Bridget Johnson on OpinionJournal.com looks at Hollywood's fascination with communist revolutionaries and knows why some Americans don't realize communism is all that bad.
Annoying as the Che adulation is, a recent comment by a 14-year-old on an online movie message board was truly disturbing: "I just saw The Motorcycle Diaries, which further made me question: Why is communism bad? . . . Young people are told how bad communism is, but we are not told why. . . . The Motorcycle Diaries showed me how Ernesto Guevara wanted to help people. . . . But this did not explain why he was such a 'bad' person and apparently deserved to be murdered by the U.S."
She notes that there really isn't a movie that tells the full tale of Stalin's Russia, Fidel's Cuba, and the like. Of Guevara she notes:
Guevara told a British reporter after the Cuban Missile Crisis that the nukes would have been fired if they were under Cuban control--which would have wasted all of those future American suburban revolutionary wannabes.
Is this a man who should be celebrated in film? Apparently. She notes that two more "Che" films appear to be on the way.
I'll help out that 14 year old a bit. Communism is bad because it robs men and women under the control of communist governments of the all of the freedoms that you take for granted. If you refuse to relinquish those freedoms you are expendable. Communism requires a coercive arm of government for it's continued existence. If he wants to know what that means he need only read history.
UPDATE: More on Che here, from Dean Esmay.
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