Friday March 04, 2005

AN IDIOT AND HIS USEFULNESS. The L.A. Times runs a story that's pretty much a couple of North Koreans talking to a Times reporter about how things back home aren't so bad, really. It's risible and pretty dull, because these Der-Fuhrer-was-a-terrific-dancer narratives all tend to resemble one another, with the subjects taking on that defensive, dismissive tone common to totalitarian apologists:

He said as North Korea worked to change its state-run economy, it would look to China as an example and seek to change gradually. He didn't use the word "reform" — anathema to some trained under the socialist system.

"In the past, we were revolutionaries. But now we prefer evolution to revolution," he said. "We will try to learn from China's successes and failures"...

The North Korean criticized some Japanese politicians' efforts to link the nuclear talks to the question of Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korea in the 1970s and 1980s.

"This was something done by a few overly enthusiastic people long ago," he said. "We tried to make amends."

"A few overly enthusiastic people"! Yeah, there are guys like that at every party.

I don't think much of the story, but I certainly never had the idea that it was meant to convince me that the North Koreans are a bunch of nice guys. The subjects are from North Korea, and presumably plan to return there, so I didn't expect them to say, "Hello, we are totally evil." Being an adult of normal intelligence, I weigh their words against what I already knew about their country from magazines like The New Yorker ("one of the most brutal governments on earth").

Who doesn't know this? Well, Hugh Hewitt apparently thinks the nature of North Korea's government is a big secret and that the Times is trying to pull a fast one on its readers. He throws a two-day fit about it, raving that the Times is "lost in a hall of ideological mirrors and deep, deep left-wing ideology," "a west coast tip sheet for the Democratic Party" that "can't distinguish between news and propaganda." He calls the paper "The Pyongyang Times of Los Angeles." He calls the reporter "Barbara Demick-Duranty." I mean, the guy basically craps his pants and rolls around in it.

That Hewitt, over-excitable on his best days, would behave like this is not surprising. For a nanosecond, though, I was surprised that the Ole Perfesser actually called attention to this spectacle. Isn't he embarrassed to associate his smoother, heh-indeedy repertoire of right-wing moves with this craziness? But then I remembered: you can't build a movement just on intellectuals and rentiers; you have to suck in some proles, too. If your own style is too cool for the cheap-seaters, find a frother with a megaphone and see if he doesn't get them pounding the tables.
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