Mac Margolis, who wrote recently about the "selective zeal for democracy" of those who condemned the Honduran coup, wrote another little piece on Latin America for Newsweek this week: "Latin America Rights Itself" (print only). He argues that "the region now looks on the brink of a rightward shift," pointing to upcoming elections in Chile, Brazil and Uruguay in which the more liberal incumbent party is projected to lose, contrasting that with the great popularity of Colombia's president Uribe, "who enraged the left by befriending the Bush administration." Margolis suggests that "pragmatism is trumping charisma" and concludes: "Castigating the gringo [...]
Jun
30
2009
NYT Reports Honduras (Opponent Opinions) From Afar
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Looking at a June 28 New York Times report that the "Honduran President Is Ousted in Coup," A Tiny Revolution blogger Bernard Chazelle (6/28/09) writes that "from the byline alone, you know this is going to be good": "Elisabeth Malkin, in Mexico City, with reporting by Simon Romero from Caracas." To Chazelle this all "makes perfect sense since, as we all know, Mexico City and Caracas are the two major cities in Honduras. (Too bad they had no reporter in Bangkok. I hope the Pulitzer committee doesn't notice.)" Moving on to the piece's actual content [since altered by the Times], [...]
May
06
2009
Press Ignorance Competes with Distortions on Bolivia
The North American Congress on Latin America has published (NACLA Magazine, 5-6/09) Dan Beeton's account of how, following Evo Morales' huge win in the Bolivian presidential referendum of last August, his opponents instigated "riots, economic sabotage and the massacre of more than 20 indigenous"–during which Bolivia threw out the U.S. ambassador for attempted spying and allegedly providing "funding for violent opposition groups." Yet, Beeton tells us, "save for one Washington Post article, the [subsequent U.S.] Morales visit garnered no full-length reports in major U.S. papers." This could arguably be a good thing, considering the results of what little attention was [...]
Apr
27
2009
The Dark Side of MSNBC's 'Crazy Political Uncle'
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Noting that, "for the last decade or so, Washington has indulged Pat Buchanan as a sort of crazy political uncle" by having "agreed to forget about his long track record of racially questionable commentary and writing," TPM Muckraker's Zachary Roth and Justin Elliott (4/24/09) have caught a column "for the far-right web magazine, Human Events," that doesn't quite jibe with the image portrayed on Buchanan's "frequent MSNBC appearances, where he plays a mostly well-mannered, if hardline, conservative." The commentary in question asserts that "family-and-faith, God-and-country" America "does not comprehend how the president could sit in Trinidad and listen to the [...]
