MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

New York reacts: calls Chavez “oil pimp” and UN “cheap bordello”

Although there has been no official Washington reaction to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez offensive remarks towards US President George W. Bush during his Wednesday United States speech, New York's sensationalist press had a binge.

Headlines such as "El Loco Lefty rants at Bush" or the "the featured clown of the 61st UN General Assembly was Venezuela's strongman" in The New York Post give an idea of how the Venezuelan president was treated.

The "Daily News" published a front page picture saying "Hasta la vista baby and take the UN with you" and described Chavez as an "oil pimp" and the United Nations as a "cheap bordello".

Both newspapers agreed with President Chavez that it was an excellent idea to have the UN moved away from New York and taken to Venezuela if he so wished.

"You're more than welcome, please, to take the atrophied, self-abasing remains of a global ideal 2,100 miles to Caracas, where you can play the messianic oil baron game to your heart's content with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, fresh in from Tehran, perhaps with a dirty bomb in his suitcase".

"You can take the UN, and you can shove it ? there".

"And you can shove the gasoline you sell to Americans through Citgo, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Venezuelan national oil company through which you are bribing your way into international power".

"United Nations, the parliament of mankind? Naw. A cheap bordello".

Further on the newspaper underlined that "Chavez's attempt at being the class clown was one of the most outrageous UN performances since Yasser Arafat, the late head of the Palestine Liberation Organization, wore a pistol into the General Assembly and Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev banged his shoe on a desk".

From Washington the White House said it "was not going to dignify those comments with a response."

U.S. Ambassador to the UN John Bolton called Chavez's performance a "comic strip approach to international affairs."

But former President Bill Clinton said Chavez's rant was a "mistake" that backfired. "He's not hurting us, he's just hurting himself and his country," Clinton said on CNN's "Larry King Live." "It's OK with me if he wants to disagree with the Bush administration's policies. I disagree with a lot of the Bush administration policies," he added. "But this kind of personal demonization is the very thing I'm trying to stop".

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice panned Chavez's performance as "not becoming for a head of state."

The New York Times on the other hand only addressed the Chavez performance in its inside pages and The Washington Post had a minimum reference in the front page saying that the "harshness" of the Venezuelan leader's criticisms "had surprised quite a few people".