>Chuck wrote:
>Jon Stewart is a brilliant comedian
No argument there. But The Daily Show ridiculed Chavez because of his "hyperbole", when he was really making more of a joke than anything else. This was clear to me when I watched the speech (on C-Span website). Chavez needled Bush, but the speech was about the danger US imperialism/capitalism is to the rest of the world, and how the rest of the world, especially the South, is beginning to wake up and fight back. He also called for the rebuilding/reestablishment of the United Nations because, as he put it, it has completely collapsed and is no longer functional in a meaningful sense.
BTW I am much closer to being a worshipper of Jon and TDS than I am a worshipper of Hugo Chavez. ;-)
And I'm going to steal an observation from Peter Werbe, who has pointed out that since we found out last month that Dubya finds flatulence very amusing and is known to rip off a few himself, it may be that Chavez was not indulging in hyperbole but simply reporting the fact when he said he could smell sulfur behind the UN podium...