Why should this surprise anyone? Both New York City and Seattle are dominated by politically correct lefties. Excuse me, but have we already forgotten terrorist Bill Ayers and the respectability he receives from the Chicago political establishment? A large number of Americans were also indifferent about President-elect Barack Obama’s infatuation with Saul Alinsky’s activist tactics.
Historical illiteracy has become the norm in the United States. Even graduates of our “best” schools know virtually nothing about the past. We are in serious danger. And Obama will most assuredly make things a lot worse. Eric Holder, after all, has been chosen to be the next head of the U.S. Department of justice. We can take for granted that conservative Republicans will be harassed and arrested at every opportunity. They will be charged with be minor technicalities similar to a traffic cop giving
a ticket to someone for driving 55 1/4 miles per hour in a 55 miles per hour zone.
Although the New York Times article actually surprised me (were they really printing those facts? wow!) the reactions by many of the paper’s readers who critiqued the article were no surprise at all, just more of the same.
In Seattle’s defense, the Lenin statue is by no means near the waterfront. It’s right outside a Taco del Mar in the middle of Fremont, one of the kookier neighborhoods that nobody takes very seriously. If nothing else, it’s an interesting relic, preserved from destruction after the fall of the USSR, that carries a lot of history that shouldn’t be forgotten.
But then again, something like that would be better put in a museum.
“In Seattle’s defense, the Lenin statue is by no means near the waterfront. It’s right outside a Taco del Mar in the middle of Fremont, one of the kookier neighborhoods that nobody takes very seriously. If nothing else, it’s an interesting relic, preserved from destruction after the fall of the USSR, that carries a lot of history that shouldn’t be forgotten.”
When the USSR fell in 1989 and the Russians were tearing down everything in sight having to do with the Soviet Union, there was a rumor that they were so strapped for cash that they were selling off memorabilia to the highest bidder. One rumor (now debinked, of course) was that a small town in Iowa had bought Lenin’s corpse to be put on display in their town square..
Kvalseth is right. I live in the Seattle neighborhood just north of Fremont. Even Seattle regards Fremont as a bit odd. Seattle’s city council has spent a fortune trying to keep strip joints out. Fremont has a nude parade each summer.
Other than boats traversing the ship canal, there’s not much to see in Fremont, which is mostly decaying buildings from before WWII. So art is used to draw tourists into the bars and eateries. Lenin is one draw. This past summer I helped a Japanese tourist I met on a bus find it. There’s also a troll grasping a VW under a bridge, the Fremont Rocket, which looks like a holdover from some 1950s-era hamburger stand, and (my favorite) “Waiting for the Interurban.” You can find pictures of them here:
Waiting is marvelous. It’s a rare example of public participation art, regularly getting decorated for birthdays and other events. It’s never the same. Fremont easily has the most interesting outdoor art in the city. Lenin is just one example.
All that may change though. Just yards from Waiting is Adobe’s Seattle headquarters and Google is locating offices nearby. With their employees buying into new condos in the neighborhood, Fremont is likely to lose it’s old, kinky Greenwich Village flavor and become dominated by the “my property values” mindset. Before long they’ll be complaining about fishing boats that pass by smelling like, “Gasp, fish!”
Conservatives should spent less time bashing other people’s art and more time creating interesting, funny art of their own. I’d love to see one of FDR in a wheelchair, jauntily looking up with a cigarette holder in his mouth and the blacks and Jews he did nothing to help (despite landslide victories) being crushed beneath his wheels. Call it “FDR-Failing (to) Do Right.” It should be close enough to the DC mall, that tourists will flock to take pictures.
And there’s Ed Kennedy atop an overturned car, Carter in a chair far too large for him, Bill Clinton holding a dress and pointing his fingers at us….
There’s power in humor. G. K. Chesterton suggested it was also the best way to counter acts of terror.
Americans can be a gullible lot can’t we? I find it humorous that we feed into the “art as life” frenzy whenever we find something of a dubious nature or somehow an affront to our sensibilities. When will we ever learn to just ignore the idiots that are trying to shock us? Wouldn’t they tire of spending their time and money if they get no press coverage and nobody goes on a pilgrimage to protest their “art”? In reality, whomever or whatever group erects these monstrosities do it for one reason and one reason only. Is it to enlighten? Possibly perplex? Maybe to stretch one’s ideas of society or the family unit? Nope. Simply so people who find their work offensive are made to look like biggots or small-minded idiots therefore making the creator look somehow superior. Shock value if you will. Sort of like the idiots today putting an anti-religion “there is no God or Heaven…” sign next to a Christmas tree at the state capital in where was it…Washington or Oregon? Everybody wants their 5 minutes in the spotlight somehow. Some just enjoy getting it at the expense of others.
My brother lived in Ukraine for two years and the second time he came home, he brought with him a gigantic plaster bust of Stalin that had evidently had some deep meaning to him during his earlier visit, in a capture-the-flag sort of way. It had served as a mascot of sorts, and he went to great lengths to bring it home and to repair it when the nose was broken off by TSA.
I don’t know why he wanted a bust of Stalin, especially since he does know how horrible Stalin was. But it had meaning to him beyond its form, and that’s all that mattered.
The Seattle Lenin statue was bought and imported as a joke, and was erected in Fremont for the same reason. Everybody gets a good laugh out of it. Seattle politics may be dominated by totalitarian filth but — thank God — it is not NYC.
Interurban is a pretty great restaurant in Edmond Ok, or was. If “art” got no attention, it would disappear. Then again, what we put statues up of, represents what we revere. I can see both sides.
One of these days history should be taught at schools. Che was a brutal killer!
In all fairness, people should know who this man is, and what he represents.
Che Guevara? You have just got to be messed up to devote this much time to such useless endeavors. People can be made to believe nearly anything. Just surf the internet and you can find moubntains of mis-information. I am not surprised by this, but I am tired of it. I feel ready to hear from the poets now.
The Cooper Union building looks very nice. The brickwork is fantastic. And, it was build in Lincolns time? Wow.
Compare the building to the Stalin drape. Compare the quality, the amount of work, the amount of laborers, working together it took, and compare it to the pathetic, egotistical crap drape of Stalin.
Signs of the times. Cheap, poorly done, lefty crap over real works of substance and beauty.
as for me i don’t understand why people go out of there way to make other people upset or just unhappy. if it is done to them; they file lawsuits and make all kinds of trouble, if you don’t like something don’t watch it or go to where it is, if someone else likes it let them have at it, but to wrongly go and put things offensive to people in public areas just to make points or some other stupid agenda then it is wrong. just like in Washington state capitol, the athiest having to desacrate the nativity seen with there garbage and the govener letting them do it is a disgrace. we don’t go out of our way to make the athiest upset so why do they have to do it to normal people. just as the gay picket line where an old woman got her cross slapped out of her hands and then she was pushed around, this is not America and it must stop. divided we fall. we are playing into the hands of our enemy, they are watching us distroy ourselves. be smart. find center ground and be American first. be blessed all of you who read this little letter.
If new yorkers can tolerate it, so be it. If they get bombed again by enemies of America who admire che, I can tolerate that as well. Piss off screw york. You have shamed the nation by your politicians and your actions, again. You deserve what you get.
I guess the level of sickness in NYC is getting higher, and it is too bad because i live here and have to put with this level of idiocy from NYC elitists…!
Equal representation then for other communist-totalitarian leaders like him to be put up also like Mussolini, or Hitler, or Stalin (hey communist like Che)..right??? Ridiculous what the city does without even consulting the citizens that are paying for this travesty to be put up …what does Che represent to us New Yorkers…? Another revolutionary gone bad like Castro…?!!! And we have to look at hin now everyday…!!! Stupid…absolute idiocy…!
HOW COME WE PUT UP IN NEW YORK CITY STATUES OF COMMUNISTS AT THE TAX PAYERS EXPENSES, BUT, CANNOT PUT UP STATUES OF JESUS, OR A GUARDIAN ANGEL OR THE POPE…???
I see the difference New Yorkers, not me, are infatuated with the dark side and cannot see the good in people…cannot venerate good God fearing but will pay homage to a killer…
Dark helmett, mind your karma, or your already screwed, then no cure but rage, though you could apply for help, some quick drug can avoid you to bear that pink paradise which is the object of your delusion
trust me, Im no Obamist, nor socialist whatever, just a normal human
Lincoln brigade should be remembered because it fought fascism. They fought for noble cause. Guevara, Ulanov, Djugashvili, were mass murderers, tyrants, and cowards.
I could accept statues and T shirts of Lenin, if they are of the last photo ever taken of him; the ultimate image of a dead man still breathing, but totally brain dead. And all leftists should learn to quote what Mrs. Molotov said when released from the Gulag: “You can survive prison if you have enough bread, soap, and garlic.”
“Lincoln brigade should be remembered because it fought fascism. They fought for noble cause.”
This is a myth, they were actually de-facto “pro-fascists” while Stalin and Hitler had their non-alignment pact. Stalin was not anti-fascist until after Nazi forces invaded the USSR. Prior to that moment the greatest enemy (according to the Stalinists) was liberalism and social democracy or “social fascism” in COMINTERN speak.
“Lincoln brigade should be remembered because it fought fascism. They fought for noble cause.”
They were actually de-facto “pro-fascists” while Stalin and Hitler had their non-alignment pact. Stalin was not anti-fascist until after Nazi forces invaded the USSR. Prior to that moment the greatest enemy (according to the Stalinists) was liberalism and social democracy or “social fascism” in COMINTERN speak.
To The New Centrist:
The Nationalist forces were supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy therefore Lincolns fought fascism. During the Spanish Civil War Lincoln Brigade suffered more than 50% causalities, all in the noble cause of fighting the Axis powers. This is what I said, nothing more and nothing less. I know very well that Lincolns were controlled by Komintern, that during the war they shed the blood of loyalists belonging to POUM and many others (under orders of Komintern), and that under the orders of the Komintern most of the leadership and members shamefully supported the 1939 Molotow-Ribbentroff pact.
Centrist committed two logical fallacies; future (support for M-R pact and Komintern) is not the past (heroism during civil war), and wrong actions (e.g. POUM, Komintern)do not erase good actions. In SF it is their dead that are honored.
With all the honorable men and women that should have a statue in their honor…why a murdering thug like Che? Who paid for this? What does this say for the thousands of men, women and children murdered by this coward?
A re-post from the piece on Naomi Klein which applies here even better -
The western left/commmunists history is a history of infamy – a history of absurd subservience to the Komintern and the Soviet Union’s interests.
I will remind you here only Lilian Hellman’s and her enlightened coterie’s attitude during the Finnish War.
And what gives even more dramatic dimensions to the distorted history which is taught in American schools, is that if you ask students about a war that happened in Europe in the thirties, they’ll all talk about the Spanish Civil War where the left was the good side and Franco’s army was a collection of monsters, and not about the Soviet Union attacking Finland without any provokation, and with utterly untenable justifications – and the Soviets’ actions and sub-sequent victory and unfair peace conditions being firmly supported by communists erywhere in the world.
P.S. vis-a-vis Guernica: during the Guernica bombing died about 300 people, while during the Barcelona May days, when the pro-Stalin communists took on syndicalists and anarchists, died close to 900 – as now tell this Naomi Klein.
Why should this surprise anyone? Both New York City and Seattle are dominated by politically correct lefties. Excuse me, but have we already forgotten terrorist Bill Ayers and the respectability he receives from the Chicago political establishment? A large number of Americans were also indifferent about President-elect Barack Obama’s infatuation with Saul Alinsky’s activist tactics.
Historical illiteracy has become the norm in the United States. Even graduates of our “best” schools know virtually nothing about the past. We are in serious danger. And Obama will most assuredly make things a lot worse. Eric Holder, after all, has been chosen to be the next head of the U.S. Department of justice. We can take for granted that conservative Republicans will be harassed and arrested at every opportunity. They will be charged with be minor technicalities similar to a traffic cop giving
a ticket to someone for driving 55 1/4 miles per hour in a 55 miles per hour zone.
Although the New York Times article actually surprised me (were they really printing those facts? wow!) the reactions by many of the paper’s readers who critiqued the article were no surprise at all, just more of the same.
In Seattle’s defense, the Lenin statue is by no means near the waterfront. It’s right outside a Taco del Mar in the middle of Fremont, one of the kookier neighborhoods that nobody takes very seriously. If nothing else, it’s an interesting relic, preserved from destruction after the fall of the USSR, that carries a lot of history that shouldn’t be forgotten.
But then again, something like that would be better put in a museum.
New Yorkers, throw on your ski masks and get out your ropes, chains, and lead pipes. That statue needs to come down.
Kvalseth writes:
“In Seattle’s defense, the Lenin statue is by no means near the waterfront. It’s right outside a Taco del Mar in the middle of Fremont, one of the kookier neighborhoods that nobody takes very seriously. If nothing else, it’s an interesting relic, preserved from destruction after the fall of the USSR, that carries a lot of history that shouldn’t be forgotten.”
..then they ought to take up a collection and purchase the real thing.
When the USSR fell in 1989 and the Russians were tearing down everything in sight having to do with the Soviet Union, there was a rumor that they were so strapped for cash that they were selling off memorabilia to the highest bidder. One rumor (now debinked, of course) was that a small town in Iowa had bought Lenin’s corpse to be put on display in their town square..
..or to be used for target practice?
There used to be a statue of Lenin in Dallas outside of Goff’s hamburgers on West Lovers Lane.
The owner traveled to Russia after the breakup of the USSR and had it shipped back to Dallas. He also had a plaque installed that read “America Won”.
Kvalseth is right. I live in the Seattle neighborhood just north of Fremont. Even Seattle regards Fremont as a bit odd. Seattle’s city council has spent a fortune trying to keep strip joints out. Fremont has a nude parade each summer.
Other than boats traversing the ship canal, there’s not much to see in Fremont, which is mostly decaying buildings from before WWII. So art is used to draw tourists into the bars and eateries. Lenin is one draw. This past summer I helped a Japanese tourist I met on a bus find it. There’s also a troll grasping a VW under a bridge, the Fremont Rocket, which looks like a holdover from some 1950s-era hamburger stand, and (my favorite) “Waiting for the Interurban.” You can find pictures of them here:
http://www.see-seattle.com/odyssey.htm
Waiting is marvelous. It’s a rare example of public participation art, regularly getting decorated for birthdays and other events. It’s never the same. Fremont easily has the most interesting outdoor art in the city. Lenin is just one example.
All that may change though. Just yards from Waiting is Adobe’s Seattle headquarters and Google is locating offices nearby. With their employees buying into new condos in the neighborhood, Fremont is likely to lose it’s old, kinky Greenwich Village flavor and become dominated by the “my property values” mindset. Before long they’ll be complaining about fishing boats that pass by smelling like, “Gasp, fish!”
Conservatives should spent less time bashing other people’s art and more time creating interesting, funny art of their own. I’d love to see one of FDR in a wheelchair, jauntily looking up with a cigarette holder in his mouth and the blacks and Jews he did nothing to help (despite landslide victories) being crushed beneath his wheels. Call it “FDR-Failing (to) Do Right.” It should be close enough to the DC mall, that tourists will flock to take pictures.
And there’s Ed Kennedy atop an overturned car, Carter in a chair far too large for him, Bill Clinton holding a dress and pointing his fingers at us….
There’s power in humor. G. K. Chesterton suggested it was also the best way to counter acts of terror.
–Michael W. Perry, Chesterton on War and Peace
Egg it!
Americans can be a gullible lot can’t we? I find it humorous that we feed into the “art as life” frenzy whenever we find something of a dubious nature or somehow an affront to our sensibilities. When will we ever learn to just ignore the idiots that are trying to shock us? Wouldn’t they tire of spending their time and money if they get no press coverage and nobody goes on a pilgrimage to protest their “art”? In reality, whomever or whatever group erects these monstrosities do it for one reason and one reason only. Is it to enlighten? Possibly perplex? Maybe to stretch one’s ideas of society or the family unit? Nope. Simply so people who find their work offensive are made to look like biggots or small-minded idiots therefore making the creator look somehow superior. Shock value if you will. Sort of like the idiots today putting an anti-religion “there is no God or Heaven…” sign next to a Christmas tree at the state capital in where was it…Washington or Oregon? Everybody wants their 5 minutes in the spotlight somehow. Some just enjoy getting it at the expense of others.
My brother lived in Ukraine for two years and the second time he came home, he brought with him a gigantic plaster bust of Stalin that had evidently had some deep meaning to him during his earlier visit, in a capture-the-flag sort of way. It had served as a mascot of sorts, and he went to great lengths to bring it home and to repair it when the nose was broken off by TSA.
I don’t know why he wanted a bust of Stalin, especially since he does know how horrible Stalin was. But it had meaning to him beyond its form, and that’s all that mattered.
The Seattle Lenin statue was bought and imported as a joke, and was erected in Fremont for the same reason. Everybody gets a good laugh out of it. Seattle politics may be dominated by totalitarian filth but — thank God — it is not NYC.
Interurban is a pretty great restaurant in Edmond Ok, or was. If “art” got no attention, it would disappear. Then again, what we put statues up of, represents what we revere. I can see both sides.
One of these days history should be taught at schools. Che was a brutal killer!
In all fairness, people should know who this man is, and what he represents.
Guevara was a stone-cold murdering thief – as anyone who bothered to read his diaries would find out.
Too bad that modern life says that hearing a press release on TV counts as knowledge.
All hail the freedom fighter? Don’t be a dou’Che!
Che Guevara? You have just got to be messed up to devote this much time to such useless endeavors. People can be made to believe nearly anything. Just surf the internet and you can find moubntains of mis-information. I am not surprised by this, but I am tired of it. I feel ready to hear from the poets now.
The Cooper Union building looks very nice. The brickwork is fantastic. And, it was build in Lincolns time? Wow.
Compare the building to the Stalin drape. Compare the quality, the amount of work, the amount of laborers, working together it took, and compare it to the pathetic, egotistical crap drape of Stalin.
Signs of the times. Cheap, poorly done, lefty crap over real works of substance and beauty.
as for me i don’t understand why people go out of there way to make other people upset or just unhappy. if it is done to them; they file lawsuits and make all kinds of trouble, if you don’t like something don’t watch it or go to where it is, if someone else likes it let them have at it, but to wrongly go and put things offensive to people in public areas just to make points or some other stupid agenda then it is wrong. just like in Washington state capitol, the athiest having to desacrate the nativity seen with there garbage and the govener letting them do it is a disgrace. we don’t go out of our way to make the athiest upset so why do they have to do it to normal people. just as the gay picket line where an old woman got her cross slapped out of her hands and then she was pushed around, this is not America and it must stop. divided we fall. we are playing into the hands of our enemy, they are watching us distroy ourselves. be smart. find center ground and be American first. be blessed all of you who read this little letter.
If new yorkers can tolerate it, so be it. If they get bombed again by enemies of America who admire che, I can tolerate that as well. Piss off screw york. You have shamed the nation by your politicians and your actions, again. You deserve what you get.
I guess the level of sickness in NYC is getting higher, and it is too bad because i live here and have to put with this level of idiocy from NYC elitists…!
Equal representation then for other communist-totalitarian leaders like him to be put up also like Mussolini, or Hitler, or Stalin (hey communist like Che)..right??? Ridiculous what the city does without even consulting the citizens that are paying for this travesty to be put up …what does Che represent to us New Yorkers…? Another revolutionary gone bad like Castro…?!!! And we have to look at hin now everyday…!!! Stupid…absolute idiocy…!
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b360/Jeff123456/4ward.png
CLICK ON THE ABOVE FOR MY 2 CENTS
HOW COME WE PUT UP IN NEW YORK CITY STATUES OF COMMUNISTS AT THE TAX PAYERS EXPENSES, BUT, CANNOT PUT UP STATUES OF JESUS, OR A GUARDIAN ANGEL OR THE POPE…???
I see the difference New Yorkers, not me, are infatuated with the dark side and cannot see the good in people…cannot venerate good God fearing but will pay homage to a killer…
Dark helmett, mind your karma, or your already screwed, then no cure but rage, though you could apply for help, some quick drug can avoid you to bear that pink paradise which is the object of your delusion
trust me, Im no Obamist, nor socialist whatever, just a normal human
As far as the Lenin statue goes, I place my trust in New York’s pigeons to decorate it appropriately and repeatedly.
Lincoln brigade should be remembered because it fought fascism. They fought for noble cause. Guevara, Ulanov, Djugashvili, were mass murderers, tyrants, and cowards.
#20 TERRY:
my sentiments exactly!! Where can I find the T-shirt?
I could accept statues and T shirts of Lenin, if they are of the last photo ever taken of him; the ultimate image of a dead man still breathing, but totally brain dead. And all leftists should learn to quote what Mrs. Molotov said when released from the Gulag: “You can survive prison if you have enough bread, soap, and garlic.”
“Lincoln brigade should be remembered because it fought fascism. They fought for noble cause.”
This is a myth, they were actually de-facto “pro-fascists” while Stalin and Hitler had their non-alignment pact. Stalin was not anti-fascist until after Nazi forces invaded the USSR. Prior to that moment the greatest enemy (according to the Stalinists) was liberalism and social democracy or “social fascism” in COMINTERN speak.
More here:
http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/antifascism-klehrhaynes-1913
here too:
http://www.butiamaliberal.com/2008/07/abraham-lincoln-brigade-memorial.html
“Lincoln brigade should be remembered because it fought fascism. They fought for noble cause.”
They were actually de-facto “pro-fascists” while Stalin and Hitler had their non-alignment pact. Stalin was not anti-fascist until after Nazi forces invaded the USSR. Prior to that moment the greatest enemy (according to the Stalinists) was liberalism and social democracy or “social fascism” in COMINTERN speak.
More here:
http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/antifascism-klehrhaynes-1913
To The New Centrist:
The Nationalist forces were supported by Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy therefore Lincolns fought fascism. During the Spanish Civil War Lincoln Brigade suffered more than 50% causalities, all in the noble cause of fighting the Axis powers. This is what I said, nothing more and nothing less. I know very well that Lincolns were controlled by Komintern, that during the war they shed the blood of loyalists belonging to POUM and many others (under orders of Komintern), and that under the orders of the Komintern most of the leadership and members shamefully supported the 1939 Molotow-Ribbentroff pact.
Centrist committed two logical fallacies; future (support for M-R pact and Komintern) is not the past (heroism during civil war), and wrong actions (e.g. POUM, Komintern)do not erase good actions. In SF it is their dead that are honored.
With all the honorable men and women that should have a statue in their honor…why a murdering thug like Che? Who paid for this? What does this say for the thousands of men, women and children murdered by this coward?
And an edifying update: Del Toro is in Cuba for the screening of “Che”.
A re-post from the piece on Naomi Klein which applies here even better -
The western left/commmunists history is a history of infamy – a history of absurd subservience to the Komintern and the Soviet Union’s interests.
I will remind you here only Lilian Hellman’s and her enlightened coterie’s attitude during the Finnish War.
And what gives even more dramatic dimensions to the distorted history which is taught in American schools, is that if you ask students about a war that happened in Europe in the thirties, they’ll all talk about the Spanish Civil War where the left was the good side and Franco’s army was a collection of monsters, and not about the Soviet Union attacking Finland without any provokation, and with utterly untenable justifications – and the Soviets’ actions and sub-sequent victory and unfair peace conditions being firmly supported by communists erywhere in the world.
P.S. vis-a-vis Guernica: during the Guernica bombing died about 300 people, while during the Barcelona May days, when the pro-Stalin communists took on syndicalists and anarchists, died close to 900 – as now tell this Naomi Klein.