-By Warner Todd Huston
A smart gas station owner from Wadsworth, Illinois has given up his Citgo franchise and re-opened as a Shell station. To celebrate he posted a sign that gives Hugo Chavez a wonderful sendoff. “Adios Chavez,” it reads.
For the last five years I have personally boycotted any Citgo gas station. Citgo, you see, is wholly owned by Petróleos de Venezuela S.A., which itself is wholly owned by Venezuela’s despotic President Hugo Chavez and his puppet government. I have written several times in the past about this fact (here, and here) and have wondered why more Americans haven’t talked about boycotting this foreign hatemonger’s gas stations?
After all, Hugo Chavez has called the U.S. any manner of names and has centered the U.S. as the chief villain of his paranoid delusions of persecution anyway, so why not let him stew by refusing to do business with this half-witted, half-pint dictator?
So, today I am happy to report that Randy Whitmore’s gas station at Delany and York House roads in Wadsworth, Illinois has done just that. He’s flipped the tin-potted Chavez the bird and gone back to being a Shell man.
Whitmore joins two other stations in northern Illinois that have gone from Citgo to Shell, one in Mundelein and one in Libertyville, both near suburbs to Chicago.
Good on these three stations for dumping a brand owned by an enemy and good for them not doing business that benefits our self-professed enemy, Hugo Chavez. Now, let’s hope more Americans boycott the remaining Citgo stations causing others to make the switch.
And for those of you whining that we are only hurting the American businessmen that own these locally owned stations, I say you are darn right we are. Maybe if they hurt enough, they will do business with a respectable franchise and stop aiding and abetting our enemies. Such putatively American businessmen deserve to be hurt.
____________
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, RedState.com, Human Events Magazine, AmericanDailyReview.com, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events and is currently the co-host of “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Conservatism” heard on BlogTalkRadio. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
Fair Use: This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. I am making such material available in my efforts to advance understanding of political, human rights, economic, democracy, and social justice issues, etc. I believe this constitutes a ‘fair use’ of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research, educational, or satirical purposes. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site/blog for purposes of your own that go beyond ‘fair use’, you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.