In his continuing campaign against the corrupting influences of Yankee imperialism, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has taken aim at the twin scourges of free speech and golf.
In recent weeks, Chavez has closed 32 private radio stations, proposed a law providing prison terms for “media crimes” and announced the closings of two public golf courses to make room for affordable housing or a socialist university campus or a park or something. Anything.
“Golf is a bourgeois sport,” Chavez declared on his weekly radio program on state-sponsored radio. “Do you mean to tell me this is a people’s sport? It is not.”
You have to wonder if the protestations about the idle rich and their motorized golf carts mask the frustrations of a closet 28 handicapper. Fidel Castro, the godfather of Chavez’s socialist ambitions, had little use for the sport, either — especially after he shot a much-publicized 150 against Che Guevara in 1961. Many of Cuba’s finest pre-revolutionary golf courses had already been covered with military barracks.
Contempt for capitalist values hasn’t stopped other strongmen from enjoying the links, especially in places where independent news organizations have already been vanquished. On his very first golf outing, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il recorded a 38-under-par 34, according to accounts in the state-controlled media. Throughout the late 1990s, Dear Leader routinely made four or five aces per round. Really.
We’re not sure where Chavez got the idea that you have to be a millionaire to get the shanks. The parking lots at Chicago’s and Cook County’s public courses are packed with proletariat duffers. (It used to be that if you knew someone on the County Board you could clout a prime tee time — even play for free — but that’s another story.)
In recent years, governments around the world have come to embrace the idle rich as a vital revenue source. China reportedly has more than 300 courses, and Russia is enjoying a mini-boom. Raul Castro, no longer stuck carrying the clubs for Fidel, is pursuing deals with Canadian and European companies to build up to 10 golf resorts to bring badly needed tourist dollars to Cuba.
Chavez, meanwhile, has been closing courses at a clip of about three per year. Bolivarians do not wear plaid pants.
“I respect all sports,” he explains. “But there are sports, and then there are sports.”
Spoken like a man who fears he’s no match, even now, for Kim Jong Il.
