Chavistas target golf

Posted By Joshua Keating Wednesday, August 12, 2009 - 1:06 PM Share

The New York Times's Simon Romero reports that Hugo Chávez really doesn't like golf, which means no one else in Venezuela is allowed to:

After a brief tirade against the sport by the president on national television last month, pro-Chávez officials have moved in recent weeks to shut down two of the country’s best-known golf courses, in Maracay, a city of military garrisons near here, and in the coastal city of Caraballeda.
“Let’s leave this clear,” Mr. Chávez said during a live broadcast of his Sunday television program. “Golf is a bourgeois sport,” he said, repeating the word “bourgeois” as if he were swallowing castor oil. Then he went on, mocking the use of golf carts as a practice illustrating the sport’s laziness.[...]
A housing shortage has also pushed the government’s hand, Mr. Chávez said last month, when he questioned why Maracay had so many slums while the golf course and the grounds of the state-owned Hotel Maracay, a decaying modernist gem built in the 1950s, stretch over about 74 acres of coveted real estate.
“Just so some little group of the bourgeois and the petit-bourgeois can go and play golf,” he said during his television program.[...]
“I respect all sports,” he said. “But there are sports and there are sports. Do you mean to tell me this is a people’s sport?”
He then answered the question: “It is not.”

I'm generally not a big fan of Chávez's politics or economic policies, but I'm with him on this one. Golfers require entirely too much space to play their maddeningly boring sport. On the other hand, as Times blogger Robert Mackey points out, some of Chávez's heroes might not like his principled anti-golf stance.

Flickr user: R'eyes

EXPLORE:LATIN AMERICA, SPORTS

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TORTMASTER

2:57 PM ET

August 12, 2009

Opinions

Aren't opinions great? Mr. Keating and Mr. Chavez happen to agree that golf is unnecessary. Mr. Keating writes about his opinion on a foreign policy blog. In Mr. Chavez's case he takes his opinion about something and forces everybody to live in accordance with his whim no matter how picayune the issue. I think that's called "fascism."

JOSHUA KEATING

5:01 PM ET

August 12, 2009

just to clarify

I don't actually agree that golf should be BANNED. Please don't take the post literally.

ALLRISE

6:17 AM ET

August 13, 2009

AllRise Court

The people are voting at AllRise.com community court for the case: Hugo Chávez VS. Golf. The Charge: Golf is a bourgeois sport for lazy people. What do you think? Cast your vote http://bit.ly/lhkfT

APARICIO

10:36 AM ET

August 13, 2009

It is true

I agree on one thing. Golf is not a sport, it is game, cool game, relaxing, but a game at last.

THOMAS79

10:57 AM ET

August 13, 2009

How insightful

On last weeks episode of "Chavez Knows Best".

AARON W

1:31 AM ET

August 17, 2009

Bourgeoisie is a

Bourgeoisie is a classification used in analyzing human societies to describe a social class of people. Historically, the bourgeoisie comes from the middle or merchant classes of the Middle Ages, whose status or power came from employment, education, and wealth, as distinguished from those whose power came from being born into an aristocratic family of land owners. In modern times, it is the class owning the means for producing wealth. This forms the basis of Marxism – Marx observed that the majority could only sell their labor for a wage, instead of a cash advance for products or services they made themselves.

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