The reporter in question being Adam Housley, who’s been covering the protests in Caracas all week, and the apologist being NYC Councilman Charles Barron, whom you’ll remember more recently from his violent threats towards the NYPD and less recently as host to Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe. Here he gives us a glimpse of what the western left must have sounded like during Stalin’s heyday. Don’t call him a useful idiot. He’s not an idiot; he’s just on the other side.

The dispute here is over Chavez’s shutdown of RCTV, the opposition television station in Caracas whose closure inspired the street demonstrations. The government has replaced it with something called Tves, which is precisely the type of “news” outlet you’d expect it to be:

It is now several days later, and it is clear that Tves is exactly the kind of bland, safe programming that makes private networks cringe. Most of the programming I have seen is one big infomercial for Venezuela and Chavez. Shows depict poor Venezuelans, happily prancing across the screen, despite the fact they look like they have been living in a hovel or the slums for years. Beautiful women stroll on the beaches, smiling in their bikinis and sandals. Educational programs are seemingly geared to 7-year-olds — for instance, having watched Tves, I feel certain that I can adeptly shave the kernels off of an ear of corn. And all of the original programming looks to have been shot with a home video camera, making my herky-jerky shooting look like award-winning videography. There is a constant underlying sound track that Sesame Street might want to look into for copyright infringement.

So yes, now the evil empire that RCTV was surreptitiously building is gone. But isn’t it curious that not only has their audience not gone to Tves, but the number of viewers of the last remaining private opposition network, **Globovision, has skyrocketed in less than a week?

The first two minutes or so are background; the fireworks begin, not surprisingly, after the daughter of a political prisoner injects some absolute moral authority. Exit question: Are the cheers at the end for Housley or something else going on off-camera?

The clip has been edited for brevity.