For His Gratitude to Hugo Chavez, Joe Kennedy II Takes the First 'Fearless Comment' Award

I like it when our leaders plainly speak their minds, when they don’t hold their tongues, when they don’t weigh their words oh so carefully.

I like it, in other words, when they act like normal human beings with normal human emotions, like anger, resentment and scorn, as opposed to poll-obsessed Caspar Milquetoasts.

A good example:

Barney Frank, the recently retired Congressman, was once asked by a reporter if he thought the members of the Boston City Council should be elected at-large, meaning by voters across the entire city.

“The question isn’t whether they should be allowed to run at large,” Frank immediately responded, “the question is whether they should be allowed to remain at large.”

In the interest of promoting outspokenness by elected officials, I have decided today to institute a Fearless Comment awards program.

To win, all someone has to do is say something gutsy and at least a little bit controversial in public.

Awards will be made not on an annual basis but rather whenever a leader says something I consider a Fearless Comment.   I want to encourage such behavior as much as possible.

I am chronically strapped for cash, so there will be no prize money attached to these awards.  I’ve had to rule out fancy looking citations, too.

Winners will get only the weirdly fulfilling satisfaction that comes from seeing their names in bold face and their words immortalized in the Massachusetts Politics Blog.

Of course, if some wealthy benefactor were to take a shine to the Fearless Comments program and donate a large sum in order to establish a cash awards component, I’d welcome him like a brother -- as long as he’s OK with my charging a reasonable administrative overhead fee (80%).  Blogging is surprisingly expensive.

The first Fearless Comment award recipient is Joseph P. Kennedy, II, son of the late Robert F. Kennedy and father of our state’s newest member of the Congress, Joseph P. Kennedy, III.

Since quitting the U.S. House of Representatives many years ago, Joe the Second has devoted himself to Citizens Energy Corp., which provides free and discounted home heating oil to low-income folks in 16 states and the District of Columbia.  Hugo Chavez, the leftist President of Venezuela and close friend of Fidel Castro, donates roughly half a billion dollars’ worth of that oil yearly to Citizens Energy.  Not surprisingly, Kennedy has often been criticized for his business relationship with a man widely perceived as an enemy of America.  Chavez is infamous for, among other things, calling former President George W. Bush “the devil” during a speech at the United Nations.

This past Friday, March 1, the NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams broadcast a story on the Citizens Energy-Hugo Chavez link. 

In a clip taken from one of the long-running “Joe 4 Oil” TV commercials for Citizens Energy, Kennedy explained, “When we asked the biggest oil companies for help, only Citgo and the people of Venezuela, and Hugo Chavez responded.”

A retired oil company executive, who worked for one of the companies that rejected Kennedy’s request, complained that Chavez’s oil donations were the “height of hypocrisy” because Chavez does not worry one bit “about the price all Americans are paying for oil.”

An exasperated Kennedy was shown exclaiming, “Don’t you think if he (Chavez) gives us half a billion in help, we should say thank you?”

At the end of the segment, a combative, fiery-eyed Kennedy dismissed his critics thusly:

“It’s all happy horse manure.  That’s what they sell.  I don’t like it.  I don’t buy it.  I’ll fight ‘em every time.”

I think you can have serious objections to President Chavez and still appreciate the wonderfully direct way Joe Kennedy defended himself.  That’s why he’s a Fearless Comment award winner.