New Film Post: “Wearing Che”
I never owned a Che T-shirt, but in college I had a tee that proclaimed: “It’s Not A Revolution If You Can’t Dance To It.” I rarely wore it because it was a little blousy, but when I did, it was better than a Che for impressing flowering-feminists that I was a conscientious boy-radical worth getting drunk with and ranting all night to about the sorry state of the proletariat.
I looked it up, and when the great radical-granny-fem-anarchist, Emma Goldman, supposedly uttered her most-quotable line she was not, in fact, promoting my life of frat-tastic free-for-alls. She was instead responding to an impudent proto-punk who had taken her aside at a party to chastise her for dancing at Anarchist functions. Emma was always getting down at parties, with or without music. In between leading the fight for female contraception, co-founding the anarchist movement, and being arrested and jailed for high treason, she shook it. The boy tried to convince her that her incessant dancing was disrespectful and dangerous to the group. He was afraid that if people saw one of the new party’s leaders showing such silly displays of emotion they would never take the movement seriously. The kid had a point. As liberals repeatedly prove by, say, disowning Howard Dean for getting excited at a rally or nitpicking Obama’s every move or attacking Hillary’s singing, the left loves to devour its own. But Emma thought it was crucial to keep a sense of playfulness in one’s political activism. Nervous Nelly’s be-damned. So she told the little prick, “If I can’t dance, it’s not my revolution.” Oh well. She didn’t stop dancing, and capital A “Anarchy” today is a couple of pony-tailed guys calling Cheney a fascist on Berkeley late-night public access television.
The point is Emma would love how The Daily Show’s Scott Jacobson* and Josh Glasser have taken the piss out of all of us faux-revolutionaries in their new short film, “Wearing Che.” Ernesto Che Guevarra on the other hand would have had them both executed by a Bolivian firing squad. Touché T-Che. Viva la Circle Pee!
*Scott co-re-scripted The Japanese Bewitched on issue #2.
The Howard Dean Screaming Action Figure:
This audio-equipped collectable goes for $29.95 a pop.
