Becoming a medium for Chavez's tsunami of bullshit
I spent an intense hour and a half yesterday Livetweeting Chávez's Cadena.
I highly recommend it as a hobby. Livetweeting forces you to pay close attention to the guy, to settle into the rhythms of his mind as he riffs and improvises in front of the camera. You learn a lot.
It was a head-spinning experience. Chávez on full-rant mode was never the most coherent of speakers, but yesterday he seemed to reach for a kind of rapid-fire dada of bluster, contradiction and just plain gibberish you really have to experience to believe.
He's threatening the opposition... no! wait ... now he's trying to expropriate that bit of idle land - except some lady in the audience tells him it's a National Park but ... hold on! ... that was like 12 milliseconds ago, now he's ranting against Zapatero and ... sweeeerve ... now he's singing Zapatero a lullaby and ... what's this? ... now he's ribbing Reyes Reyes for being too formal and ... an instant later he's on a standard rant about the richie-rich people back east before ... throwing it to a lady in the Delta who rants for about a minute or so - on Cadena - in an Indian language that 99.9999% of the audience can't understand ...
On and on, for hours on end.
It all comes at you so fast, in such dizzying succession, you find your brain shutting off as you settle into an unflattering version of a giggling 14-year old's state of dimwitted excitement as you try to tweet along.
It's really something else.
I feel for my journo friends who have to listen to Aló from beginning to end every weekend for professional reasons. That can't be doing anybody's mental health any good.
The thing that always stuns me, makes me feel deeply alone and, somehow, un-Venezuelan, is that this kind of thing clearly has an audience. Some people love it, it's clear... but ... how can it not be blindingly evident to everyone that the guy's marbles went AWOL years ago?!
I just don't get it.
Kepler
Francisco Toro
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Between 1998-2002 I
Between 1998-2002 I occasionally listened Chavez rants to try to understand what many people liked about him and never found it, so for my sanity one day I decided not to hear him anymore.
Chavez's marbles
Quico, my understanding is that this is precicelly why chavez keeps his job.
His purpose is to dooze out venezuelians, pro and anti, the same. The ones that one to keep their sanity either emigrated or stoped altogether listening to his rant (ni-nis mostly) and the others are in deep verbal koolaid state.
Do we even remember Conenhagen a couple of weeks ago? what happened to the dutch conspiracy, etc... It does not matter waht he says, only that he continues talking, singing, shouting, threatening and in shorth, keeping the show alive!
His handlers need all the distraction they can get to continue plundering and embezeling Venezuela to the bone. That is all.
Corolary, when Chavez finally looses his grip, hell be taken ofstage and made into a new t-shirt.
Cheers,
LuisF
chavez is not the 'why'
A total waste of time to continually watch him.We now have sufficient info on his character and goals to make a decision and follow it.
The answer to why people still like him and follow him lies within each person and not on Chavez's behavior.
Clue:
Look at each follower/believer you know and find the personal characteristic that hooks him/ or her to Chavez.
Common characteristics include:
-naivety/idealism/ otherwise= not so smart
-personal and cynical interests
-emotional complexes
-lack of education
-envy/anger emotional roller coaster
-the need to belong
I could go on....but one things we know for sure is that it is not the best side of people that hooks into a cult.
AND it has precious little to do with Chavez himself.Chavez is only an easy channel for these needs.Once the cult is well established it will take an irrational experience or experiences to break the cycle.
Firepigette
Ranting as a way to govern
I listen to the guy occasionally - I wish I could hear him more often, but my wife would kill me in the process. If you take away the fact that the guy is leading a country, Chavez is a fun guy. Maybe I should set up a support group for people like me ;-)
The problem is, if you speak non-stop for 4 hours, rambling on with whatever crosses your mind, chances are that you will end up with the foot in your mouth. That definitely is not good when the entire country is very aware of what you say, and not good as a way to rule a country.
There is a maybe-apocryphal story on one of the Chavez ministers that underscores my point. The guy used to be called by Hugo at 3 AM in the morning to deploy some plans, but Chavez being Chavez, he would drift away from the main point for hours and hours. The minister would hold the phone and fall asleep, just to wake up in the precise moment when Chavez asks him if he agrees with the measures he just outlined. He would say "yes", would spend half a morning wondering what he did just agree on, and would end up taking extreme measures, just in case this is what Chavez asked him to do.
The magic of the Livetweet
"If you take away the fact that the guy is leading a country, Chavez is a fun guy"...
Right! This is exactly the feeling I had yesterday. In its own derranged way, once you surrender and just go along for the ride, it was...well...entertaining for certain.
Insane. But entertaining...
The magic of insanity
"Right! This is exactly the feeling I had yesterday. In its own derranged way, once you surrender and just go along for the ride, it was...well...entertaining for certain."
Of course he is entertaining. That's why the ignorant, deranged lunatic who thinks he knows everything is one of the staples of American sitcoms. John Ratzenberger put his kids and grandkids through college by playing a character just like Chavez.
Oh wait, I forgot that half the CC audience is about as culturally illiterate as a deaf smurf (e.g., Kepler), so let me explain. Ratzemberger is famous for a TV show called "Cheers" where he played a character called Cliff Clavin, who constantly said things like this:
"Well ya see, Norm, it's like this. A herd of buffalo can only move as fast as the slowest buffalo. And when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that are killed first. This natural selection is good for the herd as a whole, because the general speed and health of the whole group keeps improving by the regular killing of the weakest members. In much the same way, the human brain can only operate as fast as the slowest brain cells. Excessive intake of alcohol, as we know, kills brain cells. But naturally, it attacks the slowest and weakest brain cells first. In this way, regular consumption of beer eliminates the weaker brain cells, making the brain a faster and more efficient machine. That's why you always feel smarter after a few beers."
Doesn't that sound exactly like Chavez?
Sabado Sensacional's new front man?
He would be GREAT for Sabado Sensasional, Sadly he runs the country, or more accurately, he ruins the country
a great master of ceremonies
he's a great MC ever since the academy days. He conducted many weddings back then
Market Survey?
Has any non-government marketing or polling outfit ever made a serious effort to determine the size of this nut's listening audience?
A time series would be even more entertaining, since I'd guess that the number of Chavez listeners has gone way down over the years (although I doubt that such a series exists...).
One days he'll be going to
One days he'll be going to jail. His punishment will be to watch every single one of his own cadenas.
Fred
Exactly a fun guy
Yep. A fun guy who is either a natural (like me) Tourettes, or speeding.
IMA THINKER HE IS DEH NATURLICH! Srsly, dots a lotta talkin.
Seriously, he is biPolar or Tourettes.
I still think he'd make a fine neighbor. I suspect he'd be king-hell running the local volunteer fire department.
.5mt
It's just a show in the end
When foreigners ask me why he retains such high approval polling numbers in spite of all the problems, I try to explain it by saying that you can't think of Chavez just in political terms, like you can in other countries. He is not just a president. He has created a whole new role for himself. Part Oprah, part Rambo, part reality star (he basically wants to be on the air continously), Chavez is giving the masses what they have wanted since the begining of time: entertainment. It's not funny to us, but we would be having the rides of our lives if we believed the show.
The constant hop-scotching
The constant hop-scotching from one idea to the other, with little or no connective tissue or transitional riffs, the totaly inability to stay on-topic once he actually has found one, the wildly bi-polar emotionalism, from faux-payaso, to Coronel ball buster, to moron, to Castro blowhard knock-off, etc., to the lack of impulse control - in which he says totally inappropriate and vasatly un-presidential blarney - these are all classic symptoms of a neurological condition know the world over as ADD, or Attention Deficit Disorder.
It's very common in the military, the political arena, on stage and on the big screen, and in sports as well. I know because I have it. But Hugo-san is really the posternino for ADD. Anyone who can tough it through more than half an hour of Alo Presidente and all that word-salad bullshit - "Mi quito el sombrero ante usted."
Juancho
now you know how it feels to
now you know how it feels to work for real time news agencies in venezuela
Cadenas and apagones
Slightly OT here - I was visiting Kate's blog today, and ran across (http://rolita815.blogspot.com), and ran across this fabulous little video: http://www.youtube.com/user/M3DD. Thankfully, it's not hours and hours!