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.

Legends Of The Fall

It’s come to this: after being open 20 years, the Nixon Library’s best spokesman for defending the Nixon “legacy” is creationist fraudster and imaginary civil rights veteran Ben Stein.

The  celebration of 20 proud years is in the spirit of Nixon, with events featuring such 60s legends as Freddie “The Jew Counter” Malek.

The Library spent most of these years with no actual Nixon presidential documents. It’s been a place of song, myth, and wedding rentals,  staffed by the fervent few who still believe Nixon’s vindication will come, someday.

How will you celebrate the Nixon’s Twenty Years Of Lustration?

Why not begin with the man himself, your very own Richard M. Nixon Talking Action Figure!

Others may wish to commune with the man himself, Being Richard Nixon, or the sweaty facsimile thereof.  Kids of all ages still snap up the Nixon masks  for Halloween, and a subset finds them useful in robbing banks. 

You can return to Nixon’s Red Hunting roots with this portrait of a simpler time, then Congressman Nixon pretending to examine the famous in their day Pumpkin Papers:

One of the five film rolls was blank, giving us 20% odds that the staged event was even faker than it appears.

Nixon pioneered the Republican habit of hauling   minorities  around for street cred.

You’ll always treasure the special friendship of Sammy Davis Jr. and Nixon with this commemorative key chain.

For the true Nixonian  connoisseur only ” Millhouse – A White Comedy”  will do.  Warm up the VCR and return to a magical era, when Nixon could salvage his place on the 52′ Republican ticket with a mawkish speech, the climax of which was the candidates firm vow not to surrender his daughters’ puppy. 

Richard Nixon: he fights for you!

Shown shouting at lefty Latin American students,  Nixon displays his mastery at presenting himself as America’s champion against the swarthy Reds.

They may all be weird, but Nixon hid it least. David Greenberg writes on the history of Nixon character archaeology, the decades of man hours dedicated to trying to fathom his mysteries.

*Phil Ochs’ leftiod-folkie classic  “Here’s To The State of Richard Nixon” isn’t sold in stores, but you can acquire an MP3 version, and if you really want to attract stares a ring-tone is available, for unfathomable reasons.  

Snakes Eyed

How can the Teabaggers surge to power when they can’t even agree on their flag’s name, now on sale at deep discounts?

No Tea Party rally is  complete without Hammers & Sickles, racist Obama posters, and the beloved “Don’t Tread On Me” flag.

Continental Congress Delegate Christopher Gadsden invented the banner during the Revolution. [Fun Fact: Gadsden's grandson James, after valiant service driving the Seminole from Florida, did further service to our Manifest Destiny by solidifying the Southwest's theft from Mexico. He bought the last bit in service of a railroad line, a scheme by Jefferson Davis to give the Slave states an outlet to the Pacific]

The flag’s last use in politics was by the Peoples Bicentennial Commission, a leftie alternative to the bland commemoration planned by the Nixon/Ford administration.

Accept No Substitute

But all this proud heritage hasn’t kept goofballs from spelling the name “Gadsen”  in their hamfisted efforts to catch the Teabagger fever.

And at steep discounts. $9.99 brings you this handsome polyester number. But the real savings come with correct spelling. Flag retailer victims of the Teabagger Bubble are trying to unload product for as low as $.49.

Where will we ever unload all this green/yellow plastic?  What of today’s youth?

One patriotic school did its part.

They got the Spirit of ’76 so bad they misspelled Gadsden a few graphs above an admonition the kids “use proper spelling on all work.”  [They also threw in Jefferson Davis along with Abraham Lincoln because it just seemed right.]

7/23 Bonus Update!

Wonkette has chosen this auspicious moment to launch a t shirt line, featuring none other than the Gadsden Snake!

“The Teabaggers will have literally no idea what to think“

We’re Inventing Facts To Serve You Better!

How will you celebrate America’s first step towards killing the Red Scare?

This day in the history,  the United States Senate tried to strangle McCarthyism in its crib, voting a resolution denouncing  Joe McCarthy’s first false claims of Reds in the State Department.

This was just five months after McCarthy stumbled into his campaign,  launching a flood of fanciful Communist charges after he saw the response to his “I have in my hand” speech in  Wheeling West Virginia.

McCarthy survived, and had many more political lives, but that’s no reason not to mark the day his act was called out as a “fraud and a hoax.”

McCarthy Meets The Marketplace!

“I believe you can ask almost any school child who the architect of our far eastern policy is, and he will say ‘Owen Lattimore.’ ”

– Joseph McCarthy

Owen Lattimore was McCarthy’s first target, a China expert the Senator claimed was the “Number one Red agent in America” and “Alger Hiss’s boss.”  A neat trick for a man who didn’t work at the State Department.  The Senate’s Tydings Committee cleared Lattimore of all charges, and this “instant book” [one of the first, if not the first] was part of Lattimore’s victory lap.  Unfortunately Lattimore’s enemies were not satisfied, and McCarthy ally Senator Pat McCarran took up the hunt again, forcing Lattimore to spend five years batting off charges.

Robert Newman wrote the definitive story: 

For the Lattimore completest, an enterprising soul has taken his FOIA’s FBI records and slapped them into a book:

Spunky, but the FBI has already put them online.

Why not enjoy some quality time with the man himself?  Return now to 1952, with Joe McCarthy unfazed by the Senate’s earlier repudiation and salivating over the sunlit vistas ahead – Ike’s expected election and his own looming committee chairmanship.

M. Stanton Evans, a tireless soldier in the struggle, is the most prominent current “McCarthy Was Right-ist.”

But if you like your fanciful history with long legs and a grating voice, Ann Coulter compiled some of what is known and a lot of what she could make up about Soviet spies in “Treason.”

Actual historian Ellen Schrecker’s history of McCarthyism:

“Point Of Order” is McCarthyism near the end, compiled out of the Senator’s overreaching at the 1954 Army-McCarthy hearings. His incessant cries of “point of order” rapidly irritate fellow Senators and viewers, and the hearings helped turn public opinion against the witch hunter.

Several years later director Emile de Antonio completely lost his mind,  deciding that what America in the 70s craved was listening to faceless shapes behind a scrim explain the Revolution being brought to you by the Weather Underground.    Time stands still as you hear the flat Midwestern voices of Bernadene Dorn, future Obama “pal” Billy Ayers, and more explain the struggle.

      Sadly unavailable on video except as part of the collected works, Smithsonian Folkways felt moved in 2007 [!] to release an audio CD version, allowing a new generation of teens to groove to such commie classics as “We Are a Small Organization”  and “Why We Are Communist & Speak Collectively” [and apparently escew pluralization!]

William F. Buckley evolved into the cuddly kindly uncle of the conservative movement, but back in the day he trafficked in all manner of nonsense about McCarthy.    He and his future paramilitary brother-in-law Brent Bozell wrote a pioneer apologia,

Buckley continued to bang the drum into the sixties in his columns and on “Firing Line,” his retrospectively sparkling TV show.       This episode is one of the greats, where “Bill” and Fred Schwartz deplore the dissipation of anti-Communist fervor.

However did that come about? Here we have two men in a  studio mustily reviewing how Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev proved he was a Marxist in his  “Secret Speech” denouncing Stalin, 13 years after the fact, and three years after Khrushchev himself lost power.

The fizz “Dr. Fred Scwartz” brings to the topic are typical of the man. His Christian Anti-Communist Crusade [oh yes, they have a web page!] spent much of its time flogging Fred’s book,

but when not doing that they were ferriting out the Red presence in youth culture.  He promoted the wholesome Janet Greene as an Anti-Communist

folk troubadour against the Kingston Trio menace,   with minimal results.

Glen Beck carries the torch for Joe McCarthy on a nightly basis, combining head shaking, interviewees he won’t let get a word in, and incoherent versions of his own theories in a potent brew of fiction and spittle. And he draws a fan base to match, folding his tales into their own pet causes such as re-litigating World War II. Did you know Japan was a victim of China and Russia? It’s true, I read it on the Internet!