A Kennedy shills for Chavez

Examiner Editorial:

John F. Kennedy would no doubt be horrified to see his nephew self-righteously shilling for a tin-horn communist dictator like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. JFK was a liberal on most domestic issues, but on foreign policy, he was an ardent anti-communist.

Countless movies and documentaries have been made about Kennedy's shining moment, the Cuban Missile Crisis. That was October 1962, when he forced Premier Nikita Khruschev to blink first and withdraw the Soviets’ nuclear-tipped missiles from Marxist dictator Fidel Castro’s Cuba, just 90 miles south of Florida.

Today, there is nothing at all bright about the way JFK’s nephew Joe – named after the oldest Kennedy son, who died bravely fighting the Nazis – is prostituting the family name on behalf of one of Castro’s closest allies and an avowed enemy of America.

Joe Kennedy appears in radio and TV spots offering low-income Americans a 40 percent discount on a one-time delivery of up to 200 gallons of heating oil. "Help is on the way," a Windbreaker-clad Kennedy promises in the ad, "from Citgo and our friends in Venezuela." He never mentions Chavez, nor does he explain why Venezuela, with a 2007 per capita gross domestic product of just $6,900 (less than Croatia or Belarus) would send highly discounted oil to a country with a per capita GDP of $43,500.

This is the same Chavez who expropriated U.S.-owned oil firms, then gave sweetheart deals to Chinese and Russian energy companies. He has repealed basic freedoms of press and speech, and was just barely prevented recently from becoming president for life.

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Curiously, despite his wealth, Kennedy receives a $400,000 annual salary. Instead of embracing his uncle's courageous anti-communist legacy, he has become just another smarmy celebrity who yammers on about having compassion for the poor from the doorways of multimillion-dollar mansions and private jets, all the while accepting oil stolen by a dictator. Lenin had a name for Western liberals who did this kind of thing – "useful idiots."

This guy is a disgrace. He should be an embarrassment to his family, but that family has been embarrassing itself for 40 years with such luminaries as Sen. Ted. In this family the smart ones were unfortunately murdered or killed in World War II. It has become a survival of the least fit for public leadership.