T-Shirt Che, Movie Che, Real-Life Che

Just like a lot of kids who grew up in the Sixties, I absorbed a vague idea of who Che Guevara was. Maybe because I grew up in one of the mellow beach towns of Southern California instead of, say, Berkeley, I never saw anyone actually wear a Che t-shirt. There was always one hanging on the wall in any t-shirt shop in counterculture-ish places like Venice Beach, though.

Still is. Right next to the Jim Morrison and Bob Marley t-shirts. As many have pointed out, the great irony of Che Guevara is the sheer amount of capitalist enterprise that has been built around his image.

We just finished watching The Motorcycle Diaries, in which a pair of adventurous young men travel throughout Latin America on an old Norton motorcyle. One of them happens to be Che Guevara, idealistic young medical student, a few years before his involvement in the Cuban revolution.

And we're talking extremely idealistic here: it wouldn't be out of line to compare Movie Che to Jesus, right down to his healing lepers.

It's an entertaining movie and the lead characters are appealing. Although we all know historical movies are almost always completely made up by screenwriters who have never cracked open a history book, I have no reason to doubt that Guevara was an honorable young man who saw widespread poverty among the natives of Latin America, not incorrectly pinned it on imperialists, and saw communist revolution as the best way to oppose those imperialists.

I found myself wondering about the motivation of the filmmakers, though. Either they purposely told a dishonest story or they purposely told an incomplete story. I feel a little insulted when I sense I'm being propagandized.

Politics aside, wouldn't it be a much more interesting movie, if the filmmakers had explored how the idealistic young man evolved into Generalissimo Guevara, presiding over the execution of thousands of Cubans and founding Cuba's labor camps? I remember an episode of "The Twilight Zone" that more deeply explored the tragic paranoia of power in a mere half-hour screenplay. Not everyone can be Rod Serling, but they could have given a shot.

On the DVD's extra features, Robert Redford enthuses about the Young Che character. It made me think of the accusations I've heard conservative talk show hosts make about "Hollywood liberals". Is Robert Redford just an empty head living in an insular world? I suspect not. I'll bet it has more to do with invoking Che being a great way to piss off conservatives.

To sum up. T-shirt Che: pretty cool. Movie Che: pretty cool. Real life Che: not so cool.

Pre-Election Quickie

Too busy with our home remodeling mega-project to do a proper pre-election day blog entry. Here are some editorials I've collected over the last few weeks:

San Francisco Chronicle: Some children left behind

But the most troublesome aspect of Proposition 82 is the question of how many -- and which -- children it would reach. State and federal programs now cover preschool for about 160,000 California youngsters at the lowest income levels. Studies have shown that preschool benefits are particularly dramatic among children from lower-income families. Yet the bulk of the Proposition 82 funding would be subsidizing preschool for kids whose parents are already paying for it.

Shikha Dalmia and Lisa Snell commenting in the San Francisco Chronicle:
Universal Preschool Is Inviting Universal Disaster

Preschools that do participate will have to pay wages on the K-12 teacher scale negotiated through a mandatory collective bargaining process that the unions lobbied for. They will also face other onerous regulations such as minimum staff-child ratios. All of this will raise the cost of doing business, driving many private day care centers out of the market and leaving fewer affordable options for low-income parents for whom three hours of state-funded day care covers less than half their needs.

Mountain View Voice: Call the bluff on Measure A tax

But there is a catch built into Measure A, an unwritten "understanding" that up to half of the $5.2 billion or more that would be raised over the 30-year life of the tax would be spent on country transit projects, including the controversial BART extension to San Jose.

Greg Perry, vice mayor of Mountain View commenting in the Mountain View Voice: Measure A is against the spirit of democracy

Multiple polls over two years indicated that the VTA tax could not pass. So they slipped the VTA tax inside a county tax that was polling better.

Well, whomever or whatever you vote for on Tuesday, please don't base any of your decisions on anything you saw or heard in the TV ads. Be hip -- get your disinformation and viciousness from blogs, instead! Happy voting!