By Patrick J. Buchanan
In July of 1870, King Wilhelm sent Foreign Minister Bismarck an
account of his meeting with a French envoy who had demanded that the
king renounce any Hohenzollern claim to the Spanish throne.
Bismarck edited the report to make it appear the Frenchman had
insulted the king, and that Wilhelm rudely dismissed him. The Ems
Telegram precipitated the Franco-Prussian war Bismarck wanted.
Words matter. And if a picture is worth a thousand words, how much greater impact can a motion picture have? We are finding out.
Egypt has banned “Exodus: Gods and Kings,” the $140 million 20th
Century Fox biblical epic. Cairo’s culture minister Gaber Asfour
condemns it as “a Zionist film” containing “historical inaccuracies.”
The depiction of enslaved Jews building the pyramids and Moses
parting the Red Sea to enable the Jews to flee and drown the Egyptian
army is false, says Asfour. Historians date the pyramids to around 2540
B.C., 500 years before Abraham, the father of Judaism.
Paramount’s “Noah” was banned in Egypt, Indonesia and Malaysia, for taking liberties with the Quran.
Islamabad is in an uproar over the Showtime series, “Homeland,” where
Pakistani intelligence services are portrayed as colluding with
Islamists trying to kill ex-CIA director Saul Berenson and station chief
Carrie Mathison. In the season’s final episodes, the U.S. cuts ties to
Pakistan and closes the embassy.
The Showtime series “maligns a country that has been a close partner
and ally of the U.S.,” a Pakistani embassy spokesman told the New York
Post, and “is a disservice not only to the security interests of the
U.S., but also to the people of the U.S.”
The 2014 “Homeland” finale was aired just after 140 Pakistani school kids were massacred in Peshawar by the Taliban.
Islamabad is “a quiet picturesque city with beautiful mountains and
lush greenery,” said one Pakistani, yet is “portrayed as a grimy
hellhole and war zone where shootouts and bombings go off with dead
bodies scattered around. Nothing is further from the truth.”
Angrier than Egypt or Pakistan is North Korea over Sony’s “The
Interview.” Why would a film company owned by the Japanese, who are not
beloved in Korea, think it would be a great fun to make a comedy out of a
CIA plot to assassinate North Korea’s head of state?
The North Koreans are serious people. They massacred half of the South Korean cabinet in the Rangoon bombing.
They have brought down airliners and sunk warships without warning. They have plotted to assassinate South Korea’s president.
Their megalomaniac ruler, Kim Jong-Un, just had his uncle-mentor
executed, along with his family. Kim has atom bombs and seeks to
miniaturize them to put atop missiles able to reach the United States.
He is the most erratic and dangerous ruler on the planet and this assassination-comedy is just the thing to set him off.
Says Adam Cathcart, a North Korea expert at Leeds University, “In
North Korea it’s more or less a fait accompli that the Americans are
trying to kill our leader.” To sustain its Stalinist dynasty, says the
Washington Post, Pyongyang has created a “personality cult that is
anything but a laughing matter.”
In retaliation for “The Interview,” North Korea, says the FBI, hacked
into Sony’s computers, published confidential emails and threatened
retaliation against any who showed the film.
The North has repeatedly denied it hacked into Sony. But it now
appears the U.S. has retaliated by disrupting Internet service in North
Korea, much to the cheers of the War Party, which wants President Obama
to put the Hermit Kingdom back on the list of state sponsors of terror.
North Korea is now using racial slurs to describe Obama.
There is an aspect of reckless immaturity here.
While the Wall Street Journal thinks it would be fun to send DVDs of
“The Interview” by balloon into the North, the Washington Post says
possession of the film there would be regarded as treasonous, and could
bring a death sentence.
No one denies Sony the right to produce a comedy about blowing up Kim
Jong Un. Nor was anyone denying theaters or Internet sites the right to
show it. What Sony seemed to want was to produce a movie that made the
assassination of a dictator appear hilarious, but to be exempt from any
consequences.
But we live in a world today where if you produce cartoons of the
Prophet with a bomb for a turban, or disparage Islam in videos, books or
movies, you can get yourself and others killed.
Dutch filmmaker Theo Van Gogh was butchered in Amsterdam by an
enraged Muslim for “Submission,” a 10-minute film that excoriated
Islam’s treatment of women.
In this weekend’s Washington Post, Joe Califano, a confidant of
President Johnson, writes of how the new film “Selma” demeans LBJ’s
crucial role in enacting the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
To enrich itself, Hollywood is playing games with religious beliefs
and historical truths — and making enemies, not all of whom believe in
turning the other cheek.
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