Dear Kim: Nuke The West Coast, Please

Regarding ‘Interview’ is silly, daring" (Friday Star), a review of the controversial movie about an attempt to assassinate the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un, I have one question: Were we watching the same movie? 

 

This movie is portrayed as an edgy comedy, but it is nothing of the kind.  It wallows in racism, graphic violence, dismemberment, sexual slavery and sexual mutilation.  It is offensive not just to North Koreans in particular ways, but to oriental peoples in every way.  Asians might have forgiven the producers for the jokes about the size of their eyes or as slapstick targets worthy of being machine-gunned by the score for laughs, and they might have overlooked the reference to Koreans eating dogs or the funny way orientals talk, but I'm pretty sure that portraying Korean children in drag is not just beyond edgy, but beyond the pale. 

 

And lest you think the movie merely racist and violent, it is also the most homophobic and misogynistic mainstream movie of recent memory, and perhaps ever produced.  There are few homosexual clichés this movie does not embrace, and women are portrayed as objects good for laughs, sexual abuse, and little else.

 

This is a cruel, divisive and dreadful movie, and the fact that anybody finds anything redeeming in it makes me embarrassed not just for American cinema, but America.  Hopefully, Sony's minor embarrassment in recent days at the hands of some suspected North Korean Hackers will be as nothing compared to that of the general public, now that this dreck has been released. 

It's not every day that freedom-loving Americans will find themselves on the same side of an issue with Kim Jong Un, but in the case of The Interview, we should be.

 

Pete Smith

Houston, TX 

Obama: Islamist Sycophant

Regarding "Obama vows U.S. response to N. Korea" (Saturday Front Page), within days of the hacking of Sony Studios computers - allegedly over the opening of a movie that portrayed North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in a bad light - President Obama blamed North Korea, promised that the United States would "respond proportionally” to those attacks, and criticized Sony for giving in to intimidation by cancelling the movie's release, declaring that such capitulation would encourage "other countries to sabotage documentaries, or news reports they don’t like.” 

 

How different was his reaction to another movie that allegedly resulted not just in threats, but the murder of American diplomats in Benghazi two years ago.  Within days of the murders, President Obama claimed that an obscure home movie produced several months earlier that ridiculed the Prophet Muhammad had provoked Muslims to mass protests in Libya, escalating into the attacks on Americans that left four dead, including ambassador Chris Stevens.  Obama disavowed the movie, claimed that it was an affront to Islam, swore America had no hand in the venture, and had the director arrested.

 

Apparently, his concern for protecting freedom of expression depends on whose ox is being gored: Obama seemed perfectly comfortable stepping all over first amendment rights so as to keep from offending Islamists.  I could wish that he applied the same standard to all bad actors, but mostly, I'd like him to focus his ire on the bad actors, and not moviemakers.

 

Pete Smith

Houston, TX

LTE: The Hook Up Culture - Liberalism

Liberalism
Regarding "Cosby scandal masks the larger problem" (Page B7, Tuesday), New York Times columnist Nicolas Kristof boldly states that rape is tolerated in American society because "too often, boys are socialized to see women and girls as playthings." He then insists that "the larger problem is a culture that enables rape. The larger problem is us."

But wait, he's not done. Kristof is also certain that "We collectively are still too passive about sexual violence in our midst, too willing to make excuses, too inclined to perceive shame in being raped," to which I can only ask: What is all this "we" nonsense?

Nicolas Kristof may have stumbled through the first 55 years of his life without strong opinions on rape, but I'm fairly confident he is part of a very small minority.

And while he does make an important point about a lax culture on college campuses that enables rape, his conclusions are off the mark: Rape happens on college campuses, not because all of us failed to be concerned about it, but because of the "hook-up" culture that has not just popularized casual sex, but institutionalized it.

Stripped of significance in the minds of our young, it's not too big a leap to surmise that if sex is no big deal and available on demand, that the line becomes blurred in the minds of our youth when it comes to rape.

 

What is significant is why young people feel that sex is no big deal. The answer is simple: Progressivism. Liberals have been promoting the feminist sexual revolution as consequence-free for more than 50 years now and only seem to have discovered that rape is a problem the day before yesterday. Liberals have also dominated campus culture for the past 50 years. Do the math.

I don't think it's unreasonable to conclude that rape flourishes - not because of "all of us" - but despite our best efforts to prevent the onslaught of liberalism.

Nicolas Kristof might fairly be called a liberal and a progressive. If he wants to understand why rape flourishes, he might start by examining his own values, instead of everybody else's.

Pete Smith, Houston
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.chron.com/opinion/letters/article/Sunday-letters-The-hook-up-culture-5938730.php
http://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/letters/article/Sunday-letters-The-hook-up-culture-5938730.php