Communist Chic

Look what's available from The North Face in men's and boy's sizes:

Please explain to me how anyone is buying this. How a well-known, respected American company is producing an item that advertises – hammer, sickle and all – a nation responsible for the deaths of nearly 62 million people.

Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe has an interesting explanation for this fashion trend:

[P]erhaps the strongest explanation is the simplest: visibility. Ever since the end of World War II, when photographers entered the death camps and recorded what they found, the world has had indelible images of the Nazi crimes. But no army ever liberated the Soviet Gulag or halted the Maoist massacres. If there are photos or films of those atrocities, few of us have ever seen them. The victims of communism have tended to be invisible -- and suffering that isn't seen is suffering most people don't think about.

''Communist chic?" The blood of 100 million victims cries out from the ground. To wear the symbols of their killers is no fashion statement, but the ultimate in bad taste.

Instead of supporting this company and its bad decision to produce this junk, how about contributing the money you might spend on such a jacket to the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation and help erect a monument to those that have perished under communist tyranny?

Besides, you can get a better jacket from L.L. Bean, unless they start making Swastika parkas. And if that's the case, well...at least you'll have your principles to keep you warm.

(H/T Michelle Malkin)