Today’s Hugo Chavez ’stemwinder’ at the UN – which saw the Venezuelan Mussolini wannabe calling Bush Satan, replete with sulphurous fumes, while waving around a tome by Noam Chomsky – was certainly a plus for both subjects … Bush, already recovering in the polls, gets a further boost from the thug’s almost comical attack (”Live in New York… it’s Hugo Chavez!”) and the the multi-millionaire marxiste gets another goose to his already copious book sales. [Will there be Chomsky t-shirts a la Che?-ed. Nah, not good-looking enough.]

The big loser was, of course, the United Nations, not the least because Chavez was saluted for his efforts by a hearty round of applause. As I have written numerous times on this blog, I am a supporter of the UN. (That is why I was so outraged by Oil-for-Food.) But now I wonder if it’s salvageable as do, no doubt, many Americans whose tax dollars provide the primary support for what looks increasingly like a social club for sociopaths (Chavez, Ahmadinejad) and kleptocrats (Chirac, Kofi and the whole Oil-for-Food crowd.) What started out as a great liberal idea has turned into an almost perfectly reactionary institution – a common metamorphosis, alas. And after this change, as is also often common, an entirely new class ^[1] has risen up to protect the institution and its perquisites. The question confronting us now is how to break this pattern.

UPDATE: Claudia Rosett – who, as we know, is a close student of the UN – may have found the answer ^[2]. [Certainly makes sense to me.-ed. For once we agree.]