"A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery."

No, but it might have something to do with gem-encrusted gold statues.

China National Radio says: "When the gold flashes, it captures the intense interest of the public."

"There he was, back in high school, a fresh-faced member of the volleyball team and a student leader in Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution..."

"... ordering teachers to line up in the auditorium, dunce caps on their bowed heads. He stood there, excited and proud, as thousands of students howled abuse at the teachers."

Then, suddenly, a posse stormed the stage and beat them until they crumpled to the floor, blood oozing from their heads. He did not object. He simply fled. “I was too scared,” he recalled recently in one of several interviews at a restaurant near Tiananmen Square, not far from his alma mater, No. 8 Middle School, which catered to the children of the Mao elite. “I couldn’t stop it. I was afraid of being called a counterrevolutionary, of having to wear a dunce’s hat.”

When China got tough on the purveyors of shoddy statuettes of Chairman Mao.

This is a news story from 2010:

... Mao's hometown of Shaoshan sold 124 million yuan (£12.4 million) worth of trinkets last year, of which almost three-quarters were Mao statuettes. But buyers have complained that some Mao statues do not even resemble the founder of modern China and that substandard statues have melted in the heat or chipped easily.

"The new guidelines include a ban on plastic and plaster because plastic deforms and plaster is easy to break," said the head of the Standardisation department at Hunan province's Quality Supervision Bureau, who declined to give his name.

"We will have a team of art and craft experts working with factories to determine the likeness of the statues, based on photographs of Chairman Mao in historic moments, in order to decide which ones are authentically Mao," he added.

If they really cared about standards, they wouldn't revere Mao, but who's buying these things? Tourists?

I ran across that article yesterday while looking for a photograph of the statuette I saw in a house in Madison that was staged for sale.

Real estate is a subtle matter.

Who knows what will warm the heart of the buyer? It depends on the context. When you "stage" your house, what do you leave out and what do you put away? Let's say you had one of these:



Out or in? Assume Madison, Wisconsin.

"There are at least two things wrong with this official Department of Education website quoting Mao Zedong..."

"1. Mao probably meant 'to be insatiable in learning,' not 'satiable.'

"2. WHY ARE YOU QUOTING MAO ZEDONG ON A U.S. GOVERNMENT WEBSITE?"

"Hugo Chavez’s body will be preserved and forever displayed inside a glass tomb at a military museum..."

"... not far from the presidential palace from which he ruled for 14 years, his successor announced Thursday in a Caribbean version of the treatment given Communist revolutionary leaders like Lenin, Mao and Ho Chi Minh."

So reports the Associated Press. How they know what's going to happen forever is beyond me.

What I really mean to say is: The Associated Press should be ashamed of itself.

Video from the "Guns Across America" rally here in Madison, Wisconsin today.

Here's some edited video showing the crowd and the signs.



In the middle there is a prayer, and at the end is the national anthem. Once you get to the national anthem, it's all national anthem from there on. I decided not to edit that part down because you get a good view of the people who attended the rally and their attitude.

The prayer is quite interesting, including some discussion of what Jesus said to Peter after he cut off a man's ear. (Jesus didn't tell Peter to surrender his sword. He told him to "put it back in the holster." My Bible says "sheath," but Jesus wasn't speaking English.)

At 2:07, you see a sign that says "Political Power Grows Out of the Barrel of a Gun. Mao," held next to a second, matching sign that says — in between 2 peace signs — "Support and Defend the Constitution."

At 2:15, I'm talking to this man about his nice-looking but hard-to-stop-and-read sign:



He asks me if I recognize the face and (despite knowing I'm wrong) I guess Michael J. Fox. He lets me know it's Ayn Rand and I say I'll read it later (knowing I've got the still). It says: "The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other - until one day when they are suddenly declared to be the country's official ideology."

At 2:35, I talk to a counter-protester with a sign that says "Ban High Capacity Magazine Clips" and ask "What's a magazine clip?" She knew there was some question about that term, but she'd researched it on the internet and decided that was the term she wanted to use. Perhaps saying "magazine clip" is a way to signal which side you're on. A shibboleth.

ADDED: Other stills from the rally here.