Jeez-- guy really knows how to abuse a metaphor, doesn't he?
----- Original Message -----
From: michael a. lebowitz
To: [email protected]
Sent: Sunday, June 03, 2007 1:55 PM
Subject: Re: [PEN-L] Re: [PEN-L] Re: [PEN-L] The current
counter-revolutionary offensive in Venezuela - what it means and how to defeat
it
At 11:39 03/06/2007, jim wrote:
here are some letters to the editor of the L.A. TIMES that seem relevant:
Re "Chavez didn't start this media war," Opinion, May 30
People such as Bart Jones are willing to embrace tyrants as long as
these tyrants speak against the U.S. government.
SNIP
GUSTAVO CORONEL
McLean, Va. [interesting location...]
--
Gustavo is an old vzlan oil guy-- think he was on the BoD of the old PDVSA.
His most interesting (to me) outburst from a while back:
They are bringing Lebowitz in
the eighth inning but the game
is already 9 to 1
By Gustavo Coronel
December 2, 2003
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Left hander relief pitcher Mike Lebowitz walked slowly to the mound of
the Caracas baseball stadium. He had been brought at the last minute from
Havana, from the Vedado neighborhood to be exact, where he had been living for
a while, trying to understand Latin American baseball and politics. As he
walked to the mound he felt like a beached whale. He had no knowledge of the
opponents, not even a good feeling for his own team. He had been reading a book
by Marta Harnecker, "Harnecker" as he calls her, but he knew that Chileans do
not play baseball. Furthermore the book was in Spanish. From what little he had
seen so far, his team was not even revolutionary in the orthodox sense of the
word. At best the game was being played by two teams of the bourgeoisie, not by
a truly revolutionary team opposing the hated oligarchies. And there he he
was, coming in to pitch for a team which seemed to be simply looking for a
political reshuffling and not for a true change. "What am I doing here?" he
thought. But as he thought that, it was already too late. Manager Gregory
Wilpert was handing him the ball.
The problem with Lebowitz is that he is not a baseball player. He
probably plays good hockey, at least he looks like a hockey player, but they
brought him to Caracas to play a game he did not know anything about. His
knowledge of Latin baseball was only theoretical. In the case of Venezuelan
baseball it was only based on whatever books Marta told him and this is not the
proper way to play the game. The pitcher he was relieving, Greg Palast, had
gone back to London in disgrace, after allowing several runs by the opposition.
Manager Wilpert only had Lebowitz left in the bullpen. The star of the team,
first baseman Chávez, has had a disatrous performance. He committed several
costly errors which allowed the opposing team to build a comfortable lead.
Lebowitz felt this was unfair. The game is already lost, he felt, and no matter
how good I look in relief I will not get any credit.
He decided, therefore, to do the minimum possible effort on behalf of a
team he did not trust. For all he knew, the good guys were the others. He would
be going back to Havana, where he would write an esay on the unusual type of
baseball played in Venezuela.
The main problem with Lebowitz is that he lives in a predominantly
theoretical, academic world. If you pitch "this way," theory says, the batter
will strike out. But whenever he tries to put this theory into practice, he
gets clobbered. Considering his significant cultural limitations, he did as
well in Venezuela as a Venezuelan would have done shoveling snow in British
Columbia.
© 2003 Gustavo Coronel
Michael A. Lebowitz
Professor Emeritus
Economics Department
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C., Canada V5A 1S6
Director, Programme in 'Transformative Practice and Human Development'
Centro Internacional Miranda, P.H.
Residencias Anauco Suites, Parque Central, final Av. Bolivar
Caracas, Venezuela
fax: 0212 5768274/0212 5777231
http//:centrointernacionalmiranda.gob.ve
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
