Don't Cry For Bush In Argentina

The protests down there over the weekend were miniscule, insignificant, disproportionately obnoxious, and weren't even primarily about him:

George Bush is here in Latin America this week, visiting Brazil and Argentina, and the standard reports of the American media are trying to depict a handful of isolated, juvenile socialist-organized "demonstrations" as some sort of sweeping, popular mass protest against Bush’s visit, thereby suggesting, yet again, that the Administration’s policies are flawed because people in other countries dislike Bush. As usual, the truth is vastly different than what the U.S. media is reporting....

These putative "mass demonstrations" in Argentina and Brazil are, in reality, nothing more than a few isolated spray-painting incidents of trite pacifist slogans in Brasilia, and a Cindy Sheehan-like "rally" of a few thousand people in Argentina led by a astro-idolozing, fat, retired soccer player who found time away from his decade-old cocaine addiction to show up wearing an oh-so-clever t-shirt showing Bush's name spelled with a swastika....

Unsurprisingly, the attention-craving Chavez’s principal ally in these escapades seems to be the American reporters and correspondents reporting on Bush’s trip. They instinctively regurgitate stories of supposedly widespread anti-Bush sentiment based upon nothing but a handful of socialist stragglers defacing public property with anti-war cliches and jobless Latin American hippies gathering for some music, celebrity-gazing and chants. The American media is accustomed to misleadingly translating such isolated 1left-wing antics as some sort of symbol of widespread public opinion, and they have obviously packed their reportorial laziness in their suitcases with them as they travel with Bush to Latin America.

Just wanted to do my part to set that record straight - and to reassure our readers that their instincts have not yet softened into wishful thinking.