Curiouser and Curiouser

A few days ago I mentioned here that Christopher Knight, the art critic of the Los Angeles Times, had noticed the odd fact that the logo for last weekend's anti-Obama march on Washington makes use of a symbol with a long pedigree on the militant left, a raised fist.

It turns out that the Rolling Stone website has more details. They report that the raised fist imagery was a source of debate among the organizers of the march, some of whom were plainly aware of its history and associations. Tea Party Patriots national director Jenny Beth Martin tried to persuade Brendan Steinhauser, an executive of FreedomWorks, which organized the march, to adopt a logo with more conventionally patriotic imagery — an eagle and a shield. In an e-mail reply, Steinhauser refused, and said the use of the raised fist was a deliberate effort to "co-opt" left wing imagery. He called it an "edgy symbol".

Okay, but when Glenn Beck finds what he claims is "Fascist" and "Communist" imagery around Rockefeller Center, he tells his viewers it's evidence that the Rockefellers, those notorious Bolsheviks, have been secretly transmitting to unsuspecting pedestrians all kinds of encoded come-ons for totalitarianism. So what does it mean when his guys knowingly adopt a long time symbol of the communist party into their image kit?

I'll be waiting for Beck's on-camera commentary denouncing the logo for last weekend's march.

And waiting. And waiting. And waiting.

The item on the Rolling Stone website, with the full text of Steinhauser's e-mail, is here.