Muy molesto el Rey y muy molestos nosotros los latinoamericanos con la boca del presidente venezuelano Hugo Chávez. Por favor un poco de respecto.

If you never saw the exchange at the Cumbre Iberoamericana in Santiago, Chile last November that led the King of Spain Juan Carlos I Borbón y Borbón to ask in irritation “¿Por qué no te callas?,” there it is. It was not just that Chávez was attacking the former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar but also interrupting the current Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. That was what led the King to utter his now famous refrain: ¿Por qué no te callas?

In Spain and Latin America, ¿Por qué no te callas? has been adopted as the anti-Chávez line every time Chávez utters some new offensive statement, which is more frequent than you might think. ¿Por qué no te callas? has also grown into quite the cottage industry, fed by Chávez’s all-too-often bizarre pronouncements. You’ll find ¿Por qué no te callas? on t-shirts, on billboards, on coffee mugs and in countless references in the Ibero-American media. Here’s a video from Spain sung to a pasadoble:

Once again on his weekly Allo President television show, Chávez unleashed his tongue. The attacks on Colombian President Álvaro Uribe are nothing new. This past Sunday, Chávez called Colombian President Uribe a “liar” who “shouldn’t even run a corner store.” I guess he is upset that Uribe enjoys an 85% approval rating, the highest in the world and that Uribe’s efforts in Colombia are causing the collapse of the FARC. But it was for German Chancellor that Chávez reserved his fury. Chávez apparently was mad at Merkel, who had said the leftist Venezuelan president wasn’t the voice of the continent. He called her “a political descendant of Adolf Hitler and German fascism.” He went on to say:

“Ms. Chancellor, you can go to …,” he said, pausing for effect and eliciting giggles from the audience, a group of military officers, cabinet ministers and government officials. “Because she’s a woman I won’t say anything else.” The leftist leader, who famously called U.S. President George W. Bush “the devil” at a United Nations assembly, slammed Merkel for calling on Latin American leaders to distance themselves from Chavez. “She is from the German right, the same that supported Hitler, that supported fascism, that’s the Chancellor of Germany today,” he said.

And Obama wants to make nice with this idiot? More from Reuters and the Associated Press.

And Merkel is correct, Chávez does not speak for the continent.