OMG, they really think Michael Moore was serious!

Teh Stoopid! It BURNS!!!

Well, this is par for the course at El Luniversal, since they never fact-check a goddamned thing they write anyway (and neither does the AP, which inhabits the same building.) They also have no sense of humor, and their hatred for all things Chavecito would blind them to what the rest of us can see is an obvious joke.

But really, Eva Golinger, I expected better of you, because I know you’re smarter than that. Have you been living out of the US so long that you’ve forgotten Michael Moore’s ironic sense of humor, which he turns quite mercilessly on his own country? (And Franz Lee, that goes for you, too. Lighten up, comrade!)

Fortunately, someone at Complutense University in Madrid gets the joke. I’ll let Juan Carlos Monedero explain it to you:

Michael Moore, Nasty Liar

Dear friends:

I’ve been watching the video in which Michael Moore supposedly disrespects President Chávez and lies repeatedly about him to sully the revolution. How is he a traitor? How the strategy of the opposition has caused us to lose perspective. It’s all a big joke. What happened to the irony?

Let’s look at this with some tranquility. What was Moore doing in that interview before the viewers of that program? He was laughing at North Americans and their gringo stereotype of the president and all Latin Americans, not at President Chávez and the Venezuelan people! It’s just a joke.

Moore is on board with what’s happening in Latin America, but his public persona is precisely that: a guy who seems not to know much about anything, constantly telling jokes and pointing out ironies. If we damn him to hell or think he’s a liar, it’s because we don’t understand what he’s trying to say! I reiterate: Let’s not let the constant lies of the opposition cause us to lose sight of when someone is being serious, and when he is joking.

It’s abundantly clear that what he’s saying, from the get-go, is just one big leg-pull. He points out Foreign Minister Maduro and says he’s a bodyguard! It’s obvious that he doesn’t want to look like an imbecile who confuses Maduro with one of the security men.

On the other hand, what does the Empire think of Latin America? (1) That all its inhabitants are the same, whatever country they are from and whatever ethnic group they happen to be; (2) that all of them are not only alike, they are like the Mexicans; (3) that the Mexicans, the prototype of all Latin Americans, are people who make noise at all hours (especially in the night and in hotels where honored gringos are trying to rest below them) and that they all drink tequila. That’s the joke which Moore repeats in the interview! If we take it as real, we’re falling for the same cliché that Moore is laughing at!

Revolutions have to be able to laugh at themselves.

Translation mine.

I don’t know about you, but I love to laugh. There’s plenty of humor and irony in the Bolivarian Revolution, and while I’m totally down with it, that doesn’t mean I can’t giggle over goofy pictures of Chavecito doing something wacky and silly. He’s often funny on purpose; he’s not, in fact, the buffoon the oppos make him out to be. (Real buffoons are funny only by accident–as many of Chavecito’s predecessors and opponents definitely are.) I take his serious deeds seriously, and his funny deeds in the spirit they were intended.

Same goes for Michael Moore. The man sticks a whoopee cushion under every pompous ass he meets, the better to get us thinking seriously about what we need to do. In other words: Just like Chavecito! I absolutely loved it that they got together in Venice and had a good chat. I figured they were two peas in a pod for having serious minds and light hearts. It did my heart good to see them getting along famously, as I knew they would.

And I bet Chavecito gets this joke, too. Let’s see if and when he weighs in. I bet he’ll be chuckling. (Anyone wanna lose some money betting against me? A quick hundred or two?)

So what’s the punchline of this joke? Simple: The oppos got punked…again. By none other than the gringo they were hoping to co-opt.

What’s less funny is that some serious good people still don’t seem to get it. Once more, with feeling:

See? It’s okay to laugh. Go on now…giggle. You know you wanna.