Flagged  

Still some holes in Ebay’s shielding our eyes from the Cracker Cross.  Another demonstration of fifties  casual Confederating is shown by poster for “Love Me Tender,” the Elvis vehicle which brought us the maudlin classic of the same name.

Jon Snow Faces The Future!

Last year came shocking word that The Lego Movie was pixelated Communism. Now the tiny figures have openly mobilized for the workers cause in Spain!

It’s On!   

If you read only one decline and fall of the Soviet world book this year, make it this!

Having failed, despite Sarah Palin,  in the space race, the USSR seems to have found comfort during its declining years by throwing up some of the weirdest spacecraft looking oddities known to man.

Saucy Frenchman Frédéric Chaubin was on hand as real, existing socialsim ceased to exist, leaving behind these Bolshevik beached whales.

The Guardian offers a slide show.

The USSR In Construction  

Moscow’s late wave appears to have washed ashore in the tropics as well, with the former Soviet, now Russian embassy  doing its part for the last heave.

Satellite of Love  

Marketing?  

Generations of socialists have pondered the Left’s historic failure to get much of a toehold in the United States.  Now a band of plucky Hoosiers have offered a suggestion: direct sales!

The American Socialist Party wants to get word to the masses ASAP, so they’re offering commissions to those bold enough to rope in new members of the vanguard.

ASP’s mysterious Central Committee generously offers to pay you to recruit people for free party memberships, paid for by unclear funds.   In addition to cash and the thanks of the proletariat, your efforts winning new millions to socialism earn you the distinguished title of “Commissioner of Advocacy,” bravely going forth with “a minimal rudimentary understanding of the fundamental principles of socialism.“

The whole operation looks like a dubious web site designed to sell you insurance, decorated with bland generic images.

And don’t think this is some talking shop:

“All our websites require that users place their photo, first and last name. Our objective here is to create a professional organization and not another listserver that degenerates.”

Classy!

Appropriation, re-purposing, transformation are all well and good, but The Gibson‘s invitation to hoist one for the working class is just a mess.

The promotion appears to be an effort at self-mockery, about entitled young cocktail sniffers having a day off in honor of the workin man, and some people are getting into the spirit. 

“The Campari is for the bitterness of the struggle; the orange juice is for the sweetness of a fair wage; and the mole bitters is for so many of today’s workers who have yet to receive one.”

But DC’s would-be hipsters have made a complete hash of their theme borrowing. Nice use of Lewis Hine breaker boy photo, and he did campaign for the eight hour day and against child labor, but this was decades after Haymarket Riot, which wasn’t on Labor Day.

Haymarket was the birthplace of the original Labor Day, May Day.   That holiday commemrates the anarchists and others executed after  Chicago police broke up a peacefull labor protest and a bomb was thrown in the Chicago square.

The authorities rounded up the leaders of the eight-hour day movement who’d organized the rally, and charged them with having somehow inspired the unknown bomb thrower.

They were hung in 1887, and the world labor movement began to mark May 1 as Labor Day.

September’s Labor Day is the thoughtful alternative, growing in importance when workers were actually allowed to organize under the New Deal.    May Day was demonized as a Soviet holiday, and in the 50s “Law Day” was invented to compare and contrast with their crude tank displays. Law Day in turn was appropriated by cop groups who come to Washington by the thousands to stand around the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial and gape at its hidious lion cub statues.

The annual cop fest has been somewhat muted since 1995’s celebration feaured hundreds of police wandering hotels drunk, nude and shooting off fire extinguishers.

Leon Trotsky died in Mexico seventy years ago this week.

In this delicate time, where may the Trot-curious turn for information and solace?

Burly Christopher Hitchens, America’s pet former Trotskyist, has long waxed nostalgic for his time in the struggle, although technically the grouplet to which he once adhered, Britain’s International Socialists [now Socialist Workers Party] had sprung free from orthodox Trotskyism.

The vast literary output of the late Russian revolutionary,   author and Frida Kahlo appreciator remains in print.

But real comfort may be found in the endless Trotsky tributes, homages and cultural oddities that infest the marketplace.

Trotsky [or Richard Burton’s head] explodes on the screen in The Assassination of Trotsky.

Burton looks more Col. Sanders than Lev Davidovich with perhaps cinema’s worst prosthetic facial hair.

But Alain Delon looks fabulous, as always.

If you reveled in the movie’s non-stop action, you’ll thrill to the film’s soundtrack, released for some reason in 2006.

The ageless revolutionary gets endlessly name-checked in the world of pop, from the Stranglers classic “No More Heroes”…

“Whatever happened to Leon Trotsky?
He got an ice pick
That made his ears burn“

 

… to the unfortunately named Trotsky Icepick.

A more “upbeat” tone is set by Uruguay’s own Trotsky Vengaran [“Trotsky Avenged”, or “Avenge Trotsky”]

Trotsky is but an afterthought in the marketing juggernaut which is Frida Kahlo, but one to which The Old Man adds a bit of saucy fun.

Kahlo’s partner Diego Rivera  sponsored Trotsky’s asylum in Mexico, protecting, housing and feeding him. Trotsky returned the favor by having an affair with Kahlo, by some accounts.  In the Salma Hayek biopic an unlikely Geoffrey Rush does the honors.

 

Remember when every store from The Gap on up was crammed with vaguely Frida inspired fashion, quickly flushed from the market by the clothing buying public’s indifference?

“Frida” as brand appears to live on principally in naming the endless supply of somewhat Mexican bars and restaurants, many with murals slapped up!

Frida herself evolved into a nasty little Stalinist, placing herself at the Man of Steel’s feet in one of her last paintings. 

 

Audiences have not clamored for “Zina,”  which recreates the world of a Trotsky daughter, the suicidal mother of his grandson who operates the Trotsky Museum in Mexico. Her psychological fragility can’t have been helped by living in Berlin as Hitler advanced to power. She once visited Trotsky’s Turkish exile, accompanied by two ostensible Trotskyists who were in fact Soviet agents. Both her ex-husbands were killed by Stalin. The film incorporates actual home movies Trotsky shot in Mexico, but it’s only available in PAL format, forcing you to go to the Euro side.

 

 

 

Assassin Ramon Mercader’s path to Trotsky [and afterlife in Cuba and the USSR] is traced in this Spanish documentary:

 

Before Mexico Trotsky’s first stop in exile was Turkey, where he spent four years.  This film recreates those magical days,   a highlight of which was fishing with dynamite sticks, according to Trotsky secretary Jean Van Heijenoort    [or perhaps it was a story from another secretary, Albert Glotzer.] In any case, fish were gotten by fair means or foul.

 

How the deed was done, film & photo division:

…the best account of Stalin’s disappearing Trotsky and others from the images of the revolution.

 

Trotsky has not been entirely absent from Mexico since his assassination. The fifties saw production of a Mexican film with the Devil messing with Santa:

 

…with the Devil played for some reason by an actor named Jose Luis Aguirre ‘Trotsky.’

The film was so bad, or the rights to it so cheap, that it was worthy of a salute -Mystery Science Theater 3000: Santa Claus:

 

Trotsky’s assassination site, his Mexico City home turned museum, plans a conference marking this anniversary.  As far as I can detect it is being publicised solely through pitches on lefty newsgroups.

Better Fewer But Better!

 

 

Founding Fathers Fakery!

 

 

 

 

The Washington Post reports on the tragic encounter between boring old “Colonial Williamsburg” and red hot tea baggers, searching for validation in the make believe village.

Park operators seem somewhat leary of the crazed tricorn-hatists now flocking to the sleepy Virginia recreation of a cleaned up colonial village.

But times are tough and all are welcome.

This the price the nation must bear for the indulgence of reenactors.  Prancing about in itchy uniforms at battlefields where real issues were decided has led to greater tolerance of costumed  cranks in general.  And we are left with queeny reactions when someone dares to suggest that the slavery bits in the Constitution were not inscribed on gold tablets.

Hey, who’s that guy in the corner? 

A previous attempt to associate with the Founding Fathers image:

But they are all best buds in the afterlife:Know what they knew! 

Get Dipped: 

The tea baggers must never know that they’ve fallen into a trap.  Williamsburg was restored with Rockefeller money, [before they went Communist?] and as the crew cut prophet taught us, Rockefeller Center is a themepark of Marxist icons.