Hey, it’s not like they were on the Axis of Evil of anything:
North Korea has similarly denied the massive hack of Sony Pictures, which has been forced to cancel next week’s planned release of “The Interview,” a comedy about an assassination attempt on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
But KCNA applauded the attack.
“The hacking into the SONY Pictures might be a righteous deed of the supporters and sympathizers with the DPRK,” it said, using the acronym of its official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. “The hacking is so fatal that all the systems of the company have been paralyzed, causing the overall suspension of the work and supposedly a huge ensuing loss.”
Experts point to several signs of North Korean involvement. They say there are similarities between the malware used in the Sony hack and previous attacks against South Korea. Both were written in Korean, an unusual language in the world of cybercrime.
“Unfortunately, it’s a big win for North Korea. They were able to get Sony to shut down the picture. They got the U.S. government to admit that North Korea was the source of this and there’s no action plan really, at least publicly no action plan, in response to it,” said Cha. “I think from their perspective, in Pyongyang, they’re probably popping the champagne corks.”
I didn’t see the segment, but my wife was telling me that when she caught a few minutes of CNN while having lunch with some business associates today, everyone the network interviewed was angry with Sony (this was before news of Paramount knuckling under as well) for capitulating to North Korean demands to censor their media. Which seems rather paradoxical, given that, as is their wont with any socialist dictator*, CNN gave in to North Korean censorship long ago:
And let’s not forget this infamous 2005 segment with the network’s goofy far left founder. Ted Turner red-lined the Godwin meter in interviews when he learned that Fox News was launching in the mid-1990s. But when faced with a 21st century national socialist regime, he was quite happy to sing their praises, the very definition of the phrase “useful idiot”:
But then, it’s not like most MSM outlets don’t have a similarly huge mote in their eye on the issue of choosing self-censorship over advancing the First Amendment:
“Sony’s cave-in to North Korea sets a horrible precedent.” – Newspaper who wouldn’t run Mohammed cartoons
— David Burge (@iowahawkblog) December 18, 2014
Update: From Ace, “What Exactly Has North Korea Done That Progressives Don’t Do Every Single Day?”
A professor blogged a criticism of a teaching assistant, who’d discussed gay marriage in her classroom, but then shut down all dissent, claiming dissent to be illegitimate (per his claim).
Result? The university is “investigating” him and has suspended him from all teaching duties.
Ace’s headline resonates particularly strongly here in California, where Sacramento’s first impulse is to ban everything. Not to mention at CNN, which has a pretty strong ban everything instinct as well. As does MSNBC, where “Lawrence O’Donnell probably would have pulled ‘The Interview’ too,” his associate Chris Hayes tweeted tonight.
But of course — presumably, as someone who declared on air in 2010 that “liberals amuse me. I am a socialist. I live to the extreme left, the extreme left of you mere liberals,” O’Donnell would wish to advance the goals of the socialist nation that really puts the extreme into the extreme left.
Meanwhile, Mary Katharine Ham spots this moment on the sclerotic former news channel: “Journalist on CNN: Hey, don’t we have a responsibility not to offend Kim Jong Un?”
I know what you’re thinking right now — good thing Hollywood didn’t think like that in World War II. But which is more important? Actually defeating Imperial Japan, or being endlessly hectored afterwards about the tone of our propaganda afterwards by the hairshirt left? (And don’t get them started on the horrors of V-J Day in Times Square, aka, the birth of America’s rampant Rape Culture. No, really.) Remember the motto that defines political correctness and unites our left with those in Pyongyang: Better dead than rude!
Which thankfully wasn’t the nation’s mindset in December of 1940, one year before we went to war:
The angriest reaction came from the German-American Bund, Hitler’s stooges in the U.S. They harassed Jack Kirby and Joe Simon, the creators of Captain America, with hate mail and telephoned death threats.
“The theme was ‘death to the Jews,’” Simon wrote in his memoir. “At first we were inclined to laugh off their threats, but then, people in the office reported seeing menacing-looking groups of strange men in front of the building on 42nd Street, and some of the employees were fearful of leaving the office for lunch.”
Simon called the cops, and as soon as the police showed up, the phone rang. Mayor Fiorello La Guardia wanted to speak to the creators of Captain America. Simon got on the line. “You boys over there are doing a good job,” the voice squeaked. “The city of New York will see that no harm will come to you.’”
That is how it’s supposed to work in a democracy.
But the offspring of the Greatest Generation decided to airbrush their parents’ vision of America out of existence.
Or as Jim Treacher writes, “Oh, now you’re worried about free speech and artistic expression?”
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