Caracas Chronicles

Quico says: A taste of TVES, the new State run Channel 2, from my inbox…

So I woke up this morning after last night’s sob-fest at RCTV to see aerobic tae- bo kick boxing on Channel 2. Like tanned and fake-titted instructors in gym-tights dancing to something that sounded like sped up Daft Punk or one of those cheesy pop-house bands. This went on for some time, interrupted later by some requisite negritos with tambores.

By the time I got to the office there was some kind of show of people doing some kind of snow/ice sailing, it didn’t look horribly Venezuelan, though maybe there’s a place at the top of Pico Bolivar that’s flat enough for that sort of thing. Then we saw several hours of cameras panning across cute schoolchildren, their mouths open with ponderance as they glanced around the room like disoriented refugees. Lost track of things for a while, but when I came back there was some translated movie, I suspected German, about blond girl of maybe 10 and some guy about my age, at some point she drops a bunch of change onto a store counter to buy some alcohol to impress him, later shoots a toy arrow at some woman she doesn’t like, then gets behind the wheel of Mr. Robinson’s Volvo and threatens to run him over.

I’m sure they’ll have Chavez on screen for most of the time over the next couple months, at least as soon as they run out of German socialist movies and National Geographic specials dubbed into Spanish. They’ve also apparently dredged up a 1970s Argentine soap opera in what appears to be an attempt to pass it off as local content.

Socialism I tell you.

Why does this remind me so much of this old Simpsons clip?