{"id":3848,"date":"2008-12-22T06:51:51","date_gmt":"2008-12-22T11:51:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3848"},"modified":"2008-12-22T21:27:25","modified_gmt":"2008-12-23T02:27:25","slug":"notes-to-a-young-dumb-lefty","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=3848","title":{"rendered":"Notes To A Young, Dumb Lefty"},"content":{"rendered":"

Benicio Del Toro – an excellent actor, and, like too many actors, dumb as a bag of hammers about politics and history – is directing<\/strike> co-producing the yuuuuuuge biopic about Che Guevara:<\/p>\n

When asked why the movie needed to be so long, co-producer and star Benecio Del Toro replied, \u201cThat is a question for Che. Why such a fulfilled life? We believe that this is the shortest film about Che Guevara\u2019s revolutionary life that could be made.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mark Goldblatt in NRO<\/a>, with emphasis added:<\/p>\n

Well, no.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The shortest film about Che\u2019s revolutionary life has already been made. In it, a couple of scruffy, paramilitary-looking, motorcycle-riding cartoon cockroaches decide to \u201ctake over\u201d a kitchen, running amok until a giant muscle-bound can of Raid appears and \u201ckills them dead.\u201d<\/p>\n

Guevara, in reality, belongs to that species of human vermin who attach themselves to a charismatic villain \u2014 in Che\u2019s case, Fidel Castro; in Heinrich Himmler\u2019s case, Adolf Hitler; in Khalid Sheikh Mohammed\u2019s case, Osama bin Laden \u2014 and enact their murderous agendas until the countervailing forces of history end their pathetic existences. Granted, Che is more photogenic than either the thin-lipped Poindexter Himmler or the hairy-backed Super Mario Brother Sheikh. It\u2019s hard to imagine either of them ever moving a gross of tee shirts the way Che does. But the fact that Che continues to sell is a testament to the historical ignorance of every consumer of his visage<\/em>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I remember standing at Lake and Lyndale, at the little counterdemonstration with a little over a dozen of my friends and readers<\/a> of this blog last year.<\/p>\n

A cute redhead with a pierced nose and a carpenters apron festooned with fascist flair walked through the crowd selling buttons. Among them were a bunch of Che Guevara buttons.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cOne dollar\u201d, she said, perkily.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cYou do know that Guevara was a mass murderer, don\u2019t you? He ordered the execution of children?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

She grinned, looking a little dazed, and walked away to more fertile sales ground.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The guy ordered the murder of eight-year-old boys. He slaughtered entire families of his opponents. He was not merely a thug; he was a cowardly, sadistic thug.<\/p>\n

To not only roil in admiration for Guevara, but to support a systematic, institutional beatification of such a person, complete with rewritten\/suppressed history and iconic imagery?<\/p>\n

Wow. Good thing that’s just the province of young, dumb radicals. Good thing no modern movement would immerse itself purely in a figure’s surface appeal and ignore all that’s underneath…<\/p>\n

<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Since it’s inevitable that someone <\/em>in my comment section will bleat “What? You’re comparing Obama and Che?” – Er, no.<\/p>\n

I’m comparing their audiences.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Benicio Del Toro – an excellent actor, and, like too many actors, dumb as a bag of hammers about politics and history – is directing co-producing the yuuuuuuge biopic about Che Guevara: When asked why the movie needed to be so long, co-producer and star Benecio Del Toro replied, \u201cThat is a question for Che. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,69],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war","category-socialism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3848\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}