I heard it was you
Talkin' bout a world where all is free
It just couldn't be
And only a fool would say that

--Steely Dan

Greetings from the AP bureau, where I'm seeing three computer screens right now. It's election day. I've been up since 4:30 am, out roaming the polls since quarter to 6am - on a fucking Sunday. It's now nearly 10pm and I'm still "on call." Think, like, a doctor - except with no marketable skills.

Or, to be more specific, the only task I've been assigned in the last four hours was to order pizza for the office and go downstairs to wait for the guy. Since it's Sunday the front entrance is locked and you have to tap on the door to ask the security guard to let you back in. That means, someone off the street could just totally jack you, and instead of being able to scramble inside like on a normal weekday you'd have to politely knock first.

And that means, they really sent me out there as bait - you know, to draw out the thugs and thieves, and once those guys were out of the way someone else could descend and safely fetch the pies. This place is fantastic.

This morning I was slammed, talking to about 30 different citizens on the street. A mix of enthusiastic Chavez-voters, and embittered opposition supporters, whose leadership withdrew their candidates saying the elections were a fraud. They were still gonna lose under the best of conditions and they knew it. Pussies.

So I'd get a few quotes, phone them in to the bureau chief, he would say "Hm. Try and and get someone to say ____," then I would then hang up and slam my head against the nearest brick wall. This cycle repeated over several hours. I now have serious brain damage. You can tell. Because I cannot write sentences with multiple clauses.

Thus far, the last quote at the bottom of this update is the only one of my 30 people to make it into print. I am in no mood, ladies and gentlemen.

However, running across Caracas guerilla-style, talking to as many Chavistas versus opposition as possible inside three hours, gave me renewed perspective on this fuckin' monkey circus of a country.



*****************************************************************************



Before I ever flew down here, I read several news features that sympathized with Chavez's supporters and scoffed at the opposition as elitist and out of touch.

I'm starting to see where those writers were coming from.

On Friday, I had a cabbie tell me the thousands of red-shirted Chavez supporters, whose numbers stretched for blocks, were all government workers bussed in and forced to participate in the protest march.

Really? So those miners I interviewed from the rural interior were really just hack beauracrats? And a government that's incapable of collecting garbage out of the fucking streets managed to coordinate thousands of workers all over the country - covertly - to travel to Caracas and pose as genuine supporters...inside 24 hours?

And according to the cabbie, Chavez has the nerve to offer the Venezuelan poor cheap subsidized food...of low quality! "Um, isn't it better to have food of some quality than no food at all?" I threw out there. And I'm not a smart man, ladies and gentlemen.

"That's just it," he answered, "Chavez doesn't give them the chance to get better food." His point was Chavez keeps the poor in their place so he can hold onto their support through benevolent social programs.

You know, as opposed to the previous political parties, which led bold initiatives to really help the poor excel in life beyond the bare necessit-oh wait that never happened.

But then again, Chavez does put a lot of creepy Orwellian government propoganda on the food packaging.

And from what I've witnessed this week, you can put on a red shirt, a red cap, and run for office and the people will elect you without question. In fact, you're lookin' at Dickie Cronkita, diputado socialista of Caracas' Ninth Ward.

One man's Will of the People is another's Tyranny of the Majority. I can definitely understand the Opposition's nerves here, because if you don't like Chavez you're fucked. The man's unstoppable and not going anywhere for a long time. The main chant at a pro-government rally? Ooh! Ah! Chaaavez no se va!

(Spanish impaired: "Ooh. Ah. Chavez is not leaving." Got it?)

In fact, if Chavez wins a supermajority in the congress with this election, he'll be able to change the constitution to repeal presidential term limits. He's said he wants to "stay in politics" until the year 2021. Yikes, don't get ahead of yourself there dude. Or democracy, for that matter.



****************************************************************************



But the opposition's still cluelessly elitist. One woman slammed him for not being "intellectual" and "presidential" enough - he doesn't act like a proper statesman. Which, when you flip that on its head, is the same as saying he's too much like the people. Yeah, I hate it when leaders speak their minds - why can't they just be more like your standard politician? She said he speaks too sencillamente (SI: "simply.") She just expressed this incredible disdain and disgust for the everyman, and she didn't even realize it...

She wondered why Chavez couldn't be more like Uribe - the president of Colombia. You know, the country mired in paramilitary civil war. Why can't you be more like your brother, Chavez? I mean clearly, Uribe's statesman-like style is working wonders next door.

She did make the legit point that Chavez has this brutish style. There's a reason why people call Chavez a payaso. (SI: "clown") They're right - his speaking style has been so repetitive and so antagonistic over the years it's reached the point of parody and goofiness.

Someone needs to stand up to Bush, but Chavez takes a shot at Bush literally every fucking speech he makes, regardless of the subject. He's become a one-trick pony, as an AP-er outside of the bureau reasoned last week. After a while, you stop taking him seriously...it's undeniably clownish. So I'll give the lady that much.

And here's the kicker: At first she didn't want to give me her name. Her friends had to convince her. This woman was genuinely scared of government retribution if her name wound up in print. And I've heard enough whispers and stories to believe that element's out there. Plus the Chavez gov't is cracking down on a private media and press. The media's been unapologetically slanted and reckless and irresponsible over the years, but reigning them in with censorship and criminal penalties doesn't make you any better, in my book.

But Venezuela's elite lives in its own insular existence. Even down to a trip to the grocery store - I can't do it justice on paper. You'll be behind someone, and they'll just park their cart so it perfectly blocks your path and wander off. This happens a lot. They're really in their own little bubble and it shows in so many little ways.



***************************************************************************



Maybe I'm hedging too much, but look: Neither side's hands are clean. It's just - it's complicated.

I am gonna miss the hell out of story down here, and not being a part of the action as it advances without me. I am gonna miss the hell out of the women down here. (I'm already putting my mail-order bride business together to help pay off loans.)

BUT if God blesses me, I'll live to tuck my grandkids in and tell them scary bedtime stories of the time Grandpa Dickie lived in Caracas...