Samizdata

The Controller’s Monthly Note from Radio 3 informed me of a new role that may fail a test of utility. They have appointed the artistic director of Music and the Deaf to sign a prom.

This Prom will be the first ever ‘signed Prom’. Dr Paul Whittaker, artistic director of Music and the Deaf will guide the audience in the hall through the music of Stephen Sondheim in the company of the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by David Charles Abell (above).

Music and the Deaf is a worthwhile charity that aids deaf pupils who wish to learn how to read music and play instruments. Supporting this minority endeavour through private philanthropy and voluntary contribution is admirable for those who are interested in this cause.

One must ask if private encouragement requires public support: and if it does, whether a ‘signed prom’ meets that requirement. Music is enjoyed by people who can hear, not by the deaf. This is a fact. Allowing the Orchestra of the Deaf to play gives public evidence that the deaf do not need tobe prevented from studying music.

A ‘signed prom’ is a sop to the irrational and a waste of public money.

I try always to take my camera with me whenever I go out, because I never know what interesting thing I will encounter, and because I have a superstitious fear that on the one day when I don’t take my camera with me when I go out, that will be the day when an Airbus A380 flies over the middle of London, much too low, with one of its engines on fire, just when I have a perfect view of it.

Which means that when, on a recent late night visit to a local food and drink store that I don’t usually frequent, I spied the following mildly interesting collection of objects, I was able immediately to photograph them.

Okay, not an especially startling thing to see. A fizzy drink named after a murderous bolshevik who, because he died young just after being very well photographed, and because a lot of stupid and dishonest people worshipped him while concealing exactly why, is remembered as beautiful, and cool, and wise, and virtuous.

This peculiar cult of Che the Beautiful has been much discussed here, over the years, and not in a polite way. However, this fizzy drink does not by any means completely disgust me, by which I mean that the idea of it does not completely disgust me. I haven’t actually tasted Che and am in any case quite happy with the Tesco own brand version of such “energy” slop. Yes, these Che cans perpetuate a silly cult, but they also make it look, I think, rather ridiculous. For what we have here is not so much an anti-capitalist message as capitalism co-opting the iconography of anti-capitalism. Many of those seriously stupid people who not only love Che but who actually having a real inkling of what he stood for and of what he tried so ineptly to foist upon the world, well, they hate that. Their hero reduced by marketing opportunists to selling little cans of a generic fizzy drink to a target demographic of adolescent and agingly adolescent fools! Their precious revolution reduced to “the revolution of energy”, and it’s not even proper energy type energy, just stuff to keep kids awake for a few more hours. The horror. And I love that. This is the kind of thing that may eventually cut this beautiful, dead, deluded, murdering incompetent down to size.

Also, this is a photo-opportunity for the likes of us to remind ourselves, yet again, just what a bastard this particular bastard was, and just how stupid it is that so many people still worship him.

By the way, it was most gratifying how quickly google yielded up all those links. As one of the authors linked to above says, I forget which one, it is not at all hard to learn the ghastly truth about this ghastly man. Typing “Che Guevara” into google doubtless engulfs you in evil delusions. I don’t know. I didn’t do this. What I typed into google was: “truth about Che Guevara”, and most of what I very quickly found was very good and very anti-delusional.

According to one lady writer, when Che was a child he used to kill dogs for fun, a sure sign, she adds, of a psycho. Is that true? “Che Guevara killed dogs for fun” only got me back to the article I read this in. But if it is true, I think we might spread this around. Perhaps some little labels should be printed saying “When Che was a child he killed dogs for fun”, or maybe just “dog killer” because that’s quicker and simpler – and maybe tactically more effective because more cryptic and weird and disconcerting – and could then be stuck on Che tee-shirts, on Che posters, and on these little Che tins.