Anne Applebaum Speaks Truth to Weeniehood as Sean Penn Visits Hugo

Anne Applebaum is a multilingual polymath who wrote Gulag, arguably one of the top five books of the twenty-first century just as Solzhenitsyn's Gulag Archipelago was arguably one of the most influential books of the twentieth century. The end-product of socialist dictatorships was vividly described in both books with encyclopedic accuracy and horror.

So why do Americans, especially those never disciplined as children, go to places where governments impose iron restrictions on whole populaces, forgetting the lessons that Anne and Alexander have imparted so well? Anne takes a look at unspanked Sean & Naomi, the cellphone-throwing runway looker, and draws lessons herself from their visits to revolutionary Venezuela and its revolting leader Hugo.

After a wonderful tongue-in-cheek understated must-read pair of descriptions of the two superdupers above in Caracas, she gets to the point:

In fact, for the malcontents of Hollywood, academia, and the catwalks, Chávez is an ideal ally. Just as the sympathetic foreigners whom Lenin called "useful idiots" once supported Russia abroad, their modern equivalents provide the Venezuelan president with legitimacy, attention, and good photographs. He, in turn, helps them overcome the frustration John Reed once felt—the frustration of living in an annoyingly unrevolutionary country where people have to change things by law. For all his brilliance, Reed could not bring socialism to America. For all his wealth, fame, media access, and Hollywood power, Sean Penn cannot oust George W. Bush. But by showing up in the company of Chávez, he can at least get a lot more attention for his opinions.

As for Venezuelan politics, or the Venezuelan people, they don't matter at all. The country is simply playing a role filled in the past by Russia, Cuba, and Nicaragua—a role to which it is, at the moment, uniquely suited. Clearly, Venezuela is easier to idealize than Iran and North Korea, the former's attitude to women being not conducive to fashion models, the latter being downright hostile to Hollywood. Venezuela is also warm, relatively close, and a country of beautiful waterfalls.

Most of all, Venezuela's leader not only dislikes the American president—so do most other heads of state—but refers to him as "the devil," a "dictator," a "madman," and a "killer." Who cares what Chávez actually does when Sean Penn isn't looking? Ninety years after the tragedy of the Russian revolution, Venezuela has become the "kingdom more bright than any heaven had to offer" for a whole new generation of fellow-travelers. As long as the oil lasts.

Anne Applebaum and Peggy Noonan are the two most brilliant, classy journalists of our generation, distaff department. And maybe of any department.