In the Spirit of Christmas Eve

I've been watching this North Korea cyberattack news pretty closely.  Read a few articles online and then watched some of Anderson Cooper 360, The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer and a bit of Morning Joe - to me, for American news media, pretty down the middle.  However, what I quickly noticed is that over and over the focus was on the "cyberterrorism" committed by North Korea against Sony and how we as nation should respond ("proportionally") to this aggression.  But one thing I never heard anyone ask is, Can anyone name a Hollywood film ever produced where the plot was for the main characters (let's say, American citizens) to pursue and successfully carry out the assassination of a sitting US President (not a fictional president)?  What would happen if your neighbor down the street used YouTube to produce a low budget independent film - let's stay with a comedy - that resulted in our dear leader (Repub, Dem, whoever) being assassinated?  So, as I watch our news, and how stories are framed, I'm reminded of double standards.  Imagine if I had been in Thailand and their movie industry created a film in which a couple of popular comedians from Iraq escaped the bombing of Baghdad and made their way to the USA, eventually using their wits and charms to somehow work their way into the White House in order to carry out an assassination of then President Bush.....and people worldwide thought it was hilarious and said, "Oh.  It's just comedy.  Don't you believe in free speech?  And isn't he a bad guy anyway?" It would have disturbed me.  And believe me, our government ("we the people") would have reacted.  And where's Jesus in all this?  And Buddha?  Gandhi?  MLK?  And the principles we supposedly hold so dear? How would our moral giants grapple with this?

Later on I was watching Charlie Rose on PBS and heard this interview.  Reminded me that there are some folks who have questions about what's going on.  

 

at the 40 minute mark

"In my view, an incredibly stupid movie. Don't you think we shouldn't be making movies about assassinating sitting leaders.......... There's enough people killing people today in the world. It's not funny to me."


And then the following morning, a lady (incidentally, a Repub) from New York phoned in on a C-Span program and made some interesting remarks. 

Washington Journal News (C-Span) Telephone lines were open for viewer calls on whether the U.S. should respond more aggressively to North Korea following the country’s involvement in a cyberattack on Sony Pictures.

18:55 mark  "You have to remember, when you take a movie that's done here in the United States, and you threaten the leader of their country (North Korea)........North Korea sees a movie come out about killing and assassinating their leader.  Why did we do that to begin with?  It's kicked off everything that's happened.  We do something to antagonize them.  I thought we were supposed to be a better country now."