Kudos to Associated Press (via Yahoo!) for noting the death toll (and the toll in chaos) of the Maoist Shining Path/Sendero Luminoso terrorists in Peru in a story on how another of Hollywood's leftist political dilettantes thinks she's in solidarity with the masses, when she's in solidarity with a slaughterer of the masses:
Actress Cameron Diaz appears to have committed a major fashion faux pas in Peru. The voice of Princess Fiona in the animated "Shrek" films may have inadvertently offended Peruvians who suffered decades of violence from a Maoist guerrilla insurgency by touring here Friday with a bag emblazoned with one of Mao Zedong's favorite political slogans.
While explored the Inca city of Machu Picchu high in Peru's Andes, Diaz wore over her shoulder an olive green messenger bag emblazoned with a red star and the words "Serve the People" printed in Chinese on the flap, perhaps Chinese Communist leader Mao's most famous political slogan.
While the bags are marketed as trendy fashion accessories in some world capitals, the phrase has particular resonance in Peru, where the Maoist Shining Path insurgency brought Peru to edge of chaos in the 1980s and early 1990s with a campaign of massacres, assassinations and bombings.
Nearly 70,000 people were killed during the insurgency.
A prominent Peruvian human rights activist said the star of "There's Something About Mary" should have been a little more aware of local sensitivities when picking her accessories.
"It alludes to a concept that did so much damage to Peru, that brought about so many victims," said Pablo Rojas about the bag's slogan. "I don't think she should have used that bag where the followers of that ideology" did so much damage.
Mao said "Serve the People," when perhaps in reality his slogan was "Slay the People." The body count in China during his communist dictatorship was 65 million plus. Or a slogan from the Mao Era could have also been (gross) "Eat the People."
A great read on the history of media bias in favor of Mao -- or how people who thought they were intelligent were actually deluded "progressive" dilettantes like Cameron Diaz -- is China Misperceived, a 1990 book by Steven Mosher. It's still in my bookshelf.
