And what a spectacle it was. What will go down as the most famous line was, as I remember it, “Yesterday the devil [President Bush] was here, in this very place. It still smells like sulfur.” He then dramatically made the sign of the cross, adding blasphemy to insult. Later, in a “press conference” he conducted largely in order to keep enjoying the sound of his own voice, he referred to President Bush as “Mr. Sulfur” — in Spanish, a frankly stupid alliteration on the letter “S.”
The White House responded only to say that the comments were not worth responding to. I do not agree. A latter-day Mussolini just referred to the President of the United States as “the devil” — to general applause, laughter, and merriment in the General Assembly of the United Nations — an organization we created to make the defeat of fascism permanent in our world. By insisting on the universality of the Organization, and not insisting on any standards for membership, President Harry Truman bequeathed a pulpit of “unique legitimacy” to our worst enemies, to mock us and incite the world against us, from right in the middle of our greatest city.
Pretending like this is not worth responding to smacks of submissiveness. In Latin America, being dignified and soft-spoken only makes you look like a pushover. Chavez is a devious charlatan and a talented idiot, a danger to himself and his country more than to us, and the President should say so.