Alvaro Vargas Llosa, an author of The Complete Guide To The Perfect Latin American Idiot (it has a whole chapter on Castro worship) and now, Liberty for Latin America: How to undo 500 years of state oppression will be interviewed by Jim Lehrer of PBS.

Alvaro Vargas Llosa is one of the world’s foremost experts on Latin America. Like Hernando de Soto, he’s a Peruvian, and he’s now at the Independent Institute, in Oakland. When people ask me where I learned about the place, I always point in his direction. He is one of the most brilliant and interesting intellectuals of the day and on every single issue, he is spot on. He knows the deal. He understands revolutions. He picks the buffoons. He’s someone everyone needs to listen to – a lot!

At least Lehrer is. Lehrer, you may recall, was the Perfect Schmuck who ignored the topic of Latin America in Miami during the first televised presidential debate on foreign policy, annoying me, annoying Miami Herald columnist Andres Oppenheimer, and even annoying Hugo Chavez, all three of whom complained about it one way or another. It looks like the guy is finally waking up because he is listening to a first-rater like Alvaro Vargas Llosa.

Don’t miss it. The details are here:

Senior Fellow Alvaro Vargas
Llosa will appear this evening on PBS-TV’s program, “The NewsHour
with Jim Lehrer”, which also airs on National Public Radio (NPR):

Friday, April 29, 2005
Airs on PBS, 6:00-7:00 p.m. local time throughout the U.S., but check
your local listings
Airs on NPR live 6:00-7:00 p.m. ET (3:00-4:00 p.m. PT)

UPDATE: Well, it was television, I just saw it. Schmuck Lehrer STILL couldn’t be bothered about Latin America so he had some underling with a Spanish name, Suarez, do it. I thought that was pretty tokenish, asking to myself, ‘is this guy really interested in Latam?’ Or was he just a token? From the lacklustre questions he asked, I was willing to guess the latter. And it infuriates me! I don’t like the ghettoizing of Latin America on the mainstream of TV news at all. ‘Latin hour, save it for the Latinos,’ I can imagine Lehrer saying. Such a goldarn schmuck! Latin America is not just for Latin Americans anymore, it is everyone in this hemisphere’s concern.

Of course Vargas Llosa and the other fellow from Duke University who was on were both gracious. But the quality of the questions was weak. And they saved the whole segment for the tail end of the show. It had a boring title – it was vaguely identified as ‘a view from South America,’ forgetting that the problems discussed were endemic to all of the region, not just the South American countries. They should have said Latin America. The Lehrer stand-in was not utterly dumb but not very enthusiastic. He probably wanted to be somewhere else. Also, he showed bad manners to Vargas Llosa.

Vargas Llosa explained and outlined the current struggle for the OAS leadership with the dramatic development in the last few hours of Mexico’s Derbez pulling out of the race, clearing the way for Hugo Chavez’s favorite candidate, Inzulza to be named chief. Vargas Llosa was just about to explain the significance of it and he was cut off right at the punch line. I definitely wanted to slap that Suarez guy. The polite thing for a newscaster with limited time to do is signal to the guest that there is 30 seconds remaining so he can concentrate his thoughts. No such luck from Suarez. He just cut Vargas Llosa off all of a sudden and moved on to the next segment. I was disgusted. Vargas Llosa was very interesting and clearly had something interesting to say. My guess is: Suarez, along with Lehrer, were not interested. They remain schmucks.

UPDATE II: I think I was right – I googled Ray Suarez, who as it turns out, is a distinguised enough journo on the American scene. But based on his past reporting, he doesn’t know beans about Latam. He’s pure Mister Domestic Issues. Therefore, throwing him in with a giant of Vargas Llosa’s caliber was a little above his head. I bet he didn’t have the slightest clue about what Vargas Llosa was getting at.