“More than 200 companies have joined a boycott of (Glenn) Beck's program,” reports the Washington Post. “A handful of advertisers, such as (iPhone owner) Apple, have abandoned Fox altogether,” continues the WaPo article.
We can only assume this Apple “boycott” was prompted by what CBS's Katie Couric (quoting the Fox commentator’s critics) describes as Beck’s “inflammatory, unfair, despicable, hateful rhetoric."
This same hyper-sensitive-to-hate-speech Apple, by the way, has just launched an iPhone application featuring Che Guevara’s quotes. Yes! “Now you can carry around Che Guevara's quotes on your IPhone!”
Alas, many of us, though not customer of this unquestionably hip product, suspect that most of Che Guevara's hippest quotes are missing from this hippest of iPhone apps. Among those we fear were overlooked by the hyper-sensitive-to-hate-speech, Apple are:
“The Negro is indolent and spends his money on frivolities and booze, whereas the European is forward-looking, organized and intelligent.”
"The negro has maintained his racial purity by his well known habit of avoiding baths" (as if Che had room to talk)
"My nostrils dilate while savoring the acrid odor of gunpowder and blood...Crazy with fury I will stain my rifle red while slaughtering any surrendered enemy that falls in my hands! With the deaths of my enemies I prepare my being for the sacred fight and join the triumphant proletariat with a bestial howl!" (From Che’s own diaries, later immortalized as The Motorcycles Diaries, though we note that executive producer Robert Redford “overlooked” this unquestionably dramatic citation for his movie.)
"Hatred as the central element of our struggle!... Hatred that is intransigent.... Hatred so violent that it propels a human being beyond his natural limitations, making him violent and cold- blooded killing machine...We reject any peaceful approach. Violence is inevitable. To establish Socialism rivers of blood must flow. The victory of Socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims!” (Thus spaketh the icon of flower-children.)
“The U.S. is the great enemy of mankind! Against those hyenas there is no option but extermination! If the nuclear missiles had remained (in Cuba) we would have fired them against the heart of the U.S. including New York City!”
"Don't Shoot! I'm Che! I'm worth to you more alive than dead!" The plea was whimpered with a Eddie Haskell-in-front-of June Cleaver-esque smile on Oct. 8th 1967 in Quebrada de Yuro, Bolivia, as Che dropped his fully-loaded weapons. At the time, Che, dragging along his guerrilla charge Willi, was trying to slink away from a firefight when confronted by two Bolivian soldiers.
That's exactly two flunky Communist guerrillas facing two Bolivian soldiers, by the way. But then, Che’s bloodthirsty bluster (see above) always had a habit of evaporating when facing men (or boys) capable of defending themselves. His stock-in-trade was blasting their skulls apart from five feet while they were bound and gagged. (Amazingly, Steven Soderbergh and Benicio del Toro overlooked any depictions of such guaranteed drama in their recent movie.)
“Mexicans are a rabble of illiterate Indians.” (note the Che Guevara banners and T-shirts at Nation of Aztlan gatherings.)
“Bolivian campesinos are simply Animalitos" (Note Bolivian President Evo Morales’ frequent genuflections to the ghost of Che Guevara and to his puppeteer, Fidel Castro.)
“Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of governmental mandates. Instead they must dedicate themselves to study, work and military service. The very spirit of rebellion is reprehensible. (“Che is our fifth band member!” Rage Against the Machine’s Tom Morello)
Che the Lionhearted’s image indeed belongs on college campuses. But it’s usually in the wrong places. He belongs in the marketing, PR, advertising – and especially – psychology departments. His lessons and history are fascinating and valuable, but only in light of Sigmund Freud or P.T. Barnum. “One born every minute,” Mr. Barnum? If only you’d lived to see the Che phenomenon. Actually, 10 are born every second.
Here’s a “guerrilla hero” who in real life never fought in a guerrilla war. When he finally brushed up against one, he was routed and surrendered while a sniveling, whimpering wreck.
Here’s a cold-blooded murderer who executed thousands without trial, who claimed that judicial evidence was an “unnecessary bourgeois detail,” who stressed that “revolutionaries must become cold-killing machines motivated by pure hate,” who stayed up till dawn for months at a time signing death warrants for innocent and honorable men, whose office in La Cabana had a window where he could watch the executions – and today his T-shirts adorn people who oppose capital punishment!
Here’s a humorless teetotaler, a plodding paper-pusher, a notorious killjoy and all-around fuddy-duddy – and you see his T-shirt on MTV’s Spring Break revelers! Perhaps competent psychologists (if any exist) will explain this some day.
Che excelled in one thing: mass murder of defenseless men. He was a Stalinist to the core, a plodding bureaucrat and a calm, cold-blooded – but again, never in actual battle – killer. Che’s true legacy is simply one of terror, murder and sniveling cowardice.
Apple, we trust, will soon become as sensitive to torture and mass-murder by the Stalinist who craved to incinerate the nation that headquarters their office and facilitates their profits, as they claim to be over a few wisecracks by Fox commentators.
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