`Queen of Entitlement’ fading into history of greed

As they’re writing in Bogota Free Planet (BFP) today, Ingrid Betancourt, who would do most anything to keep her name before the public, has fallen victim to her own publicity. As a Colombian presidential candidate, she passed out free condoms on the theme that her opponents were “corrupt”. As a freed hostage, living the good life in France, she wanted to sue not her captors, but the saviors of her life. A wave of criticism in Colombia that reached Colombians living around the world, forced her haughty retreat from trying to chisel the Colombian government for $6.8 million for her time as a hostage. When criticism of the wannabe president reached its peak, she was only after the money, she said to help other hostages.

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You don’t have to read Out of Captivity: 1,967 Days in the Colombian Jungle, the compelling memoir of the three U.S. military contractors held hostage by FARC along with Betancourt, to know that Betancourt does nothing for anybody other than herself. “In the book and in the authors’ interview this week with TIME, the men make it clear that it wasn’t just jungle fare that left a bad taste in their mouths. (Time, March 1, 2009). “Some of their more unpleasant memories are saved for fellow hostage Ingrid Betancourt, a French-Colombian who was kindnapped (sic) while campaigning for the Colombian presidency and was rescued along with the Americans and 11 other hostages last summer. The authors describe the married Betancourt as carrying on an affair with a Colombian hostage, acting like a privileged blue-blood--”a frickin’ princess” in Stansell’s telling--bossing around the other prisoners and hoarding precious books, food and a transistor radio. They even claim that she told the guerrillas that the Americans were CIA agents. Asked to elaborate on Betancourt, Stansell told TIME: “That’s an infection I lived with for many years. I’d just like to be inoculated and move on.” More...

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