All the News That's Fit to Come Out of the Mouths of Embittered Exiles

That's my suggestion for the new motto for the New York Times. Judith Miller was the official scribe for Ahmed Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress liars about Iraq's fabled WMD's. Now Mary Spicuzza is providing the same service for embittered exiles from Venezuela.

Some were excited, others nervous. All were rushing to fill out their voter registration forms at the Consulate General of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela on East 51st Street in Manhattan before it was too late. Venezuelans who had not registered by Saturday afternoon will have lost their chance to participate in one of their country's most heated votes, the Aug. 15 referendum that will decide whether President Hugo Chávez, a radical left-wing politician who has been accused of corruption and electoral fraud, will be ousted.

(For comparison's sake, here's how the Times starts another article in today's paper: "President Bush vigorously defended his strategy against terrorism today..." Note that it is not "President Bush, a radical right-wing politician who has been accused of corruption and electoral fraud and illegally taking his nation to war and various other crimes, vigorously defended his strategy against terrorism today..." Going out on a limb here, but I'd guess that every president of any country since George Washington, and probably even him, has been accused of corruption and/or electoral fraud at some point.) The Times really has no shame:

President Chávez has for years inspired a mixture of fanatical support and hatred. Mr. Chávez, who helped stage an unsuccessful coup in 1992, has earned many enemies with his radical politics and policies, which some call dictatorial. After campaigning on an anticorruption platform, he took office in 1999, but was later charged with electoral fraud stemming from a 2000 election.

Venezuelans have since witnessed a faltering economy, strikes, demonstrations and violence. Unemployment rose to about 20 percent in 2003, according to official statistics, but some say the true number is much higher.

Oooh! "Some call dictatorial." "Some say the true number is much higher." Solid reporting there. It sounds like the order has come down from on high (Bush-Kerry headquarters) that the NY Times had better start catching up with the Washington Post in its Chavez bashing or there would be serious consequences (listening to Ann Coulter's suggestion*, maybe?). More likely, the Times' reporters, like most of the mainstream media, are just a bunch of imperial fascists, and this crap comes naturally to them.

(* "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building." (Ann Coulter in a New York Observer interview, 8/20/2002), from AntiCoulter)