A reader in Santa Monica writes me to complain of Leninade — this is a drink, a lemonade soda, that features images of Lenin, the hammer and sickle, and so on. It’s supposed to be funny. My correspondent’s not laughing, and you can call her a crabapple. But perhaps you will be inclined to forgive her when you learn she is from Russia.

It’s an old question by now: Should we laugh at, or shrug off, these uses of Communist symbols because we have “won”? (There is still “winning” to do for millions in China, Cuba, North Korea, and a few other places.) Maybe so. But we have also “won” over the Nazis — years ago. And no one messes around with images of Hitler or the swastika. You know?

The key difference is: Americans and other Westerners are taught about the Nazis; they are ignorant of the Communists and their record of mass murder.

My Russian-born reader also says, “There are quite a few apartment buildings here [in Southern California] with the portrait of Che Guevara plastered on the façade.” This bothers her. Silly lady, she must be. (And how painful it often is to be aware of things.)

‐Not very often is Ivan Lendl, the tennis great, interviewed. But someone at the Sunday Times (London) got a hold of him. (The results are here.) I want to highlight a couple of passages:

“Is it true that you watched the Soviet tanks rolling into Prague?” [Remember that Lendl was brought up in Czechoslovakia.]
“Yeah, I remember my parents were in Prague for club matches and I was with my grandparents in another town. They came to pick me up and we went home on the train and at every station there were tanks aiming at the trains.”
“That must have been terrifying?”
“Well, it wasn’t terrifying because you are only eight [that is, Lendl was at the time]. My parents were very upset and I was warned not to use words like ‘occupants’ [occupiers] or to laugh or spit or say anything against them. People went to jail for using words like that. That’s another reason I wouldn’t write an autobiography [he has already discussed a couple] — people here [in America] just wouldn’t understand. People in Hungary and Poland and the former Soviet republics would understand but people in California? Are you kidding me? They have no idea what it was like.”

Some would be receptive, though. Some would be. Lendl ought to write a book. Another excerpt:

“What is it like coming to the U.S. for the first time?”
“I was 15 and came to play in the Orange Bowl and it was great . . . At home, I was able to play a maximum of two hours indoors a week. Well, how much better are you going to get? But I came here and played six hours a day for two months and didn’t bother to look around. It didn’t matter to me that the stores had all the fruit you wanted to eat — I just wanted to get fed so I could go and play again.”

Try one more portion — and then I want to share a little story with you:

“The cliched projection of you here was that you were robotic and devoid of personality, the embodiment of the caricature communist, ‘Ivan the Terrible’” [this is the interviewer talking].
“Yeah.”
“That wasn’t very fair was it?”
“No, definitely not . . . Nobody hates communists more than I do — not even Rush Limbaugh!”

Do you remember my relating this story, years ago in this column? After the Soviets invaded Afghanistan, the Solzhenitsyn kids were riding the bus to school in Vermont. And the others said to them, “Communists!” I love that story — horrifying at the same time, of course. ‐So I know a man, here in Manhattan, who is from the same projects in the Bronx as Judge Sonia Sotomayor. (It was from him that I first learned the word “New Yorican” — a Puerto Rican New Yorker. The judge uses that word too.) His mother still lives in those projects. I said, “Well, what’s it like? What’s the atmosphere up there? Are people proud of the judge?” He said, “I’ll tell you what. The reporters and the cameras and so on are all over the place. So there aren’t as many shootings. Everyone’s gonna be cool for a while.” ‐I was reading about the court cases involving Starbucks, here. At issue is the tip jar: Should those tips be divided between shift supervisors and “baristas,” or are baristas alone entitled to them? Starbucks wants to make tip policy itself; but judges have been weighing in. And I — obviously a dinosaur — am thinking, “What business is it of the government? Shouldn’t the company decide what its tip policy is? Don’t business decisions rest with businesses?” But, particularly in the Age of Obama, those questions are naïve. Apparently. ‐A Harvard student named Chanequa Campbell has been banned from campus, in a murky case — you can read about it here. The student said, “Harvard is doing this to me because I’m black, I’m poor, and I’m from Brooklyn.” Yup. Because everybody knows that Harvard absolutely hates people who are black, poor, or from Brooklyn. They especially hate people who are all three.

“You’ve got to be carefully taught,” wrote Oscar Hammerstein II. Chanequa Campbell learned those lines, in our grievance culture. You aren’t born speaking them.

‐Here is an old, old debate: Will new technology, such as the Internet, help democrats and reformers in unfree countries? Or will it help regimes identify and control the democrats and reformers? Technology is certainly double-edged in China. I have always been uncertain who has the advantage: the CCP or the democrats. I swing with almost every story I read.

I thought of this when looking at this story, which begins,

Chinese authorities shut down blogs, Internet forums and social media sites such as Twitter in an apparent attempt to stem online political discussion ahead of Thursday’s 20th anniversary of the bloody crackdown on 1989’s Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests.

May the Chinese authorities’ attempt fail. And I will have more to say about this technology debate in coming weeks, months, years — I have already written about it a fair amount. This I know: Technology is not necessarily the boon to democrats — and bane of oppressors — that many people make it out to be.

‐Nancy Pelosi used to be a prominent supporter of human rights in China. She represents San Francisco, and that sort of goes with the territory. There are liberal Democrats in South Florida who are big on human rights in Cuba. Sort of refreshing to see, motivation aside.

But Pelosi is now Speaker of the House — and therefore a national figure. She acts like it. On her recent visit to China, she talked up global warming, almost exclusively. The Associated Press ran a headline: “Pelosi Dodges Human Rights on China Visit.” The Speaker sniffed in response, “Protecting the environment is a human-rights issue.”

Yup. Won’t the people in dungeons and camps be pleased to hear that? (To read about Pelosi and China, go here.)

‐El Salvador has a new president, and he is an FMLN man — a leftist. They used to engage in violent overthrow (or attempted violent overthrow); now they are in the political racket, which is great. The first thing the new president, Funes, did was restore ties with the Castros’ Cuba. And I want to point out an interesting passage from an AP report, here:

. . . he sought to ease fears of radicalism by comparing himself to President Barack Obama as well as Brazil’s Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a leftist who has maintained warm ties with leaders across the political spectrum.
“We turned to the strong examples of Obama and Lula as proof that progressive leaders — instead of being a threat — can be a new, safe alternative for their people,” Funes said in his inaugural address.

Uh-huh. I thought you would enjoy this, too, from the same article:

Obama sent U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to represent the United States at the inauguration, which she called a testament to the strength of democracy in the Americas.
Funes singled her out in his inaugural speech as a “woman who honors America and radiates the brilliance of the feminine gender throughout the world.”

You know, I had never thought of her in quite those terms. You? In any case, I wanted to mention this, finally: “Members of [Funes’s] party applauded wildly and shouted the traditional chant of the left in Latin America: ‘The people united will never be defeated!’”

As I noted in Tuesday’s Impromptus, this is the slogan that graces the logo of the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal, where Judge Sotomayor published her “wise Latina” speech. Go here. “The people united . . .” is the old Allende-ist cry and song — and the new vogue for it makes many people, attuned to history, shudder.

‐Let me tell you about one of the most depressing letters I have received in the present season. Here goes: “I am an active-duty guy who attends classes at a college in Tucson, Ariz. In one of the hallways they have huge paintings of both Che Guevara and President Obama, in the ‘revolutionary’ style. They are right next to each other” — yup. I’m afraid this is too depressing to comment on, so I’m going to move on to . . .

‐. . . this headline: “U.S. inviting Iranian diplomats to July 4 parties.” It is over this story — which begins, “In a new overture to Iran, the Obama administration has authorized U.S. embassies around the world to invite Iranian officials to Independence Day parties they host on or around July 4th.”

I attended such a party — in Podgorica, Montenegro. Delightful event. The Obama administration is eager to make nice with the mullahs. But listen: They are a brutal, brutal, ghastly regime, its belligerent and apocalyptic foreign policy aside: This is a regime that stones young girls to death for the “crime” of having been gang-raped. There is almost no depravity to which this regime has not stooped.

Why would representatives of that regime want to attend a party celebrating the birth of a democracy? Why would democrats want representatives of such a regime at such an occasion? Some people try to persuade themselves that monsters are normal people — and such an attempt can bring great sorrow and pain.

‐Something funny happened in my earlier Impromptus — the column on Tuesday. I linked to a column from May 2003 — because I wanted to share a vignette about Bob Hope. Some readers read the rest of that column — and they were tickled to note the following: “I saw that the new governor of Illinois, Rod Blagojevich, would like to be president.”

Well, that didn’t work out so hot.

‐As longtime readers know, I have a thing for news photos — and I saw some arresting ones from Reuters the other day. Wanted to link to a few, and offer a few comments.

This is a photo of people massed for food in a Pakistani refugee camp. A girl looks skyward, at rain clouds. Stunning. A stunning photo.

This is a photo of an Israeli “settler,” in despair over the ruins of his community, taken out by Israeli troops. The whole world hates “settlers” — they are possibly the most despised group of people on earth. They are singled out as obstacles to peace (and not wisely). But, as I heard Tzipi Livni say, quite movingly, at a conference in Egypt last year, they are people too. In Gaza, many had never lived anywhere else — and that number included people in their late 30s.

Besides, a million and a half Arabs live in Israel, with democratic rights. If Arabs in the disputed territories can’t tolerate a few Jews — what hope for the future is there?

This is a photo from Colombo, Sri Lanka — and, in that country, forces of society have just won a victory over forces of sheer terror and inhumanity. It was a long time coming. We see a legion of soldiers in wheelchairs. It seems that many were victims of landmines. Again, a stunning, gut-punching photo.

Finally, a newlywed couple on a balcony in Verona, home of Romeo and Juliet. Here. Ahhh . . .

‐A little language? A few columns ago, I had a note on ring, rang, rung — but swing and swung (no swang). One reader wrote, “How come it’s not hing, hang, hung?” Another reader brought up the delightful word — unofficial word — snuck. And that reminded me of a word I particularly like: squoze.

I first heard it uttered by President Reagan. There was something on his face, and he told the press it got worse when “I squoze it.” Never had he sounded more like the Illinois kid he was — a Mark Twain kid.

‐Make another Phoenix announcement? About my forthcoming visit to the Goldwater Institute, June 18? If you’re interested — go here.

‐Finally, want to end with a golf note — haven’t had one of those in: oh, at least a few days. I was reading the comments of Jack Nicklaus, in advance of his Memorial Tournament (which is this weekend). He said, “The one thing I never liked as a golfer . . .” I was jarred by that past tense. Nicklaus is referring to his golfing life as a former life. Which it is. As I say, that kind of shook me.

But listen: To me, he’ll always be a golfer, almost as much as Bach will always be a composer.

Thanks for joining me, and see you later.

#JAYBOOK#