Chavez launches Golf War

[MB_722]

Venezuelan leader toys with closing courses, denounces `bourgeois' sport for `lazy' duffers who ride in carts

Aug 13, 2009 04:30 AM
Simon Romero
NEW YORK TIMES

CARACAS–Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's political movement has found a new target: golf.

After a tirade against the sport by Chavez on television last month, pro-Chavez officials have moved in recent weeks to shut down two of the country's best-known golf courses – in Maracay and Caraballeda.

"Golf is a bourgeois sport," Chavez said during a live broadcast of his Sunday TV program. He repeated the word "bourgeois" as if he were swallowing castor oil. He went on to mock the use of golf carts as illustrating the sport's lazy quality.

If the course closings go ahead, the number of courses shut down in the country since 2006 will be about nine, said Julio Torres, director of the Venezuelan Golf Federation.

Most of the closed courses are in oil regions and were initially built for Americans working in the industry. Chavez's purge of dissidents from the state oil company focused suspicion on golf courses, viewed as bastions of the old elite.

A housing shortage has also pushed the government's hand, Chavez 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 stretch over about 30 hectares of coveted real estate.

"Just so some little group of the bourgeois and the petit-bourgeois can go and play golf," said Chavez, a noted baseball fan, during his TV program.

Critics of the anti-golf campaign point out that Venezuela's top ally, Cuba, is going in the opposite direction.

Canadian and European investors are seeking to build up to 10 new courses as part of a bid to raise tourist revenues.

"China has more than 300 golf courses, and look what's happening here," said Torres. "We're going from 28 courses to 18.'

lol

[Hugo Chavez]

What a coincidence... I hate golf.   Stupid and boring sport.  irritating watching a few elitist egomanics taking up huge amounts of land to wack balls through the air.

[MB_722]

LOL ^^

I enjoy playin it

[Soul Crusher]

What a coincidence... I hate golf.   Stupid and boring sport.  irritating watching a few elitist egomanics taking up huge amounts of land to wack balls through the air.

Regardless, I hate golf too, but these are the actions of a dictator out of control. 

[George Whorewell]

I read about this horseshit in both the post and daily news this morning.

Its kind of ironic that Cuba is actually trying to build golf courses-- You would think Hugo would take a page from Castro's playbook.

[loco]

"He went on to mock the use of golf carts as illustrating the sport's lazy quality."   

And this is coming from a lazy fat bastardo.

[Hugo Chavez]

haha, I love it.  I take it back, maybe he would be good for America

[GigantorX]

"He went on to mock the use of golf carts as illustrating the sport's lazy quality."   

And this is coming from a lazy fat bastardo.

I wonder what he thinks of his economically destroyed nation and the fact that it's his fault?

Yeah, close those gold courses, Hugo...I'm sure that will get the population in line!