Cameron Diaz offends Peru with a purse.
The purse is, quoth the article, "...an olive green bag emblazoned with a red star and the words 'Serve the People' printed in Chinese, perhaps Chinese Communist leader Mao Zedong's most famous political slogan."
Peru was home to the Shining Path, a Maoist revolutionary group, and that little conflict killed around 70,000 people. (Yes, communism deliberately killed more than 100,000,000 people in the twentieth century. Funny how no one ever mentions that fact....) Diaz's little "fashion statement" was about like bringing a ham to a Ramadan celebration.
People who idolize communists with apparel don't understand--or just don't care--what they are saying.
The people who wear Che Guevara shirts are idolizing a mass murderer. Guevara was a sadistic murderer who took pleasure in killing people. He wasn't a "hero"; he was a psycho. Why don't those people just wear John Wayne Gacy tee shirts, or Richard Speck--or just get it over with and wear a picture of fucking Hitler? If you're going to idolize totalitarian mass murderers, you might as well go for it.
Particularly if you're an adolescent shithead who is trying to "rebel". Denis Leary said it best: "...you're eighteen years old, [and] you don't know shit about shit...!" Anyone wearing a Che Guevara tee shirt is, in my estimation, automatically labeled an ignorant fool who knows nothing about history and shouldn't be allowed to vote. There is nothing romantic about Che Guevara; he's evil.
(There is a company which markets a tee shirt with a picture of Che Guevara on it, with a big "NO" circle over his face. Those shirts are the exception to this rule.)
What about Cameron Diaz and her Mao purse?
I said that communism has killed 100,000,000 people. The majority of that figure is Chinese people. Hitler did about 20,000,000 (I include him because his regime was dictatorial and, other than a few details, utterly equivalent to that of Soviet communism) the USSR did about 30,000,000 or so; and China did all the rest.
So: Cameron Diaz thinks that Mao--a man responsible for FIFTY MILLION DEATHS--is worthy of quoting on her personal apparel.
"I didn't recognize the potentially hurtful nature of the slogan," Diaz whines. (emphasis mine)
Stupid, stupid, Hollywood liberal.