It is no surprise that Humberto Fontova has gone the route of many others looking to make a quick buck off the fame of Che Guevara. The main difference here is that he's making his money make a quick buck off the memory of a man he claims to despise. Che's memory, and particularly his image, have been abused almost since the moment he burst onto the world stage during the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Today most people know what Che Guevara looks like, even if they can't put a name with the face. The famous of Guevara taken by Alberto Korda during a 1960 funeral service for victims of a munitions ship explosion has become one of the iconic images of our time. Yet what was once an image carried by student demonstrators and social revolutionaries now adorns T-shirts, mugs, and any other number of consumer goods.

Humberto Fontova is just another in a long line of people trying to cash in on Che Guevara's life and untimely death I could not even finish his book, "Exposing the real Che Guevara and the Idiots who Idolize Him." It reached the point where it was no different than reading Ann Coulter ramble on about whatever liberal villain she's mad about today. Had Fontova been more objective, he might have been able to add to the discussion on Che's place in history.

Che Guevara was no saint, but in spite of Fontova's slanderous assertions to the contrary, he may well have been what the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre called him after Che's death in 1967: "the most complete human being of his age." Many, especially the rabid anti-Communists of his day, saw him as ruthless, which he certainly could be. If ruthlessness is something to be universally condemned, however, we should discard nearly all of the stories of the Old Testament.

Che Guevara is relevant today not because of his status as an icon. He is relevant because he lived the very inverse of the American dream. We admire those who start with nothing and attain great wealth, prestige, and power. Che was born into wealth, prestige, and power and gave it all up to attain what many would consider nothing. After seeing the grinding poverty of his continent during a 1951 motorcycle trip across South America, he left a middle-upper class life as an Argentine doctor to fight for the oppressed people he encountered in South America, Africa and Asia.

This is an important lesson to us, and our children, as we move through this hyper-consumer, "me-first" society. I believe Che was the model of what a political

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