Those Che Guevara posters recently spotted in Obama's Houston campaign offices were not hung by a young volunteer who dug the cool looking dude's awesome guitar licks for the Smashing Pumpkins, nor by an older one who thought she remembered the groovy guy with the beret "hangin" with Wavy Gravy at Woodstock.
The campaign volunteer who hung the Che poster is named Maria Isabel and according to the Lone Star Times, she hung similar banners from her balcony at home. Apparently she's no "low-level" volunteer either. She serves as a campaign 'precinct captain" and the co-chair of the Houston Obama Leadership Team.
Most interestingly, she is a middle-aged woman who was born in Cuba and lived there as a child during a period when Che Guevara was Cuba's chief executioner and second in command.
At the time, Cuba had the highest political incarceration and execution rate on earth, far surpassing that of their Soviet mentors and suitors. Pictures have surfaced (see Babalu blog.com) of Maria Isabel at several Obama campaign functions; arm in arm with Barack, in a bear hug with Michelle Obama, and apparently, very heavily involved in the Obama campaign.
Naturally, regarding the Che banner incident, the Obama campaign had nothing to fear from the mainstream media. But conservative sites and talk radio spread the story. Finally there emerged a formal disavowal, of sorts. "We were disappointed to see this picture" read the terse Campaign statement, "because it is both offensive to many Cuban-Americans — and Americans of all backgrounds — and because it does not reflect Senator Obama's views."
Not a hint, notice, that the campaign honchos or candidates themselves found Guevara "offensive," simply "unrepresentative of his views."
Michelle Obama's recent speech at UCLA might provide a clue on the lame tone of the Obama campaign's response.
Here's Michelle Obama at UCLA: "We live in isolation, and because of that isolation, we fear one another . . . [Barack Obama] is going to demand that you shed your cynicism, that you put down your division, that you come out of your isolation."
Here's Che Guevara from the jumble of soporific gibberish titled "Socialism and Man in Cuba" and widely regarded as his Magnum Opus: "The most important revolutionary aspiration is to see human beings liberated from their alienation. Lack of education makes [some] take the solitary road toward satisfying their own personal ambitions . . .
More from Michelle Obama: "Barack Obama will require you to work . . . that you move out of your comfort zones, that you push yourselves to be better, and that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual —uninvolved, uninformed.
More Che Guevara: "The mass will carry out with matchless enthusiasm and discipline the tasks set by the government, whether in the field of the economy, culture, defense, sports, etc. With ideological education the individual will reach total consciousness as a social being."
Michelle Obama: "We have to fix our souls — our souls are broken in this nation . . . We can change the world! We can! We can! We can!"
Che Guevara: "We must create a new consciousness, a New Man. We recognize the individual's quality of incompleteness, of being an unfinished product. The vestiges of the past are brought into the present in one's consciousness, and a continual labor is necessary to eradicate them . . . Society as a whole must be converted into a gigantic school."
Those fated to attend Che's "gigantic school" recall it as a gigantic prison ringed with overflowing execution pits.
In the words of late James Burnham: "The liberal cannot strike wholeheartedly at the Communist for fear of wounding himself in the process." In brief, their hearts aren't in it.
A liberal cannot put his shoulder to the anti-communist wheel, knowing it will roll over his own toes. Their beliefs share too many premises with those of Marxists. They simply cannot work up the same dudgeon against mass-murdering Stalinists who craved (and came close to) the nuclear obliteration of their homeland, as they can against, say, Rush Limbaugh.
By many media accounts, the Obama campaign somehow plans inroads into the traditionally and overwhelmingly Republican voting habits of Cuban-Americans. Apparently these insufferable Cuban-Americans must — in the words of Michelle Obama — "move out" of their Republican "comfort zones."
Fidel Castro has already endorsed his dream ticket for 2008: Obama/Clinton. Nicaraguan Sandinista "leader" Daniel Ortega has endorsed Obama. "(The U.S.) is laying the foundations for a revolutionary change," he predicted.
The Sandinista anthem, by the way, contained the line "We will fight the U.S., the great enemy of humanity." The Communist Sandinistas lifted the line straight from Che Guevara. Michelle Obama's paraphrasing — we sure hope! — was unwitting.
Humberto Fontova is the author of "Exposing the Real Che Guevara." Visit. www.hfontova.com.
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