Attention all fake journalists from the greater Miami area: you are one step closer to employable! Connie Mack just slipped an amendment into the 2008 Foreign Operations Appropriations Bill that would expand Voice of America and beam it over to Venezuela in order to convince them to stop voting for people we don’t like.
Mack’s press release doesn’t specify exactly what its going to cost us taxpayers, but our programming to Cuba has run up a $250 million dollar tab over the past decade, and um, Venezuela is quite a bit larger than Cuba and sort of on another continent, so you can imagine.
This is a really important move, Mack tells us, because in Venezuela, “the only thing the people can see or hear are the things that Hugo Chavez lets his media print and broadcast.” If true, then Chavez has some seriously diverse tastes, and a lot of freaking time on his hands to monitor it all.
Here’s a listing of what’s playing on Venezuelan cable TV tonight. Apparently Chavez has personally approved news coverage by opposition station Globovision, as well as international carriers like CNN, Fox News and the BBC. He’s also given the thumbs up to “Los Dukes de Hazzard,” “La Famila Ingalls,” and, awesomely, “Los Angeles de Charlie.” That, along with the full programming schedules of about 200 other domestic and international stations. Seriously, it’s a wonder he has any time left over to hate our way of life--although if he actually sat through that all-day marathon of Talladega Nights on channel 414, I sort of don't blame him.
I just hope Mack has slipped in an enormous advertising budget for VOA.Ve. If it gets lost in all those TV options, people might start to think it’s a big ol' waste of our tax dollars.
