to me, doing this interview to Hugo Chavez, that she cannot care less of the Cuban people dying of hunger for the madness of one, and less about the people of Venezuela. Barbara Walters and her crowd of rich liberals, too much Park Avenue and Wilshire Blvd, too much insulation, Babba. What's next? Hugo coming to "The View" for a little coffee talk? Rosie teaching Hugo how to cope with stress hanging upside down? The sad thing is that if Mrs. Walters were Venezuelan, she would be prosecuted by treasonous behaviour by the Chavista government for her little exercise of free-speech interviewing a leader hostile to their "cause", not even hostile to Venezuelan interest. Can you imagine Pres. Bush prosecuting Walters for treason only because she is not politically the same than the president? No, right? And, if you are American citizen reading this, would you accept the figure of the Pres. of the USA, democrat or republican, prosecuting anybody for his or her journalism?