A Chequer-Board of Nights and Days

Just the thing we all need as we go into the weekend . . . humor:

President Hugo Chavez demanded Friday that the king of Spain apologize for publicly telling him to "shut up" in a spat that has soured relations between the two nations and could endanger Spanish investment in Venezuela.

"The king of Spain, he has to offer some type of apology because he attacked me," Chavez said in an interview on state television Friday. "I'm not going to ask him to get down on his knees, but to in some way recognize that he went too far, that he did something inappropriate."

King Juan Carlos exclaimed "Why don't you shut up?" at a summit in Chile last weekend, as Chavez tried to interrupt Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. Zapatero was urging Chavez to show respect for other leaders after the Venezuelan called former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar a "fascist."

[. . .]

Chavez said he didn't hear the king during the heated exchange at the summit, because he was focused on responding to Zapatero.

"The king was lucky," Chavez said. "If I had heard him, I might have answered him ... shot an arrow at him like an Indian."

Um . . . what? Seriously, this is very giggle-worthy, but what on Earth was that last statement supposed to have meant? I mean, just how delusional is Hugo Chavez?

Whatever. Anything that gets Fidel Castro (he's still alive, evidently) all riled up at Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero can't be a bad thing:

Cuba's President Fidel Castro described as ``cowardly'' remarks that Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero directed at Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez during last week's Ibero-American summit in Chile.

Castro, 81, issued a statement today to side with Chavez, his closest ally, who was told to ``shut up'' at the summit by Spanish King Juan Carlos I after the Venezuelan leader called Spain's former Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar Lopez a fascist. Zapatero also defended Aznar from Chavez's attack, telling him that his predecessor was elected democratically.

The exchange was ``an unambiguous display of the genocidal ways and methods of the empire, its accomplices and the anesthetized victims of the Third World,'' Castro wrote in an e- mailed ``reflection,'' entitled ``The Ideological Waterloo.''

It's a shame someone has to win an argument between Castro and Zapatero. But at the end of the day, we know which two leaders will play Napoleon  in this Waterloo. One hopes that St. Helena will not be too luxurious for Castro and Chavez.