The last time a dictator spent a long time dying, generating repetitious reports of his impending death, Saturday Night Live, then it in its very first year, mocked the tyrant with periodic bulletins: "Breaking news: Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead."

After Franco's death, Chevy Chase, reader of the news on NBC's Saturday Night's comedic news segment Weekend Update, announced the dictator's death and read a quotation from Richard Nixon: "General Franco was a loyal friend and ally of the United States. He earned worldwide respect for Spain through firmness and fairness."[1] As an ironic counterpoint to this, a picture was displayed behind Chase, showing Franco giving the fascist salute alongside Adolf Hitler.

Hugo Chavez is almost certain to escape such a fate.  In fact the American Left is unmasking itself as totalitarian in inclination. Chavez did what the American Left aspires to - taking away private wealth in the name of the people, grabbing companies, controlling the media with an iron fist, allying with America-haters such as Iran, Hezb'allah, and Cuba, spreading socialism internationally, and driving Jews out of the country. At least so must one conclude looking att he likes of this from The Nation, probably the most influential publication on the left. (hat tip: Hot Air)

Chávez was a strongman. He packed the courts, hounded the corporate media, legislated by decree and pretty much did away with any effective system of institutional checks or balances. But I'll be perverse and argue that the biggest problem Venezuela faced during his rule was not that Chávez was authoritarian but that he wasn't authoritarian enough. It wasn't too much control that was the problem but too little.

The Left hated Franco because he fought against the communists and Left in the Spanish Civil War (allied with that other socialist, Hitler). At least, as was the case with Chile's Pinochet, the dictatorship mellowed, and the economy grew, albeit not in the same degree as Chile. The Left ruins an economy, punishes the successful, and  concentrates power and wealth in the hands of apparatchiks. Until it runs out of other people's money.

Chavez deserves mockery, not piety and mourning. It is up to conservatives in the blogosphere to come up with the comedy, and it is already starting: