Greta Van Sustern: Sony Was "Stupid" and "Idiots" to Make NK Movie; Should Have Known They'd Be Hacked, Threatened with 9/11-Style Terrorist Attacks

Really?

Several points:

North Korea has never engaged in this sort of retaliation before, and they've been similarly provoked. The awful James Bond movie Die Another Day featured North Korea as a villain, and had Bond blowing up half of a North Korean brigade; Team America: World Police featured a hilarious parody of Kim Jong-il, and showed him being killed ("assassinated," I gues) at the end.

Also, when he died, the creature living inside of him -- an alien parasite, maybe, or a mutant demi-urge taking the form of an insect -- escaped. That creature inside him, representing his soul, was a cockroach.

So why would Sony know that they shouldn't make this movie?

Greta Van Sustern is just wrong here in so many ways. Her "solution" to terrorism is just to capitulate pre-emptively to potential terrorists -- Sony and all other media companies should just figure out which Evil Basket-Case Tyrannical States are willing to use terrorism as part of their PR apparatus, and make sure they never mock such countries.

So... We're not supposed to mock the most vicious regimes which are most deserving of mockery. If we self-censor, then we won't permit North Korean terrorists to censor us, I guess.

In a way I guess that's true, but in all important ways it's wrong.

It seems to me Van Sustern is demonstrating one of the most common, and stupidest, sorts of human behavior here.

Whenever a terrible setback befalls someone -- paralysis, cancer, rape, cyberterrorism by basket-case states run by midget maniacs -- human beings have a remarkably annoying, and sometimes offensive, need to moralize about the tragedy, and begin positing all the ways in which this horrific event could have been avoided.

Though usually not as overt as in Van Sustern's formulation, the suggestion is usually present: This tragedy was eminently avoidable, and the fact that it was not avoided suggests a defect, whether intellectual, moral, or characterological, on the part of the victim.

I think people do this partly due to their basic survival programming: Learn from the setbacks of others. Postulate methods of avoiding similar tragedies.

I also think they do it partly to reassure themselves so that they're not unduly frightened: People don't like accepting the fact that many dangers are very unpredictable and hence impossible, or nearly impossible, to avoid, so they are overly fond of claiming that each and every tragedy that occurs in life was eminently foreseeable and thus eminently avoidable.

It's kind of a psychological knock-on-wood reassurance.

I don't think this is true in many cases. I do not think it was so "obvious" as Van Sustern says that North Korea would of course resort to an entirely unprecedented and never-once predicted or threatened form attack.

If this was so obvious, I'm sure Ms. Van Sustern can quote herself warning of the attack's inevitability...? Or cite someone she read making that warning?

Even if that warning had come (it hadn't, but if it had), then she's just saying "We should give in to bullies and censors and terrorists because otherwise they'll make trouble."

And all this just so she call call them "idiots" and "stupid."

This is of course the really basic thing about human behavior: Humans love to discover new ways in which they are Superior to new people they had previously not realized they were superior to at all.

Somewhere in Van Sustern is a hungry ego, impatiently crying out to be fed, as there is in all of us; she sees here an opportunity to feed the crying beast, and seizes upon it.

If Van Sustern thinks it's "stupid" to provoke terrorists and bullies and censors, she should quit her job at Fox immediately, because of course Fox takes a less charitable view of ISIS, Islamofascists generally, Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and all the various leftwing soft-fascism organizations than any other news company.

Is she so "stupid" to put her own safety and privacy at risk by antagonizing these people?

I guess so.

The Mewlings of Cowards: Too often I see cowardice being credited as "wisdom."

Risk-taking is good. I don't love Seth Rogen all that much, but mocking a tyrant is a good thing, even if it's a risky thing.

Perhaps Rogen was foolish to not realize it was risky.

Perhaps. But I don't know that. Why should I assume he didn't realize this was risky? Why should I assume he's stupid?

People tend to fear bravery -- to the extent they'll mock it, and the person exhibiting bravery, when he stumbles.

I hate this tendency our safe modern society has of mocking bravery and risk-taking.

"Well those idiots didn't know the safe play."

That's the sort of thing a boring, vanilla, will-never-impact-the-world coward tells himself about risk-taking people to make himself feel better about his own safe, soft decisions.

Risk-taking people usually do in fact know the risks.

They also know "the safe play" that the softer-bodied people are always demanding everyone take.

They just choose not to make the safe play. They choose, knowingly, the risky play.

I think it is toxic for society -- a poison that saps at our vitality-- for the Safe Play People's voices to be so loud, and so numerous, while so few people actually stick up for a bit of riskiness and danger.

Hey, Safe Play People: I've got news for you. No one ever accomplished anything big by sticking to the Safe Play.

So keep on hectoring and picking at anyone who dares to step out of line, if that makes you feel better about your own choices.

The people taking risks will just have to content themselves with mattering and living lives full of color and steel.

posted by Ace at 02:01 PM

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