Sunday, November 11, 2007

"Why don't you shut up?"

The prime minister of Spain was in Buenos Aires yesterday, after participating in the Ibero-American summit in Chile.

Having tenuously linked this post to Buenos Aires, I'll continue:

The summit in Chile wasn't exactly a love fest.

Uruguay and Argentina are in the midst of a diplomatic row over a paper mill in Uruguay that Argentina says will lead to unacceptable pollution.

And then Spain and Venezuela got into it.

Venezuela's Hugo Chávez called the former Spanish prime minister a fascist several times, which prompted the current Spanish prime minister to attempt to respond. . . .

. . . which prompted Chávez to not shut the hell up, even though his mic was off.

Which leads us to King Juan Carlos of Spain — who should certainly know a fascist when he sees one — wagging his finger at Chávez and asking him why he won't shut up.

Not really becoming a monarch, but sort of great anyway.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

When I saw this on tv yesterday, my first reaction was disbelief that it was happening... then I couldn't stop laughing. Juan Carlos is my idol.

Matt said...

completely crazy (but understandable)...in diplomatic terms, king john charles' reaction was the equivalent of invading poland...

Anonymous said...

Matt - Chavez really needs to be told that more often, so if the king of Spain is the only one who has the balls to do it... kudos to him. Diplomacy can be boring :)

Dan said...

It's also nice to see how Zapatero is so level-headed the whole time. It's really a credit to him.

The worst part of it really is the mileage Chávez is getting out of it.

Anyway, I love how it's spawned a mini-meme. The papers say people are using "¿Por qué no te callas?" as a ringtone . . . and someone registered porquenotecallas.com.

Hysterical.

If I don't post for a few days, it is because I am hard at work on "¿Por qué no te callas?", sung to the tune of "Macarena" and featuring the Por qué no te callas Dancers!