What a difference a week makes.  According to Jake Tapper of ABC News, last week Eduardo Galeano's book "Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent" was hovering in obscurity, Amazon sales rank 54,295.  Then Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez not so graciously gifted U.S. President Barack  Obama (D) with the book which blasts the policies of the U.S. in South America.  Pow! The book zoomed to the number 2 spot and is going strong.  
 
Hooray for the free market!  Other American critics are also doing well on Galeano's and Chavez's coattails; those who bought the book not only purchased Galeano's other books they also added to their hate America collection books with titles such as "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" by Naomi Klein and others of that ilk.  Of course in the evil, free market, free country of the USA people can openly buy and read books that criticize their country without worrying about police knocking at their door and hauling them off to prison for such activity. 
 
Interestingly enough, Obama's gifts of American DVDs to Britain's Prime Minister Gordon Brown last month didn't cause a similar rise of sales in Britain.  Perhaps that was because Obama's gift wouldn't work on the British DVD player format.  Chavez, who has publicly referred to Obama as an ignoramus, (his term, not mine so calm down you obsessive Obama groupies) thoughtfully did not gift Obama with the English translation of the book; Obama's diversity commitment does not extend to languages.   
 
For Galeano, Obama has definitely proven to be a change he can believe in, a man giving him hope.  And loads of financial security.  Now he'll have the time and money to write another hate America book, surely soon to be a major American movie. 
 
Is this a great country or what?  This is a great country--we aren't scared of Eduardo Galeano no matter how often our current president apologizes.