J– D– stared at the crowd from the stoop of her apartment building with look of dismay.
“These people don’t realize what they have done,” she muttered.
Excerpt from an AP story on the apparent success of Hugo Chavez’s referendum that would allow him to remain president (i.e., dictator) for life. In the fourth paragraph — whether from naivete, imbecility, or malice — the reporter quotes by name a Caracas woman expressing dismay at the turn of events. He might as well have shot her in the head himself, right then and there. Now that her dissent has been bruited about the world, embarrassing the great Hugo, her life isn’t worth a red centavo.
Like the poor souls before them in the captive nations of Europe and Asia, Venezuelans will soon learn not talk to reporters from the U.S., or they’ll parrot the party line to save their necks — and journalistic morons will use their quotes to show that a murderous tyrant enjoys the support of his oppressed people.