Hollywood’s Chavez-Cheering Stars & Venezuela’s Victims

By Karol Markowicz

Sunday, June 05, 2016

As sure as the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, Hollywood stars will take insanely dumb political positions and suffer no repercussions because of it.

But few positions are quite as backward and awful as their support for a political system that has been discarded by nearly every country that has tried it and continues to cause extreme suffering by those unlucky enough to still live under it. I’m referring, of course, to full-fledged socialism.

As Venezuelans scream “we want food” in ongoing protests roiling the country, it’s important to remember how many of our celebrities plumped for the corrupt regimes that led to the starving people in the streets — celebrities who were, are and will continue to be free and well-fed.

Sean Penn was pretty much Hugo Chávez’s BFF, praising him at every opportunity. When Chávez died, Penn mourned him and said, “Venezuela and its revolution will endure under the proven leadership of vice president [Nicolas] Maduro.”

And so it has. Maduro has continued Chávez’s policies with results that would only surprise people like Penn.

Michael Moore, who never misses an opportunity to stick his fingers in a dictatorial pie, always talked up the way Chávez allegedly shared his country’s oil profits with the people. After meeting Chávez, he tweeted, “He used the oil $ 2 eliminate 75% of extreme poverty, provide free health education 4 all.”

In 2007, Naomi Campbell interviewed Chávez for British GQ, calling him a “rebel angel” and praising Venezuela’s social programs.

“I am amazed by what I have seen here in only 24 hours,” Campbell was quoted as saying after visiting the new Children’s Heart Hospital in Caracas. “It’s marvelous to know and see what is being implemented here in Venezuela.”

Where’s Campbell now? CNN reports violent crime is rampant and gunshot victims are sitting in filthy hospitals with no medical supplies. One victim of an armed robbery had a “makeshift surgical drain, made from an empty gallon bottle, [that] draws fluid from his lungs. All the supplies, from gauze to syringes, had to be purchased out of his pocket.”

Where’s Michael Moore touting this free health-care? Did the armed robbers get the free education, or what?

You’d think that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Commie-and-socialist-loving dummies would rethink their support for an ideology that leads again and again to mass violence, mass oppression and mass starvation. But no, they keep on spouting their nonsense as if they haven’t been proven wrong at every turn.

It’s particularly painful for people like me, whose family survived the Soviet Union, made it to America and have to hear these know-nothings, lucky enough to have always lived in freedom, pontificate about how awesome people have it in countries like Venezuela and Cuba.

They get to fly home on their private jets having seen exactly what the dictator of the hour wanted them to see and then spread the ludicrous message that a system that’s an abject failure is actually a success when you look at it in the right light.

While he’s not a Hollywood celebrity, David Sirota’s 2013 article in Salon, titled “Hugo Chávez’s economic miracle,” should not be forgotten, either. In it, Sirota suggested the United States follow Venezuela’s example and nationalize the oil and bank industries.

“Chávez became the bugaboo of American politics because his full-throated advocacy of socialism and redistributionism at once represented a fundamental critique of neoliberal economics, and also delivered some indisputably positive results,” Sirota gushed.

Ronald Reagan said that freedom and democracy “will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash-heap of history,” but he may have underestimated the usefulness of Hollywood idiots.

Sirota and his friends need to look the people of Caracas, dehydrated because they have no water, in the face and tell them about these supposed positive results. The people of Venezuela are owed something from these people.

As Penn, Moore, Campbell, Sirota and many others sleep in their comfortable beds in free countries, they should spare a thought for the people they left to live under the boot. An apology is the least they could do.