King of Spain to Chavez "Why don't you shut up?"

Sensible people do. It is the anti-anything-doing-with-US enablers that are painting this situation as anything else but a dictatorship.

Even worse, Chavez passed on a message from Fidel castro congratulating chilean "freedom fighters" who fought against the Pinochet regime, despite the fact that former members of freedom fighter group "Lautaro" murdered a policeman just a few weeks ago after robbing a bank.
As for Chavez being recognized a dictator, remember that socialists and extreme left politicians have a different opinion of what a dictatorship is.

In my defence, I thought he was coming at me with a toy gun.

Well, somebody had to tell Chavez to shut up.

His public persona and his tendency to view international fora as an extension of his TV show are annoying .

While I was being sarcastic, its a fact that left/socialist politicians do not see left dictatorships in the same category as right wing dictatorships....just look at Spain, where they strive to judge/persecute those involved in the Pinochet/Videla/etc dictatorships, yet they turn a blind eye to Castro and Chavez, and lets not get into how many left politicians that were responsible for executions of civilians and priests in the spanish civil war have been spared.
Hell, they have even managed to associate Nazism with right dictatorship, even when Nazism was born of Marxist doctrines and so on.
While ill never defend a right wing dictatorship (pinochet should have been judged and condemned under OUR law system), there not an equal bias when it comes to dictatorships and right/left wing politics.
Theres a great book on the subject by Jean-François Revel called "La gran Parade" ("La Gran mascarada" in spanish), which analyzes the survival of the ideal of a communist/socialist utopia in the modern world, which provides many examples of my opinions...however, like all political books, it must be taken with an open and analytical point of view.

To be fair it is also a fact that right wing politicians do not see right wing dictatorships in the same category as left wing dictatorships...just look at how the US government handles Musaraf . People with blinders exist on both sides of the political spectrum.

Oh, and in case someone tries to say I support that fuckwit Chavez, in this case he was totally in the wrong and deserved far worse.