patteeu
04-18-2009, 12:57 PM
Jake Tapper reports (http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2009/04/chavez-gifts-ob.html) that during Obama's visit with Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan dictator presented President Obama with a book called "Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent" by Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano. The book "offers a critique of the consequences of 500 years of European and U.S. colonization of Latin America". From the text:
"The division of labor among nations is that some specialize in winning and others in losing," the book begins. "Our part of the world, known today as Latin America, was precocious: it has specialized in losing ever since those remote times when Renaissance Europeans ventured across the ocean and buried their teeth in the throats of the Indian civilizations. Centuries passed, and Latin America perfected its role."
If the gift itself isn't ungracious enough, the fact that the copy presented to our POTUS is in Spanish, a language President Obama doesn't read, makes Hugo Chavez the new favorite to win the worst gift of the year by a head of state award for 2009 in my book. Of course, there's always the chance that this gift will be just the kind of thing that floats the boat of our Apologizer in Chief. If so, Chavez might be a savvy gift giver afterall. :shrug:
"The division of labor among nations is that some specialize in winning and others in losing," the book begins. "Our part of the world, known today as Latin America, was precocious: it has specialized in losing ever since those remote times when Renaissance Europeans ventured across the ocean and buried their teeth in the throats of the Indian civilizations. Centuries passed, and Latin America perfected its role."
If the gift itself isn't ungracious enough, the fact that the copy presented to our POTUS is in Spanish, a language President Obama doesn't read, makes Hugo Chavez the new favorite to win the worst gift of the year by a head of state award for 2009 in my book. Of course, there's always the chance that this gift will be just the kind of thing that floats the boat of our Apologizer in Chief. If so, Chavez might be a savvy gift giver afterall. :shrug: