Che Guevara

CBS's Bigad Shaban filed a puff piece about the "Occupy Wall Street" demonstrators on Tuesday's Early Show, trumpeting their "self-operating mini-community in lower Manhattan" and how they were "hungry for change," all the while ignoring the radical left wing politics of many in attendance. Shaban took more time to note that "this isn't your average protest. Yoga classes are taught in the off-time."

Co-anchors Chris Wragge and Erica Hill played up the "mini-village, complete with a daily newspaper, recycling, a free breakfast buffet, [and] yoga" during their promo for the correspondent's report. Shaban picked up where his colleagues left off with his "not your average protest" line, and added that "a makeshift library has been set up with at least 1500 books...and the grounds even has (sic) its own medical tent and newspaper, 'The Occupied Wall Street Journal.'" [video clips available below the jump]

Communist Cuba's Castro brothers may be asking themselves why they need to engage in any propaganda on their own when they have Associated Press's Images Division promoting photos of Dear Leader Fidel Castro as "iconic" and the brutal Ché Guevera as a "revolutionary hero."

What follows is the text of an email NewsBusters and BizzyBlog commenter/correspondent Gary received from AP Images on Monday. It's so over the top that you almost wonder if it's a gag. This link proves that it's not. Here goes (complimentary words and descriptive flattery bolded by me):

Monday’s New York Times obituary by Victoria Burnett celebrated the traveling companion of the guerilla leader and Communist murderer turned t-shirt icon Che Guevara in “Alberto Granado, 88, Friend of Che, Dies," and skipped over the facts about Guevara's violent life as a left-wing "revolutionary."

Alberto Granado Jiménez, the Argentine biochemist who accompanied the young Che Guevara on his formative odyssey across South America, died here on Saturday. He was 88.

Mr. Granado, who settled in Cuba in 1961, died of natural causes, according to Cuban state television. His ashes were to be scattered in Argentina, Cuba and Venezuela, a state newscast said.

Mr. Granado was born in the Argentine town of Hernando on Aug. 8, 1922. One of three sons of a Spanish émigré and railroad clerk, he studied biochemistry and pharmacology at the University of Córdoba.

It was in that city that he met Ernesto Guevara, an asthmatic teenager who was determined to play rugby with Mr. Granado’s team. They became close friends, sharing an intellectual curiosity, a mischievous sense of humor and a restive desire to explore theircontinent.

On CBS's Sunday Morning, correspondent Mark Phillips described the latest adaptation of the Robin Hood legend by director Ridley Scott and starring Russell Crowe: "And so here is an evil King John, squeezing his subjects for more taxes....And here is Robin. Not as a thief, but as a revolutionary figure trying to limit the King's power. Robin Hood meets Che Guevara." [Audio available here]   

Protesting high taxes and wanting to limit government power is the equivalent of a Communist revolution? Sounds more like the Tea Party movement.

After making that bizarre comparison, Phillips further explained the plot of the new film: "This Robin joins the fight to get the English king to sign the Magna Carta in the year 1215, the document establishing the first rights on which modern democracies are based." Guevara, of course, was the ruthless henchman of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, hardly an advocate for democracy.

Attention all you folks who think of yourselves as counterculture types who demonstrate your rebelliousness by wearing Che Guevara T-shirts. The author of the most popular blog from Cuba, Yoani Sanchez who not only talks the talk but walks the walk, thinks you are absurd. The Generation Y blogger was the subject of a Miami Herald story on Saturday. We will get to her marvelous quote on the subject of Che T-shirts below the fold but first some fascinating information on the person who provides an inside look at what is really happening in Cuba which is often missed by news agencies on that island:

Yoani Sánchez, the blogger who has gained an international following detailing the absurdities of daily life in Cuba, is on the phone from her 14th-floor apartment in Havana, where the elevators rarely work. She speaks plainly, boldly, with none of the hemming and hawing common among folks on the island who fear their phones are tapped.

Sánchez is certain hers is. She is constantly followed, too. None of this stops her from finding ways, despite government attempts to block her, of continuing to post to Generación Y, the blog she launched in April 2007 and for which she has won several awards. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2008.

Imagine if a couple of women launched a "Hitler Spotting" website and proclaimed that they weren't Nazis but neutral about the morality of the subject. However, at the bottom of of the web page was this quote: "Sieg Heil!"

What would you think about the true leanings of the women despite their protestations of political neutrality? Well, change just a few details and we are describing Kelly Westhoff and Jen Paulus. Their "Che Spotting" website begins with this "disclaimer."

We are Kelly and Jen, and we are not Communists.

They aren't card-carrying Communists but, as you shall see, they are definitely misguided liberals as demonstrated in the very next sentence:

We are just two girls who went to Cuba and fell in love with Che. This is our story.

UPDATE: It turns out that "Che" was an even bigger flop than I reported earlier. The film budget was actually $58 million, not $40 million.

The two part movie "Che" has turned out to be one of the worst box office bombs in film history. How bad was it? Well, since opening last December, this movie has earned a grand total of just $1,432,057 as of the weekend of April 10-12.

Since the budget for this film was $40 million and at least half of those revenues went to the theaters screening this bomb, that means the total loss for 'Che' was approximately the entire budget cost. Compare this to the gold standard of movie bombs, "Heaven's Gate." When it was released it 1980 it also had a $40 million budget but it earned about 3 times the revenue of the "Che" movie at $3,484,331. As a result, "Heaven's Gate," became known as the mother of all box office bombs and rare was the review that did not mention its financial disaster. 

The director of the movie "Che" which will be released later this month is disingenuously claiming that he has no political axe to grind. In a CNN interview, director Steven Soderbergh absurdly stated that he only wanted to present the "facts" about Che Guevara's life:

Steven Soderbergh made certain his new movie, "Che," about the life of revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara, couldn't be attacked -- at least on a factual level.

"I didn't mind someone saying, 'Well, your take on him, I don't really like,' or 'You've left these things out and included these things.' That's fine," Soderbergh said. "What I didn't want was for somebody to be able to look at a scene and say, 'That never happened.' "

But he's aware that he's going to be accused of romanticizing the Argentine doctor and Marxist guerrilla who helped Cuba's Fidel Castro launch the first and only victorious socialist revolution in the Americas. He doesn't buy the criticism.

It looks like the best thing about the  movie "Che" is the absolutely devastating but hilarious review given to you by New York Post writer Kyle Smith. The movie which glorifies the life of communist thug Che Guevara seems doomed to bomb at the box office since it runs for over 4 very tedious hours plus the fact that it is yet another in a long line of leftwing propaganda films promoted by Hollywood that always seem doomed to failure. The entertainment value of this movie, unless you are an Obama supporter with a Che Guevara flag on the wall, seems to be quite limited but the Post review of the propaganda film,  Che It Ain't So, is quite entertaining:

MEET Che Guevara. Just think of him as Jesus plus Abraham Lincoln with a touch of Moses and Dr. Doug Ross. After 4½ hours of watching Dr. Ernesto "Che" Guevara heal the sick, teach the illiterate, daze the women, execute the lawless, defeat the corrupt, uplift the peasantry and spew the sound bite, I was convinced there would be a scene in which he turned water to Bacardi.

You can't spell cliché without "Che." And as I endured this mad dream directed - or perhaps committed - by Steven Soderbergh, I wondered where I'd seen it all before. The booted stomping through the greensward, the jungly target shooting? It's a remake of Woody Allen's "Bananas," right? Minus punch lines - or perhaps with them. "We are in a difficult situation," Che observes, at a point when his army is surrounded and forced to eat its horses.

There was an interesting post Tuesday morning on the New York Times's "City Room" blog, "Che, or a Statue of an Actor Playing Che," about a statue of an actor playing Che Guevara recently installed in a corner of Central Park. David Gonzalez interviewed passerby delighted at the representation (once-removed) of Guevara, the colorful Communist thug romanticized among the benighted left and the uninformed public for his colorful charisma and sex appeal.

Che Guevara has been put on a pedestal in Manhattan. This is something not lacking in irony, since Manhattan might not exist today had the Argentine-born, Cuban-tested revolutionary had his way and unleashed the Soviet nukes against the United States during the 1962 missile crisis.

Are New Yorkers really allowing such an homage to occupy the southeast corner of Central Park? Technically, no. The statue actually depicts a Barcelona street performer portraying Che, part of three bronze sculptures by Christian Janowski, which were recently installed by the Public Art Fund.

The Times's Gonzalez didn't genuflect to the urban hipster mentality.

If there were ever a reason that illustrates why newspapers are dying and the mainstream media isn't trusted by many people, this story from the Babalu Blog is a perfect example. Last February, your humble correspondent posted a Newsbusters blog about the studied incuriosity of the MSM over the Che Guevara flag hanging in the office of Barack Obama campaign volunteer, Maria Isabel. This flag was discovered when Houston Fox News 26 reported on the opening of an Obama campaign office as you can see in this video.

The AP had a short newsbreak story on Lorain County Common Pleas Judge James Burge who ruled that the state must stop the method of executions in the state, saying that the "lethal injection procedure doesn't provide the quick and painless death required by Ohio law." Accompanying the short story is the picture we post here showing the judge in his office where he proudly displays two posters, one with murderer, insurrectionist and communist Che Guevara upon it and the other is the famous "Hope" poster put out by the Barack Obama campaign.

This makes one wonder about the lack of reaction to this photo seen today from the media. Let us imagine if this judge happened to be considered a conservative. Supposing this judge had a poster of a right-wing dictator -- maybe even Hitler -- displayed side-by-side with a John McCain for president poster or a George W. Bush poster. So, what would the media be doing today should such a picture coupling McCain with a murderous, oppressor on the right be making the rounds? Who can doubt that the media would be completely out of it's mind (and rightfully so, by the way) about a judge that would seem to be celebrating a right-wing dictator?

Yet, here we have a judge, a public official, proudly showing fealty to a monster of the left, Che Guevara, a man that despised the U.S. and everything it stands for, without the media raising even a whimper! In fact, they publish it as if this judge deserved to be given respect.

"Good Morning America" host Diane Sawyer and ABC's George Stephanopoulos, a former top aide to Bill Clinton, discussed media bias on Wednesday's show. The topic, however, wasn't liberal spin. Instead, Sawyer wondered if "the media is, in general, easier on Barack Obama than they are on [Hillary Clinton]?"

After playing a clip of a February 23 "Saturday Night Live" sketch that mocked reporters for gushing over Senator Obama, Stephanopoulos came to the aid of the wife of his former boss, "I do think, though, Senator Clinton has a point. She's being treated like the front-runner, even though she's... the underdog in this race right now." Of course, while Sawyer and Stephanopoulos worried about unfairness to the former first lady, it should be pointed out, this is the same program that in early 2007 described the Clinton/Obama race as one between "hot factor" and "fluid poetry."

On the 40th anniversary of Che Guevara's death, October 8 New York Times penned a peppy little story about how his well-to-do children feel about their father's legacy as a Communist “revolutionary icon” and the commercialization of his image.

Glaringly absent was any mention of his unpleasant history, especially the nickname he was given when he was Cuba's high executioner, The Butcher of la Cabana.

The NYT lamented that Che's image has fallen prey to the claws of capitalism and his “message” diluted. Too bad there was no description of the brutal way that “message” was delivered (emphasis mine throughout):

Airing tonight on Soapnet is a new reality show called “The Fashionista Diaries.” The show documents six newcomers to the cutthroat fashion industry and, like most reality shows out there, would be hard to distinguish if not for its advertisements, which use Communist imagery and slogans for promotion. (side-by-side comparison shown at right)

The main graphic for the ads has a woman dressed up like Che Guevara wearing a beret and sunglasses complete with a Communist red star. The slogan placed with the picture is "the revolution will be accessorized."