If Betty White were the one blogging here she would probably say María Corina Machado has a vajayjay of steel. (White is of the opinion that describing those who are brave as having balls is inaccurate.)
A YouTube video of the annual State of the Nation Speech delivered by President Hugo Chávez on January 13th to the Venezuelan National Assembly is doing the rounds in Latin American cyber spheres. It shows María Corina Machado Parisca putting her hand up and her foot down at the meeting in Caracas. Seemingly cut from an airing of Ultimo Noticias, the clip hows Machado asking if she can stand to speak. Once on her feet, with both a tremor and real anger in her voice, she says she has been listening to Chávez sing praises to his perfect nation for the past eight hours. The nation is far from perfect, and she wants Chávez to admit that.
Machado, who won a seat on the assembly during the September 2010 elections, is known to be somewhat of an opposition firecracker and has announced that she would launch her pre-candidacy for the 2012 presidential primary elections on July 17.
While being booed by her fellow Assembly members she describes a Venezuela very different from the one Chávez claims to have created. She cites abject poverty, violence, shortage of basic goods, women who struggle to feed their children, expropriation and outright theft.
"How can you say that you protect private property when you have been expropriating small businesses; expropriating and not paying is stealing" she says, pointing at Chávez and then demanding that he discuss the very real problems at hand.
Chávez responds by brushing her aside. He says she is not in his 'ranking' and that she should win an election before even attempting to debate such a subject with him. Eagles don't waste time hunting flies, he claims and with that comment he systematically degraded Machado, a elected official, to nothing more than a winged insect. The audience cheers, proud of their manly leader.
Here is my question; if Chávez is a socialist and one of the common elements of socialism is a general criticism of social inequality, are then not all animals not created equal? Would an eagle not hunt a fly and could a fly not hunt an eagle?