Hugo Chavez’ comments felt like a punch in the gut.

I’m not sure if I would have reacted the same way if I hadn’t had the extraordinary opportunity to spend nearly two hours in a private meeting with President Bush last week. But listening to the Venezuelan president skewer our commander-in-chief from the podium of the United Nations really sickened me.

I’m not really sure what Chavez is trying to accomplish. It seems like he’s pretty cocky, what with all that oil his country controls, and he seems to take some kind of sick delight in calling President Bush things like “the devil” and “a liar.”

Perhaps even more disgusting than his cartoon character-type name calling was to hear the laughter and the smattering of applause he received from the floor of the U.N. I’m hoping it was just nervous laughter, the type that usually results from an awkward moment when someone says something so outrageously stupid that one doesn’t know what else to do but laugh.

After Chavez’s day of outrage at the United Nations, I briefly saw on the news that he was touring Harlem in New York City. The video I watched showed him getting thunderous ovations from people and enthusiastically waving to the adoring crowds. Do you think they were cheering him because he had just called our President a sulphur-reeking devil? Are Bush critics really that ugly?

Once more, Americans are treated to the ugly spectacle of the United Nations hosting some crackpot, U.S.-hating leader. One day, it’s the lunatic president of Iran; the next, it’s the vermin from Venezuela. Adding insult to injury, we apparently provided U.S. Secret Service protection to these creeps. It makes me think that if the U.N. managed to find Osama Bin Laden, they’d invite him to be the keynote speaker and throw him a ticker tape parade down Fifth Avenue.

In the middle of his wild-eyed rant about “El Diablo” and the president’s devil horns and pitchfork, Chavez did manage to utter one idea that I fully agree with. He suggested that the United Nations should be moved to his country. Now that’s a concept we can all support. Americans would stand up and cheer to the mountaintops if we finally rid ourselves of this corrupt, bloated, creaky, ineffective organization once and for all.

One of the callers to my radio show today could barely get the words out, he was so livid. “How dare Hugo Chavez come into OUR country, stay in OUR hotels, use OUR Secret Service, eat at OUR restaurants, and get away with trying to smear President Bush?” he asked. The answer is simple. Because the United Nations lets him. Continued...