Sunday’s LA Times story on the commercial exploitation of Mao Tse-tung in his hometown was weird enough (Mao snow globes!), but today’s NY Times brings news of my favorite bit of Communist kitsch ever: the “Ho Chi Minh Golf Trail”,* which the Times describes as “a series of eight courses whose label is as good a sign as any of where Vietnam seems to be headed — its heroic wartime past redefined as a sales pitch.” What’s next — gulag resorts?

* For those who don’t know, the original Ho Chi Minh Trail was a key supply route for the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War.