Journalism
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November Feature
The Fast-Talking Howard Fast. This month’s guest essay is on the historical novelist Howard Fast (Citizen Tom Paine, Conceived in Liberty, Spartacus). It is graciously provided to Painting the Culture Red by historian Ron Capshaw. You can find it under Pages (top left).
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Raul Castro to Company: Your Idea Stinks
Fragrance finito. The news from Havana: Labiofam was forced on Friday to put a stopper in the “Hugo” and “Che” colognes it uncorked on Thursday. We had said that these power-to-the-people perfumes, named for Che Guevara and Hugo Chavez, were put on the market. It appears we were in error. They were prototypes. After 24 short…
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Perfuming the Culture Red
This site has been relying on a visual metaphor for cultural emanations of communism. We never thought of the sense of smell. We’re thinking again, what with the products that a Cuban company called Labiofam has just brought out, in hopes that the wafting aroma of Marxist-Leninist heroes will attract the cologne-buying public. Bottles of…
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Steinbeck’s Synthetic Grapes
One of the major social justice novels of the Depression era, The Grapes of Wrath, just turned 75. National Public Radio commemorated this milestone. John Steinbeck’s 1939 Dust Bowl epic about the Joad family was based on articles he wrote for the San Francisco News and the Nation on the plight of agricultural workers migrating from…
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The Liberals, I — Bruce Bliven
Here at Painting the Culture Red, a major part of our mission is to explore what liberals thought of the Soviet Union. Opinion on the Left was not monolithic. (Future posts will make this clear.) But let’s start with liberals who viewed that nation and its leader as democracy’s best hope. The New Republic has…
Painting the Culture Red 